European Rail Timetable

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The European Rail Timetable (also known as rail bible ) is a course book that shows all important national and international rail connections within Europe . Originally known as Cook's Continental Time Tables , it was first published by Thomas Cook and Son in 1873 . After the takeover by the Thomas Cook Group , the timetable was continuously distributed (with the exception of the period 1938–1946 due to the Second World War ) until August 2013, but then sold along with all other print publications of the Thomas Cook Group. Since March 2014 the timetable has been published again by a private European Rail Timetable Ltd and the last Thomas Cook timetable editors.

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In addition to international long-distance connections, the timetable contains selected national timetables for the following countries:

In addition, there are important ferry connections in Europe (including the Canal, North Sea, Mediterranean Sea) and trains beyond Europe (behind Europe), i.e. H. The most important connections in the following regions are listed alternately every month:

In addition to timetables, you will find useful travel information such as visa information, maps, city maps and ticket information on Interrail / Eurail and the individual countries (in Germany, for example, you can find the Quer-durch-Land-Ticket ) or lists of scenic train routes. For this reason, the timetable was and is very popular with backpackers .

Editions

The almost 500-page timetable appears monthly, with the Beyond Europe chapters dealing with a different region of the world each month. For the “big” timetable changes in June and December, special editions appear that contain all Beyond Europe regions and are valid for six months.

German language edition

In Germany, Deutsche Bahn AG published a German-language version of the timetable for the winter and summer timetables under the name Kursbuch Europa . This license edition ended with the winter edition 2008/09 on June 13, 2009.

By the end of 2001, Deutsche Bahn published its own foreign course book (from 1995 "course book abroad"). In addition to the “long-distance connections abroad” of the complete edition (Tables A1 to H7), this included long-distance and regional connections for each country. The timetable tables had 5-digit numbers with a "2" at the beginning. The country sorting was based on the international tables A1 to H7, beginning with table A 1 Niebüll – Tondern, or after its closure with A 2 Hamburg – Flensburg – Denmark. Starting from Germany as the center and the route (s) to Jutland comparable to a clock at 12 o'clock, the routes were listed clockwise after the border crossings from Germany: A - Scandinavia, B - Poland with Leningrad and Moscow, C - Czechoslovakia , D - Austria (with connections from Vienna to Poland) with the Balkan countries and the Italian Adriatic coast, E - Switzerland, Italy, F - France, Luxembourg, G - Belgium, Paris and London, H - the Netherlands and London.

The foreign course book started with Denmark, continued with Sweden, Norway, Finland, Poland, etc. The timetables of the GDR (in the complete edition as well as the transit trains to Berlin) and the Soviet Union were not included. Some CIS connections were only established from the mid-1990s. In contrast, the course book contained the connections of the Asian part of Turkey with connections to Tehran, Baghdad (with connection to Basra) and Beirut, as well as Morocco, but also Sardinia and Corsica. Apart from rail ferries, the shipping connections that can be used with rail tickets were hardly listed.

From the 2002 timetable year onwards, the “International Course Book” was included in the license edition mentioned above.

The publication of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable ended in August 2013 with the closure of Thomas Cook Publishing.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Cook Publishing: "Railway History Continues Thomas Cook agrees deal so the European Rail Timetable lives on" , accessed on November 1, 2013.
  2. ↑ Stephen McClarence: The end of the line for Thomas Cook's rail 'bible'. August 29, 2013, accessed February 1, 2017 .
  3. ^ Soo Kim: European Rail Timetable 'saved'. November 4, 2013, accessed February 1, 2017 .