Everybody’s Talking about the Weather…
February 8th, 2013 by ant6n
With the snow storm hitting the North-East, and thousands of flights cancelled, I’m reminded of this ad from 1966. It’s for the Deutsche Bahn, the rail operator in (West) Germany at the time. It says “Everybody is talking about the Weather … not us”, and at the bottom, “just rather take the train, DB”.
Yes, the train does not rely on airports or cleared highways to run, and is at least in theory not disturbed by snow, low lying clowds, or vulcanic ash clouds. Often stranded due to weather, I have wished for a rail connection to where I wanted to go, not having to rely on airlines.
Of course this above ad seems optimistic nowadays, with the now semi-privatized ‘Die Bahn’ not being prepared for the winter as much as it used to, or when several Eurostar trains got stuck in the Channel Tunnel in 2009 due to “the wrong type of snow“. On the other hand, on that particular day, I was actually flying to Europe via London, had flights cancelled, and ended up stranded overnight on the Amsterdam airport – so I did not do much better than the people stuck in those trains.
May 11th, 2017 at 18:04
Unfortunately the DB cannot manage neither hot nor icy days. On too hot days the airconditioner breaks down in the ICE. (Since it’s a high speed railway car there are no doors which can be opened by hand). And on icy days there are large delays or even cancelations because of frozen switches. Don’t you have switches in Canada? 😉
Btw. I think the current slogan is “Deine Zeit gehört Dir” (“Your time is yours/belongs to you”)