Friday 6 October 2017

The Karlberg Conundrum (2)

Let The Train Take The Strain ... ?
It definitely looks like a station and Streetview shows a thoroughly respectable station building.
It dates from 1882 ...
... and, as you would expect in Sweden, is clean, tidy and well equipped.
There are pictures showing a number 72 bus stopping outside ...
... and the route diagram shows it as the first stop northbound on trains departing from Stockholm Central Station.
We can also discover that these innocent blue lines show the "Pendeltåg" network.
Stations carry the letter "J" for Pendeltåg (?).

Some authorities translate this as "commuter lines", but Google Translate offers "shuttle". The "pendel" bit has the same semantic history as "pendulum" in English and "pendule" (pendulum clock) in French.

So "shuttle" it is. Here is Karlberg on one of the current Stockholm Transport maps.
There are four "shuttle" routes, all given route numbers and all passing through Karlberg.
BUT ...

None of these services stops at Karlberg.
Try the journey planner?
That red text is not at all hopeful. Fortunately there is an English version.
And even on Google Maps, the 72 stop has gone ...
... although the station is still there.

Summat's up!

The truth finally evolved after a thorough reading of the Wikipedia article on the Pendeltåg network.

Den 10 juli 2017 skedde trafikstart av Citybanan, som är en järnvägstunnel under centrala Stockholm som sträcker sig från Stockholms södra till Tomteboda. I och med färdigställandet av tunneln fördubblades spårkapaciteten genom Stockholm och gav pendeltågstrafiken två nya stationer samt egna spår på sträckan. Nya stationer är Stockholm City, i nära anslutning till centralstationen och T-centralen, samt station Stockholm Odenplan (som ersätter Karlbergs station) med bytesmöjlighet till tunnelbanans gröna linje. Projektet kostade cirka 16 miljarder kronor i 2009 års prisnivå.

Clues are shown in bold and italic. Fortunately Wikipedia also does it in English.
A rail tunnel underneath central Stockholm began construction in 2008 and opened on 10 July 2017. This new tunnel, known as Stockholm City Line (Citybanan; lit. ‘the city line’), is intended for the exclusive use of the Pendeltåg system. Two new underground stations, Stockholm City Station (located under T-Centralen, both stations with connections to Stockholm Central Station) and Stockholm Odenplan Station ...
... (located under Odenplan metro station, intended to replace Karlberg Station) were built as part of the Citybanan project.

So poor little Karlberg Station would seem to be no more. To reuse some of the famous "Dead Parrot" sketch:-

It is bereft of life, it rests in peace! It's transport processes are now History! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off the network coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!!

Odenplan is posher, underground ...
... and has connection with the Metro and numerous buses.
But it's a long long walk to Karlberg Palace (click on map below for an enlargement).
As an experienced if unwilling user of the interwebnet, fbb can usually find his way round transport web sites (although those with cyrillic script, japanese and chinese would be no go areas!) but he could find nothing specific about the transfer of services to the new tunnel line on the official Stockholm Transport web site.
But then yesterday's comment writer said it all.
The web is only easy if you know most of the answer before you start.

An up to date timetable book, unfettered by dodgy signal strength, is always quicker for an "outsider" to use than anything on-line. As one Stagecoach bus manager in Sheffield was brave enough to admit, when offered a "heritage" timetable book ...
... "I would use a book like that if one were available."

Q.E.D.

Timetable books and a bit more from Stockholm feature tomorrow.

 Saturday selection blog : 7th October 

4 comments:

  1. The J is not for Pendeltag but for Jarnvag - railway. Think of J as the equivalent of the British Rail symbol.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Daddy! jarn = iron, vag = way, road. Pendeltag is not part of the Swedish national rail network, but under the auspices of Stockholm Transport, similar (approx) to London's Overground.

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  3. Really FBB - "The web is only easy if you know most of the answer before you start.

    An up to date timetable book, unfettered by dodgy signal strength, is always quicker for an "outsider" to use than anything on-line."

    Surely for an outsider, on-line is easier?

    From the bustling metropolis of northern Somerset, I was able to google "bus Seaton to Exeter" and it provided me with the departure times and the first link was to the bus times site where I could gain a full timetable.

    Where I do agree is perhaps in the most tourist orientated areas like the IOW or Cornwall where a timetable booklet does provide a handy reference but in the vast majority of places, online is arguably more flexible. As in any media, printed or online, accuracy is paramount.

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  4. I think you'll find the note about the closure of the station is the box you have cropped off (I can't find that map).

    But another question: Why would anyone have trouble finding out what stops at Karlberg station in the way you suggest when Google quite clearly doesn't list anything as stopping there? Even using the journey planning option from Centralstation clearly sends you a multitude of other ways. This does seem to be going about things in a slightly perverse fashion: or do you know people who find a bus stop and laboriously work backwards, rather than using a vastly simpler search tool?

    Whilst there does not appear to be anything on sl.se/en, there is ample information on the Swedish Traffic Administration website:

    https://www.trafikverket.se/nara-dig/Stockholm/projekt-i-stockholms-lan/Citybanan/Nyhetsarkiv-start/2016-11/citybanan-i-stockholm-oppnar-den-10-juli-2017/

    https://www.trafikverket.se/nara-dig/Stockholm/projekt-i-stockholms-lan/Citybanan/Om-projektet/

    ReplyDelete