2023-10-03 48 10

Location

On a street in Rain

Participants

Plans

Take a train to Rain, walk to the hash, and go back to the train station. The most interesting question is if I'll be able to walk the ~3-4 km to the hash and back in the 35 mins until my train home leaves. Otherwise I'll have to kill an hour in Rain until my next train.

Expedition

Ominous signs started early in this expedition: My 4 train connection on my way to the hash did not start well when my first train was extremely full - so full, that we did not pick up all passengers from my station, or the following stations. I was lucky to be able to get in - but of course, a train overfull with people is slower, because all stations take longer for passengers to get off and for some of the passengers to get in.

Even with this delay, I managed to get my first connection - because that train was also delayed. Lucky me, for now! I get my second connection too, but no surprises here because that one is 25 minutes, and I'm on delayed trains, but only 5-10 minutes late.

Sadly, that's where my luck ran out. I might have fitted into the first train, and might have gotten the connection to the second one, but for some reason the third train was also 5 minutes delayed - and I have a five minutes connection in Donauwörth. This time, my want-to-be-on train is not delayed, and I miss my connection. And because this is a hourly service, I now get to kill an hour in Donauwörth.

It's still afternoon, and it's nice outside. I decide to walk to a nice tiny park right where the Danube combines with the Wörnitz (see gallery). It's not far from the station and I'm back 15 minutes early, and get on my train to Rain. I'm now one hour behind schedule.

Of course this train leaves five minutes late. This is not only annoying because if the train an hour earlier would have done this, I would have been able to catch it, but also because it eats into my already tight budget of time I can spend in Rain.

The path to the hash in Rain is not very interesting - I follow the streets to the path I scouted the hash to be on. I walk on that path until I'm sufficiently close, moving just a little bit to the left of the path to get closer without stepping on the plated crops on the field, get a screenshot and a picture and turn immediately back to the train station. I've got a train to catch, and I've got only 12 minutes to get back. I even turn down petting a Hashcat - something the cat probably did not understand. I get to the train station - just to see my train leaving the station.

So I've got another hour to kill and I'm now two hours behind schedule. I walk back into the city of Rain, get myself something to drink, and go back to the train station with enough time to get my train. While I'm waiting, I notice that Rain still has the old style level track crossing to get to the platform - something I have not seen in many years, since they tend to get replaced with bridges or tunnels over the last ten years.

Well, Rain still has one, and so I added it to this gallery. At least one good thing that happened because of all the delays. I get on the train to Donauwörth and start my way home. This connection is special. Usually, the connection is tight in Donauwörth, and (every other hour) there's another tight connection in Treuchtlingen. The connection leaving Rain at 18:44 should be one with the additional connection. But it's not, because you can use a special train that runs twice a day with more than enough connection time in Donauwörth that gets you directly to Nuremberg - and that doesn't stop in between except for Treuchlingen, so it's also quite fast.

This all sounds great. There's just one problem. The train from Donauwörth to Nuremburg is marked as 'extremely full', where it will be impossible for additional travelers to get one - just like my first trip of this journey. It's also already running late, probably because it is so full. So I rush into the train with the tight connection to Treuchtlingen. There shouldn't be another connection from Trechtlingen that is helpful to me, but maybe, just maybe, I can catch the 19:25 train to Nuremburg from Treuchtlingen, otherwise I'll fall back to the 20:04 special train I could have taken in Donauwörth. It's not a connection from my train to the 19:25, my train is scheduled to arrive at 19:25, but if my train is less delayed than the other train, it might work.

It doesn't. And the 20:04 train is getting more and more delayed. I have two connections of 12 and 7 minutes, respectively, and that train is already 20 minutes delayed. Without a miracle, I'll miss my final train home, and I'll be three hours late. At 20:25, a train stops at my platform, going to Nuremberg. It's not the delayed 20:04, it's the regularly scheduled 20:29 service. It has a lot of space for me and the travelers around me. It doesn't make sense for that train - stopping at approximately 10 stops between here and Nuremberg, and talking 50 minutes to do so - to leave earlier than the 20:04 service that doesn't stop and does the journey in 30 mins, but I don't care anymore. I've certainly missed my 12 minutes connection by now, I'll be three hours late either way, and this train has a seat for me.

We do leave the station 5 minutes late because - as expected - we let the delayed 20:04 pass. It might have even be a good strategy to let the overfilled train enter the station second - because then more people like me accept the slower train that can offer seats.