Welcome to today's thread - #CrossBorderRail 2026 Tour Day 03 - 18 Feb - Ravières - Dijon - Culmont Chalindrey - Paris – Genève

[thias@mastodon.social]

@jon I sometimes doubt myself. A source is always good.

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@stefanlindbohm @jon Both ÖBB and the Interrail app show those with five digits only, too. Maybe it is a Hafas limitation (which would make sense, the old Hafas exchange format used fixed witdh fields and was a wee bit conservative).

[phrawzty@hachyderm.io]

@jon
Doing god's work out there 🫡

[jon@gruene.social]

I also asked why these trains are compulsory reservation anyway

“There’s too much demand!”

My response: “So run more trains!”

“But that’s the Région’s responsibility!”

But what if my plans change? I asked the employee

“Then you have to change your ticket in the app”

‍️

[hopla@zug.network]

@jon @stefanlindbohm
Little hint: the leading "8" in the numbering system indicates it's a TER train with passagers. The number after seems to be region-related, and the next one line+service related. I don't have the exact details but I can make guesses:

832xxx is gonna be a train in the Strasbourg area, either as Saverne-Sélestat omnibus or Strasbourg-Niederbronn mission.
Trains starting with "7" are "postal train" without passengers (hence won't show in apps). If I recall correctly, "9" is for last-minute sillon, "4" and "5" are cargo related

As for Dijon.. it's always a culture shock to me when I go there and see the station at a rush hour (~17:00-18:00) and there's barely any train entering/departing for 20 minutes, platforms empty, station shops sparsely occupied. Région BFC doesn't order trains for commuters, almost everything is Paris-Lyon oriented.

[bohwaz@mamot.fr]

@jon
This wasn't the case a few months ago. Also the discount cards on this line are a joke. If you want to go to Nancy from chalon and being low income you have to book with Bourgogne solidaire card on chalon-dijon. Then the only accepted discount card on Dijon-culmont is the regular mobigo discount card. Then culmont-nancy is the Ter fluo solidaire discount card. 3 different cards. If you don't book separately SNCF only offers you the regular price, accepting none of the discount cards.

[technicalotter@glammr.us]

@jon "Not my problem" thought in a nutshell.

[jon@gruene.social]

And as the train is (partially?) compulsory reservation, but of course they don’t show what’s reserved on signs on board… they do have a website to tell you https://www.maplaceabord.com/maplacelibre/details?service-name=839552&from-station=87142000&to-station=87113001&travel-date=2026-02-18

[timwardcam@c.im]

@jon How TF is a one-off user (eg tourist) supposed to navigate that?

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@jon wtf!?

[jon@gruene.social]

Ah

There’s a regional train (to the right) running as an Intercités (Nancy-Lyon)

And an intercity train (to the left) running as a TER (Belfort-Paris)

The Intercités is not compulsory reservation. The TER is

[jon@gruene.social]

@TimWardCam why are tourists taking trains? They drive like any normal person.

[maartje@blahaj.social]

@jon how low effort is that site.... give me 10 minutes with that data and you get at least a visual seat map.....

[hopla@zug.network]

@jon hosted by "e-Voyageurs Technologies (groupe SNCF)"

Days since I last discovered yet another dedicated for-profit company within the public group: 0
*sigh*

[meganl@mas.to]

@jon I'm starting to try to plan train travel and this stuff is giving me agita...

I always had admiration for you train advocate folks...deep knowledge. But now I'm really bowled over by how long and hard you must have worked to amass the skills to pierce all this stuff...

[jon@gruene.social]

I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff on #CrossBorderRail but for the sheer “no one even thought about the passengers”-ness this is one of the most extreme cases I’ve seen. Anywhere.

[grlodi@mastodon.social]

@jon the URL looks so shady as well - at least make it a subdomain of sncf-voyageurs or something…

[stefanlindbohm@mastodon.social]

@partim @jon Ah that makes sense. But they are reported with 6 digits and we (Railfinder) show them like that, so there’s some processing on their export/import then.

Starting a project after Postgres became magic helps a lot with this stuff. The liberation of ”external data? just slap it in a `text` column” without downsides :). Compared to Hafas which originally had to run on the phones of 2-3 decades ago, phew!

[jon@gruene.social]

@hopla

[jon@gruene.social]

@meganL I don’t even know if I had the right reservations today or not. If even I don’t know the railway has a serious problem.