Any effect on railroads with the new Schengen countries?

I have seldom crossed a national border by train in Europe. On tourist buses, we have sometimes spent 30 or 60 minutes at a border. The worst I ever saw was at Frankfurt-am-Oder in 1992, where our driver went wrong-way on the highway to pass about 8 km of trucks heading east.
So: With the removal of so many borders last week, have passenger trains been speeded up? (z.B.: Bratislava-Wien or Berlin-Poznan?)
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While western Europe has chosen to make life easier, our Canadian-U.S. train travel (Amtrak) seems problematic, but that is for another forum.
Many thanks.
Joe ("Sepp")

my experiences in corossing borders in Europe by train ( some 20 years ago now ) , was that it was very quick anyway . we never had to leave the train , and it was just a quick check of the passport and thats was it . But i dont think that was in passing from any former west to former east countries .

The technical part has not been a big deal for a long time. How shall I call them- multi voltage locomotives cross the border without the need to stop. Changing the locomotive can be done in 8 to 15 minutes, if necessary. But that has not changed. The trains from Berlin to Poland have had multi voltage engines for years anyway, IIRC same goes for Vienna-Bratislava. Customs usually checks the passengers while the train is on the move. Extended stays at the border where SOP when the Iron Curtain was crossed, but that´s history.

David Benton wrote:my experiences in corossing borders in Europe by train ( some 20 years ago now ) , was that it was very quick anyway . we never had to leave the train , and it was just a quick check of the passport and thats was it . But i dont think that was in passing from any former west to former east countries .

Soon after the Berlin wall came down I got a train from Berlin to Warsaw. I was just getting my bed ready when we stopped at the border at Frankfurt an der Oder and the Poles refused to let me in without a visa, even though Communism had fallen. I was turfed out at midnight and went back to Berlin on the last really slow very old-fashioned train. I slept in an underground train at the end point of the Stadtbahn.

A few years later I took a train from Poland (no visa by then) from Krakow to Budapest which passed through Slovakia. At each border I was woken up to show passport. If that sort of thing has ended it will be a good thing. Now in the EU only Britain, Ireland, Romania and Bulgaria are not in Schengen, and the non-EU countries Norway, Switzerland and Iceland are in.

Unfortunatelly the ticket controls will continue, i.e. it will be not a smooth night between for eg. Vienna and Warsawa. The conductors will change twice during the night (the train leaves at around 10 PM!).

However this problem is not comparable with the border mysery in US. :-D :-D :-D

railfilm wrote:Unfortunatelly the ticket controls will continue, i.e. it will be not a smooth night between for eg. Vienna and Warsawa. The conductors will change twice during the night (the train leaves at around 10 PM!).

However this problem is not comparable with the border misery in US.

I once took the International from Canada to Chicago. The border wasn't too difficult but the train stayed there a long time. I had to get out and show documents. It was similar to the frontier between Botswana and South Africa in the old days - though there Europeans could be seen on the train, while "non-whites" had to go through a kind of cage.

Before Schengen I took a sleeper train from Hamburg to Basel in Switzerland. The procedure there was to give the passport to the conductor.

On the roads the change is really striking. A bus from Lille in France to Moeskron in Belgium passes frontier within the suburbs of Lille. It is quite easy to miss the frontier. Once I was reading my map and looked up and we had already crossed. The Belgian frontier with Netherlands is also hard to see. I think the colour of the road signs changes.

The hard frontiers are now on the edge of the Schengen zone. Lorries can be held up for days crossing from Poland to Ukraine or Russia. I don't know what it's like with the trains, but Russia is getting harder again.

Before Schengen I took a sleeper train from Hamburg to Basel in Switzerland.

In many relations on the night trians the conductor collects all tickets and leave you sleep through the night. There is no passport collection anymore and also on sleeping coaches the conductor remains the same from the beginning of the journey.
Only on several state owned sleeping coaches (OBB, CD, ZSR, PKP) you can experience difficulties with changing staff on the way.

railfilm wrote:Before Schengen I took a sleeper train from Hamburg to Basel in Switzerland.

In many relations on the night trains the conductor collects all tickets and leave you sleep through the night. There is no passport collection anymore and also on sleeping coaches the conductor remains the same from the beginning of the journey.
Only on several state owned sleeping coaches (OBB, CD, ZSR, PKP) you can experience difficulties with changing staff on the way.

Frontiers were once quite serious. In 1980 I was on a train from Hamburg to Hoek van Holland. At the frontier from Germany the train stopped and someone was taken away by the police. I seem to remember we weren't even in a station at that point. And of course in those days there were currency changes as well. Already it seems a distant nightmare when I think about the changes in the money, and yet only on 1 January 2001 I took some nice new euros from a machine in Oostende at 3.0 a.m.

i had a rather amusing experience back in the eighties . I had a rail pass , and was travelling round europe . I think i was in Luxembourg at the time , and decided to hop on a train going to belguim . however what i didnt realise was the train went through france to get there . Now , at the time , France and NZ had strained relations , due to the bombing of the Rainbow warrior in Auckland Harbour , and our finding out the sabetours were french agents . Anyway , my french visa was only valid for a single entry into france , which i had already made . and now i was about to make another entry , and if that went alright , another one on the way back . (the alternative would be a long detour ) . the immigration check was very brief and friendly on the way over ( quick glimpse at the passports ). however on the way back , the offical actually checked my visa . Despite my bad french , i managed to communicate i was going through to Luxembourg . He just shrugged his shoulders and handed my passport back .

David Benton wrote:i had a rather amusing experience back in the eighties . I had a rail pass , and was travelling round europe . I think i was in Luxembourg at the time , and decided to hop on a train going to belguim . however what i didnt realise was the train went through france to get there . Now , at the time , France and NZ had strained relations , due to the bombing of the Rainbow warrior in Auckland Harbour , and our finding out the sabetours were french agents . Anyway , my french visa was only valid for a single entry into france , which i had already made . and now i was about to make another entry , and if that went alright , another one on the way back . (the alternative would be a long detour ) . the immigration check was very brief and friendly on the way over ( quick glimpse at the passports ). however on the way back , the offical actually checked my visa . Despite my bad french , i managed to communicate i was going through to Luxembourg . He just shrugged his shoulders and handed my passport back .

In the days when national borders meant something that situation was catered for by a special class of train (or carriage in an ordinary train) called "Corridor". The doors were locked when in the "other" country.
The best example was in Austria where trains near Berchtesgadedn passed through a piece of Germany. (The line no longer exists). There is another in Switzerland where certain trains pass through a piece of Italy.
(I was once on a bus that went from one part of Zambia to another through the Congo Pedicle).

Anyway, with Schengen none of that nonsense happens any more. The only difficult frontier is into Britain.

george matthews wrote:

David Benton wrote:i had a rather amusing experience back in the eighties . I had a rail pass , and was travelling round europe . I think i was in Luxembourg at the time , and decided to hop on a train going to belguim . however what i didnt realise was the train went through france to get there . Now , at the time , France and NZ had strained relations , due to the bombing of the Rainbow warrior in Auckland Harbour , and our finding out the sabetours were french agents . Anyway , my french visa was only valid for a single entry into france , which i had already made . and now i was about to make another entry , and if that went alright , another one on the way back . (the alternative would be a long detour ) . the immigration check was very brief and friendly on the way over ( quick glimpse at the passports ). however on the way back , the offical actually checked my visa . Despite my bad french , i managed to communicate i was going through to Luxembourg . He just shrugged his shoulders and handed my passport back .

In the days when national borders meant something that situation was catered for by a special class of train (or carriage in an ordinary train) called "Corridor". The doors were locked when in the "other" country.
The best example was in Austria where trains near Berchtesgadedn passed through a piece of Germany. (The line no longer exists). There is another in Switzerland where certain trains pass through a piece of Italy.
(I was once on a bus that went from one part of Zambia to another through the Congo Pedicle).

Anyway, with Schengen none of that nonsense happens any more. The only difficult frontier is into Britain.

The Austrian corridor trains exists also today.

Any EC, IC or ICE going from Vienna (or Linz or Salzburg) to Kufstein, Innsbruck, Bregenz or Switzerland pass through Germnay between Freilassing and Kufstein.
The "Rosenheim Bypass" was built in 1982 to avoid direction change of this corridor trains in Rosenheim Central Station.
Since Austria has entered the EU in 1995, the "big thing" about these trains is gone...

Since Austria has entered the EU in 1995, the "big thing" about these trains is gone...

Yes, that's the point. I gather that occasionally the frontiers can still be manned. I met someone a few years ago who had travelled from Spain to France and there was a border check because the Pope was visiting Spain (I think that was the reason). But the frontiers I have seen recently have no border posts any more. There are now offices, no barriers to raise and lower. Nothing except a road sign saying "Welcome to .."

I do like this new Europe, but can't see Britain joining in in the foreseeable future. The rightwing press is very against it and the civil servants in the Home Office hate the very idea. That is the reason why the trains to north of London never developed, even though British Rail timetabled North of London Eurostars.

george matthews wrote:

Since Austria has entered the EU in 1995, the "big thing" about these trains is gone...

Yes, that's the point. I gather that occasionally the frontiers can still be manned. I met someone a few years ago who had travelled from Spain to France and there was a border check because the Pope was visiting Spain (I think that was the reason). But the frontiers I have seen recently have no border posts any more. There are now offices, no barriers to raise and lower. Nothing except a road sign saying "Welcome to .."

I do like this new Europe, but can't see Britain joining in in the foreseeable future. The rightwing press is very against it and the civil servants in the Home Office hate the very idea. That is the reason why the trains to north of London never developed, even though British Rail timetabled North of London Eurostars.

The rightwing press is doing a good job. In 2005 I have do go to Brussels by car because an british friend of mine was arriving there late with the Eurostar.
After passing Antwerpen he screamt suddenly: "We have to stop, my passport is in my bag in the trunk!"
I told him, he will not need his passport...
He: "But the border...???"
I told him: "I will not become even slower for the border".
He said nothing, but his face told me that he doesnt believe me.
20min later we passed the border between Belgium and the Netherlands with 85mph...
I will never forget his face when I said: "Watch out for the blue sign with the golden stars, when we passing it, we are in Holland..."

After doing this again 40min later with the border between the Netherlands and Germany he said: "Now I understand why you on the continent like the EU!"

It was a night of surprises for him, the next surprise was my Mini doing 125mph but thats another story!

Holy smoke , what have you got in it , a big motorbike engine ???

David Benton wrote:Holy smoke , what have you got in it , a big motorbike engine ???

The BMW first generation Mini Cooper has 114 hp (115 PS), thats enough for 125mph.
Maxiumum speed I've done with these was about 135mph...