Welcome to today's thread - #CrossBorderRail 2026 Tour Day 03 - 18 Feb - Ravières - Dijon - Culmont Chalindrey - Paris – Genève
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And discovering this sort of total ridiculous shit is why there’s no substitute for going to the places and testing the trains on #CrossBorderRail
You only *get this* once you’ve experienced it
@jon
Doing god's work out there 🫡 -
So I asked at Culmont Chalindrey
Station staff told me Dijon - Culmont Chalindrey ISN’T compulsory reservation
But anything along the line Belfort - Culmont Chalindrey - Troyes - Paris IS (whereas I thought it was only from Nogent sur Seine - Paris)
️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”
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@stefanlindbohm @12train in Bourgogne it’s weird. They add the 8 only to the very slowest trains (ones that don’t serve Paris)
@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 relatedAs 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.
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My train after this one is listed as a compulsory reservation TER
It has a 47 mins total trip, Dijon to Culmont Chalindrey with 1 stop en route
I’m semi sure this is a data error and it’s not comp res. But we’ll see
@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. -
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”
️@jon "Not my problem" thought in a nutshell.
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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”
️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
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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
@jon How TF is a one-off user (eg tourist) supposed to navigate that?
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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
@jon wtf!?
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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
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
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@jon How TF is a one-off user (eg tourist) supposed to navigate that?
@TimWardCam why are tourists taking trains? They drive like any normal person.
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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
@jon how low effort is that site.... give me 10 minutes with that data and you get at least a visual seat map.....
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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
@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* -
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 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...
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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
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.
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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
@jon the URL looks so shady as well - at least make it a subdomain of sncf-voyageurs or something…
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@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).
@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!
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@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* -
@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...
@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.
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@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.
@jon Now that I read back in the thread, I can see how that would be.
At least the multilingualism must help...
Fingers crossed for you. Thanks for illuminating for folks how cross-border rail is working in practice...
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@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!
@stefanlindbohm @jon My internship back in uni was at Hacon to build a Japanese version of their Windows app. The code (obviously) assumed single byte character sets and did some formatting on it, so I built a string translation layer. That was quite fun!
