I will be out most of the day tomorrow

I am going home to visit my mother for Christmas so I will be on a train most of the day tomorrow so I might be slow responding to posts.

Knowing the train service in this country, I can only wish you the best of luck in getting there within twelve hours' time.

Yeah hopefully there will be no problems but yeah the Norwegian railroad is pretty shitty.

I challenge you to come to the UK and experience ours before saying that, Great One...

Anyway, you doing the usual for Christmas? I am; gearing up for my annual house-sit...

Yes the usual visiting my mother. Have fun house sitting. I am aware many places are worse. At least the train went on time today but I am stuck with someone who insist on small talk even og I have ny headphones on and try to watch a movie I am at the end of my rope here. Well one more hour to go but damn lady just let me watch my movie.

I think that issue is more a generic problem with trains and not particular to the Norwegian one. Normally, the trains I'd get wouldn't be busy on the 23rd but due to strikes my own journey might be as fun. As for the house/animal sitting... well, it beats the more painful alternatives (the options were about as good as the ones I listed a few years back).

Oh, and tried to check an overdue package on Amazon, only to be told it's been cancelled. Yay, another issue I need to sort out...

I should point out that I do believe the Norwegian and UK rail systems have different problems - the big issue with the Norwegian railroads is that while the *trains* have been regularly updated, the rails themselves have seen little to no proper maintenance in a couple of decades. Except in the immediate vicinity of the capital, that is.

Yay privatization.

Eh, the core issue with Norway's rail system is... because you're Norway. You're too mountainous, too low in population density and have wildly differering seasons which requires special steels etc. This means any track improvements cost a bomb, maintenence per passenger/km is higher than other comparable nations and why lines are the snakey 'stop at as many towns as possible' kind.

While you're not wrong, it was actually good until the gov't decided to split up the state-owned rail service into one company running the trains, and separating out responsibility for rail maintenance and expansion.

The result is that despite newer trains being put into service, travel time has increased due to old rails being unable to support the traffic they once could handle.

Seriously, to my knowledge, there are stretches of rails dating back at least half a century, if not longer... and the maintenance backlog keeps growing longer and costlier each year. But at least we have newer high-speed trains...

Well you could have screwed that plan even more (like we did) by then franchising out the rail services to private companies... many of which now generate nice profits for other European train companies...

Anyway, the 'new trains/rolling stock' might actually be part of the problem. A very quick look tells me the trains are a butt-load heavier and much more thirsty for the juice than the old ones they replaced. Thus, heavier wear-tear on rails, sleepers, power-lines and so on.

Yeah the repair of the lines is one thing that do cause problems. Also since the train services became privately owned everything have gotten more expensive and worse quality.

I used to get the first class thing as it cost only 10 dollar more and there was less chance of getting screaming kids and drunks there, but now with the new system there is less space per passenger, the coffee is shit and the extra cost is tripled, so from now on I will get a regular ticket as it is not worth it. As for the regular ticket, not only have it gotten more expensive but easlier if you have a disability pension you got the tickets for half price, now it is 20 percent less expensive, as a result earlier a ticket cost me about 60 bucks now it is 100 for worse service.