chornedsnorkack

This would have the problem, that all "other" airlines have their geographical forums - Europe, Asia and Far East, Middle East and Africa, North and South America - but rail does not. So, it might be better to have "Ground Transportation" forum in the Other section, and then see if this needs splitting.

Mwenenzi

Doing a search of "Rail" in the thread title of UK & Ireland forums brings up 2 pages of threads. A lot of those would not belong in Eu rail forum but many would. The UK & Ireland forum has a UK and Ireland Rail FAQ for both domestic & Eurostar

Doing a search of "Rail" in the title of all active threads in all forums brings up 18 pages of threads.

dnastudios

Eurostar have a Frequest Traveller Programme (here)

...And I've just made "Carte Banche" (something like silver with CSA, but no upgrades ), though I'm not sure if/how I'll use that.

I don't know about any other "FFP"'s other railways.


On a more serious note: A place to group information and/or answer questions on European railways could be useful to many. Gosh, I would love to understand the UK system and I live there.

SmilingBoy

There is only one elite level at Eurostar, which is Carte Blanche. (Carte Classique is the basic level.) It essentially gives you the ground privileges of Business Premier (lounge, fast track security/passport control) plus easier point redemptions on Eurostar. I think you get a less crowded carriage when travelling standard as well.

Watch this space, there are loads!

wyvern

I think this would be a good idea. Possibly it could be a general rail forum with European and other rail fora (e.g. Amtrak, country-specific rail fora) within it? We could even see UK rail moved off the BMI board to a forum of its own (much as that would be a piece of FT history gone, it might make logical sense!)

salut0

OK -- so if enough people support this, how do we vote on implementing it?

Cholula

At some point, one of the nine elected TalkBoard members could make a motion to create the forum or some variation of it. The motion would have to be seconded and then a two week public discussion period would take place in this forum while the TalkBoard voted on the motion.

If 2/3's of the TalkBoard members vote yes, then it passes.

But not all ideas brought up in this TalkBoard Topics forum are motioned and seconded. The best way to improve the odds that this would be voted on would be to encourage as many people as possible to post their views in this thread.

tcook052

Is OP proposing this forum specically to create a home for the raft of questions fired at him by TDF participants?

chrissxb

no. but I'll be happy to answer these ... St. Malo is best with train

ajax

I strongly support the creation of a European rail forum.

aztimm

I think its a great idea for a European Rail forum; I'm currently in Paris (head back tomorrow) and used the Eurostar London-Paris for this trip. A forum like this would have been handy for finding info.

But where do you draw the line? Years ago I went to Japan for grad school, and traveled extensively around Japan, using the bullet trains and other systems (some connected, some different companies, some little more than a glorified subway). Maybe you'd need a 'World-wide' train forum.

Cholula

Good idea.

Maybe we start out with a general forum title of "Train Travel" and then include sub-forums for "Asian Train Travel", "Continental European Train Travel", "UK/Ireland Train Travel" (as it seems some favor a seperate forum for GB) and "North American Train Travel" which could contain the current Amtrak forum.

I'm not familiar enough with train travel in Australia and New Zealand to know if they should be included? Can anybody weigh-in about this?

Plus I think we may want to add Subway to each Train title as they are generally considered a separate part of the rail system in many countries.

chrissxb

I don't like that idea.

where would you put eurostar? continental europe or uk? and why include subway? these information can be found in destination forum, paris metro in france forum, ny subway in nyc forum, ...


I'd like a european forum since every european country has different rails (even with frequent traveller programs) and the density is very high. japan is japan, you don't do international travel in japan using railways, do you? but you do it alot in europe!!! japan rail fits perfectly in japan forum.

AZ Travels the World

I think this is an excellent idea. Personally, I don't see the need to separate the UK from European, as the threads should specify the countries involved. (Do you put Eurostar threads in UK or Europe??)

I had the same questions about trains in Japan and found detailed information hard to come by, as most websites were in Japanese. I've also taken trains in China that I could relay information about, and an Asian Rail Travel sub-form would be the logical place for such threads.

I think a 'rest of the world' section would be a nice addition for everything else, and if, over time, a particular region stands out as appropriate for its own sub-forum, that could be addressed at that point.

So I could see these sub-forums:This would be an excellent addition to FT.

Jenbel

Last time this came up, the Japanese forum users were pretty adamant that they wanted to retain Japanese train travel within the Japan destination forum.