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In my latest Substack, I talk about the useful benefits of old-fashioned railway maps and printed timetables when planning or embarking on a train trip. Am I a Luddite, or does “old is gold” still ring true for printed maps and timetables?
andybtravels.substack.com/p/old-but-gold-why-railway-maps-and
#traintravel #railtravel #timetable #railmap #trains
Comment on Facebook In my latest ...
Is that a Cooks I see in the background? Can't beat it.
I personally moved off printed maps and timetables about a decade ago when it comes to train travel, although in a rare few instances I still use them. The weight alone is a huge off putting factor. And secondly, there's no guarantee that what's printed is correct.
Unfortunate timing for the image, DB and timetables aren't on speaking terms right now. As a general rule though, sure, paper based will give you some insight over screen based.
As a fellow Luddite who has been travelling the rails in (mainland) Europe for around 50 years I completely agree with you. Without maps and printed timetables (both Cooks and national rail operators) I certainly wouldn't have travelled anywhere near as much as I have. The main advantage of journey planners is that they are (or should be) up to date. The amount of engineering work alterations is many times what it was a few years ago. The only thing affecting the main lines were significant infrastructure problems (eg landslides) or strikes.
I'm almost 100% screen based for maps and timetables nowadays. For planning, a map is crucial, but I'm 95% leaning towards journey planners nowadays. Whilst it's good to navigate to say a Polish PDF timetable in the traditional format for a piece of line I need, I'll verify everything against the journey planner. And I'll check any plans made months in advance several times before going. And adjustments do happen. Publishing an annual or half yearly paper timetable as was done years ago just doesn't hold nowadays seeing as regular adjustments are made. An interesting example with the accuracy of even PDF timetables. DB still publish them for most lines. Some they don't. One line I needed with a train service originally only one day a week I found and scrutinised it when the journey planner revealed no longer a train service. Turns out the section of line (a one stop extension) I wanted closed months before. Journey planner data was bang up to date, DB forgot to update the PDF timetable and left the old one sitting there. For the US where I'm exploring a lot of the network, Google Maps is very reliable for advance planning and many operators feed in live data as regards on the day delays.
Agree - have kept old timetables and check journey planner results against the old printed ones
Can’t beat a printed timetable.
