Not really relevant to Raymond's main points made in his other posts,
but the big distinction in Europe is between trains that cross national
borders and those that don't. And I have bought international train
tickets (London-Paris, London-Brussel) without AFAIR being asked for id.
Of course they expect you to have a passport :-( I've also travelled by
train and by plane in groups where someone else bought the ticket, and
I've bought tickets for other people. So, for example, I went to Greece
by plane with a ticket which had my sister's name on it because she'd
booked it. I don't think anyone minded or noticed - but, of course,
they also wanted to see my passport (whch has neither phone number nor
address on it, but I assume can be cross-referenced to details about me
somehow). I've taken my mother and my daughter to Paris for a day out,
and certainly not given their names and addresses to anyone (I guess
they could have got mine from the credit card).
You can get open rail passes for all of Europe or any country in Europe.
I used one to see the 1999 total eclipse in Hungary & then travelled
around in Germany, Denmark and Norway. They asked me for id when they
sold it to me, but there is no tracking of your travel and no booking
ahead. You can go to any station, get on a train, and go where you
want.
There are exceptions like the very wonderful German ICE trains where you
have to pay extra . They use this to limit the number of passengers
(most trains will sell more tickets than seats, even for journeys that
take some hours in Britain you have to pay extra to be guaranteed a
seat, and that is only on journeys above an hour or so). The ICE trains
didn't ask me for id, and you can pay in a cash. I took one from Berlin
to Koln, try it if you can afford it, you will never want to enter an
airliner again :-)
On the other hand, British railway companies ask for your name and
address (not necessarily a phone number though) when you buy a season
ticket. I suspect this is partly for marketing, but mainly because they
want to prevent people sharing season tickets. Most of them work for
unlimited travel within a zone - there is nothing to stop you getting
off the train at your destination and coming right back again as many
times as you like. I've never been asked for any id for any single or
return ticket, even ones to other countries.
Ken
"Raymond D. Mereniuk" wrote:
>
> On 25 Apr 2001, at 0:53, Matthew Gaylor wrote:
>
> > How could that possibly make a difference? It shouldn't matter if
> > the train trip were to the dark side of the moon.
>
> If you book an airline trip you think nothing of giving a telephone
> number. What is the difference between airline travel and train
> travel? I guess it depends on how you define train travel. A simple
> way to define train travel is divide into short-haul and long-haul.
>
> Long-haul train travel is probably fairly comparable to airline travel,
> at least from the supplier's point of view. You think nothing of giving
> your phone number for airline travel so why should you think
> differently of supplying a telephone number for long-haul train travel.
> The supplier of long-haul train travel would have similar resource
> allocation problems as the airline travel supplier and the same
> reasons for wanting the option of being able to contact the
> customer.
>
> I used the distance comparison as I am pretty sure if I booked a
> London to Baghdad train ticket (or London to Moscow if there is no
> rail service to Baghdad) I would be asked for a contact number.
>
> Raymond D. Mereniuk
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> History of a Telco, A Fairy Tale
> http://www.fbn.bc.ca/telcohis.html
