On trains

Seeing Richard Allan's comments about the bewildering array of train fares available for what should be simple journeys prompts me to write a post of praise for a train company that I dealt with today. I had to book two journeys for a couple of weeks time and having ascertained which trains I wanted to get and at what times - with their website telling me how much the journey would cost - I called them up and booked the journeys at exactly the times indicated on the website, at exactly the same price they'd quoted there.

You're waiting for the punchline, aren't you? Well, in this case it's not SNCF, but RENFE (English timetables available here and UK website here) - Spain's national train company. As a point of contrast, for the price a friend of mine paid for a return from Colchester to Huddersfield a few month ago, I've purchased a journey from Barcelona to Malaga, and then a separate journey from Malaga to Madrid a week later.

Now, I could write a long post on my complaints about the British rail network and the terrible service offered by just about every Train Operating Company, but if I started to write that post, I'd probably never stop. I'll just note that RENFE is, of course, a state-owned company.