bahn.de - Irish Rail joins German rail empire!

strassenwolf

I think it's just since the start of the year that the Irish Rail timetables are now available on the bahn.de website - the website of Deutsche Bahn. Until quite recently the empire of German rail effectively ended at Holyhead and Fishguard.

To access the timetable for a particular station, the easiest thing (as far as I know) is to do the following:

put in a journey from a location in Germany in the slot on the top left, e.g., von:Hamburg nach: Dublin

the site will ask for your age - put that in

up will come the next three connections between Hamburg and Dublin. Click "detailansicht" in the bottom left

up will come the details of the journey - the various trains, etc. that will be used in the journey. Click the last one: "Schiff"

up will come the details of the ship journey to Dublin Ferryport. Click the link to Dublin Ferryport.

up will come a page with an option "anzeigen" or "show" if you're using the English version. Click that button.

And up comes the details for departures and arrivals from Dublin (Heuston and Connolly).

Then click any of the links on the train details to find departures or arrivals from/at any particular station in Ireland.

For most European countries, e.g., Italy or the U.K. it is currently possible to start the process by just putting in "Milan to Rome" or "Leeds to Manchester" and up will come the details. That is, it's not necessary to put in a foreign city at the start of the search. This does not yet seem to be fully the case with Ireland.

Hopefully this will change. As Deutsche Bahn might say, "we're not there yet, but we're getting there.":D

MarkoP11

Works fine for me, Dublin Cork

DB only have the timetable from Jan 13 forward anything before that won't work

www.bahn.ie works as well, just to show the IE website is not strange the DB one will do the overnight connections as well

Victor

MarkoP11 wrote:

www.bahn.ie works as well, just to show the IE website is not strange the DB one will do the overnight connections as well

However, they might actually exist in Germany.

GerardKeating

MarkoP11 wrote:

Works fine for me, Dublin Cork

I tried a Galway-Bray journey, and while it gave me options, it only offers IC on Connolly-Bray, no details of DART or Arrow servies.

dowlingm

Presumably IE have not offered data for commuter - would that be unusual? Can you book an RATP or London Underground journey for instance?

andrew163

When I read the title here I thought for a second that Deutsche Bahn had taken over CIE.

I can always dream..

invincibleirish

was in berlin for new years, had to get night train to frankfurt,we had tickets for train direct between berlin-frankfurt,however poor communication on our part meant the tickets were for the wrong day,however at 10pm in berlin hauptbahnhof(very swish may i say) DB personnal ensured we managed to get to frankfurt via changing trains several times for our flight.the very notion of night trains alone amazes me but kudos to DB for sorting us out when we were in trouble,3 cheers for Deutsche bahn!!

DerekP11

andrew163 wrote:

When I read the title here I thought for a second that Deutsche Bahn had taken over CIE.

I can always dream..

I laughed my horlics off at that one. Wouldn't it be great.

Herr Micko, Herr Deco, Frau Sharo...etc.

strassenwolf

dowlingm wrote:

Presumably IE have not offered data for commuter - would that be unusual? Can you book an RATP or London Underground journey for instance?

Perhaps IE didn't offer the timetable - Maybe Deutsche Bahn just...annexed it.:p

The DB site has had this information for pretty well every country in Europe for quite some time. They must have added Ireland to the system in the last few weeks. Up until then it was only possible to get as far as Dublin Ferryport, Rosslare or Dun Laoghaire on the boat. They now have coverage from the Atlantic to the Pacific (Vladivostok):D Try it.

With regard to booking, they seem to be a bit dodgy with trains which go outside of Germany. In many cases these don't seem to be bookable online, whether they are Intercity or suburban trains.

MarkoP11

Well Irish Rail might own a little bit of DB which piece is commercially sensitive

DB just launched www.bahn.ie and www.bahn.co.uk

Irish Rail like all rail operators issued its timetable (several months ahead of telling us) to other European operators for international ticket sales and travel advice also for the Thomas Cook timetable

parsi

DerekP11 wrote:

I laughed my horlics off at that one. Wouldn't it be great.

Herr Micko, Herr Deco, Frau Sharo...etc.

Good Lord - imagine what Gleis11 would be like then ? Uniforms or at least a logo...

strassenwolf

parsi wrote:

Good Lord - imagine what Gleis11 would be like then ? Uniforms or at least a logo...

Tut, tut.:D I think itwould be Bahnsteig11

Victor

Or Islenbruekehof? *




* Islandbridge Station

parsi

Nah. Gleis 11 is what is has to be "Gleis Elf" sounds good and (in English) has connotations of the little people spying and reporting back all sorts of transgressions.. Herr Deco failed to greet Herr Inspector Smith with the appropriate greeting etc....

strassenwolf

Well will Gleis11 take a different view of the Vestern Rail Korridor? And will bahn.de be able to find space on their website for the schedule?

I'm schätzing that "no" and "comfortably" will be the answers.:)

strassenwolf

It's also quite good to use the bahn.de site to have a look at the departures and arrivals from any particular station in Germany or in other countries, e.g., the UK. Being more populous countries than Ireland, they obviously have more trains, so some of the stations get a lot busier. Apart from that these countries are physically connected to others, so you get a bit more variety. Although Frankfurt is the busiest station in Germany, Cologne has always been a favourite of mine, as its a through station and there are only 11 platforms. It's quite a junction for trains travelling north-south and trains travelling east-west, and it's not unusual to have two trains standing on the same platform at the same time. The actual logistics of managing it must be fantastic.

I haven't found any other transport provider in Europe which has a system where you can view arrivals and departures from a particular station on the web.

Vorsprung

Bahn.de is a quality site for anyone going Inter-Railing too, no point forking out l load of money for Thomas Cook timetables, used it all the time back in my youth

strassenwolf

Apart from taking Irish Rail's schedules under its wing:D , DB are also currently ahead of SNCF on the new TGV/ICE services between Germany and France, set to commence in the summer. These will lop well over an hour on journeys between Frankfurt and Paris, and a bit more (I think) on journeys between Paris and Munich/Stuttgart.

However, you can't see these quicker journeys on the SNCF website, as they only allow you to book two months in advance. On the DB website, it now seems to be possible to book a November (for example) journey between Frankfurt and Paris. All 4 hours and 6 minutes of it. (It's currently around 5:20 at best). I gather the plan is to eventually reduce this to around 3:45 minutes.

Not only would that be serious competition for flights between the two cities, it might have at least some effect on journey patterns between London and Frankfurt (currently a best time between 6 and 7 hours), when the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is completed.

It would be interesting to know, when the timetables take all these infrastructural developments into account, how this could eventually affect a Dublin-Paris journey, or a Dublin-Frankfurt journey. Frankfurt-Dublin is currently, at best, 19 hours, 11 minutes, while the best Paris-Dublin is 10:54.

Is there a possibility that we may, in years to come, see a boat from Dun Laoghaire and an overnight train from Holyhead as a feasible way to arrive fresh for a day's work in Paris or Frankfurt?

Yoda

At www.bahn.ie the first line of text says "Welcome to the Deutsche Bahn UK Booking Centre". D'oh!

pointofnoreturn

They probelly decided to push their data to this service, Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen (VDV) www.vdv.de
It's a system that allows transportation operators to share timetable information, along with sharing fair services, etc.. so when you have connecting services you can tell if and how many passenger will be connecting to your service, thats the information is shared ofcourse

Victor

Yoda wrote: »

At www.bahn.ie the first line of text says "Welcome to the Deutsche Bahn UK Booking Centre". D'oh!

The Irish website is, to a degree, an after thought. It is backed by the "UK Booking Centre" - an actual office. There is no separate Irish Booking Centre.

Dear Victor,

Thank you for your emails.

Indeed the "Wecome the the UK Booking center" on our www.bahn.ie website is misleading and we appreciate your hint on that.

We will change the wording to "Welcome to the Deutsche Bahn Booking Center UK & Ireland" to make it clear that although we are UK based we very well appreciate customers from Ireland.

The trading name registered with Companies House is DB Vertrieb GmbH (DB Bahn Sales).

We wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2009!


Oliver Schmidt
Director International Sales & Marketing UK and Ireland
DB Bahn Sales

www.bahn.co.uk / www.bahn.ie

CIE

Until quite recently the empire of German rail effectively ended at Holyhead and Fishguard

Freudian slip...?