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Inland railway Sweden

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STEVIEBOY1

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Good morning,

All being well I shall be going to Norway & Sweden soon and one of the trips I am doing is on the Inland Railway in Sweden, has anyone done this trip and does the train reverse direction anywhere en route. I was looking at a rail map and it does appear to show that a reversal may happen at Arvidsjaur?

Thanks.
 
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rmt4ever

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Good morning,

All being well I shall be going to Norway & Sweden soon and one of the trips I am doing is on the Inland Railway in Sweden, has anyone done this trip and does the train reverse direction anywhere en route. I was looking at a rail map and it does appear to show that a reversal may happen at Arvidsjaur?

Thanks.

The buffet cars on Swedish trains are very expensive and they won't serve a beer until 11am :o even on Saturdays, something I found out the hard way on a 3 hr journey!

The rest I don't know, sorry
 

Billy A

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Good morning,

All being well I shall be going to Norway & Sweden soon and one of the trips I am doing is on the Inland Railway in Sweden, has anyone done this trip and does the train reverse direction anywhere en route. I was looking at a rail map and it does appear to show that a reversal may happen at Arvidsjaur?

Thanks.



Did the whole trip (Mona to Gällivare) in 2011. In my experience there were surprisingly few passengers and although you can reserve seats it doesn't make much odds as so many are free.
It's a two day trip each way as you probably know, overnighting in Östersund. They use old DMUs, starting with one units for the Mora to Östersund stage and then going up to two. You get a tour guide (one per unit) who tells you about various interesting things as you pass (like the site of a public hanging....) and takes you on little excursions like a visit to the Arctic Circle. They do both Swedish and English narration. There are frequent stops before which they take food orders so as to ensure that the cafes and restaurants are ready.
Very few people go the bitter end as it were as there's not a lot in Gällivare - it's a mining town and your entertainment options are limited to a trip to the deep mine or to the opencast one, both expensive because Sweden. Östersund's options, as you need to spend at least one night there, are an open air museum called Jämtli and that's about it.
At some point on the line there's a long stop - I think it's Storuman - while they take away the train and do something or other with it. I can't comment on reversals, I don't remember any.
There's no onboard catering hence the frequent stops. You do get toilets, one of which broke while I was on board whereupon the driver came back to see if he could do anything (while the train was still running at line speed....) and having failed the tour guide announced that if anyone had urgent need they were to tell her whereupon she would ask the driver to stop and the short taken could do their business "in the nature".
You might be able to get into the cab, during my trip a passenger spent most of the journey in there with the driver and guide.

You don't see much, unless views of about 1,000 km of coniferous forest are your thing. As you go north the trees thin out and the first view of reindeer brings passengers to the windows.

Book accommodation well in advance.
 
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30907

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35 years ago, but only North from Arvidsjaur (there was a connection from the main line then, and it was impossihle to do the whole line from Sundsvall in a day - the service was all ysar round though).

The map very clearly shows a reversal.

I, too, remember the miles of forest - and also difficulty getting food at Jokkmokk en route, but that was long before the tourist potential had been discovered.
 
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dutchflyer

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Have also done the whole route-long, long ago, mostly when it still was normal service of SJ.
Part of it later when it was IB. At that time (going south from Gällivare) there was some ''ambulant servering''-young girls selling local produce from baskets, giving local tourist-info and the in SE inevitable cf+cookies, with also, as above, orders taken for more solid food at stopping places-at some where local grannies also came to train to sell home-baked goodies or offer private rooms (a bit like TransSib-which one would not expect in highly developed SE). These prices were considerably lower as the normal price range on SJ-restaurang.
Frankly: compared with current average UK_pricing for food/drink on stations etc, SE is not really that much more expensive. If you travel there longer, the best bargain is the set lunch, (dagens lunsj/rätt) mostly 2-3 set courses +bread+soft drink+cf, for around 99 SEK. As labour is expensive (or just fairly remitted) there, its mostly self-serve!
 

JonasB

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Good morning,

All being well I shall be going to Norway & Sweden soon and one of the trips I am doing is on the Inland Railway in Sweden, has anyone done this trip and does the train reverse direction anywhere en route. I was looking at a rail map and it does appear to show that a reversal may happen at Arvidsjaur?

Thanks.

Correct, the train reverse direction in Arvidsjaur. The trains consists of Y1 railcars that are a bit spartan. There are seats, luggage racks and a bathroom, but not much more.
 

STEVIEBOY1

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I have just returned from this trip which was good, yes the train did reverse direction in Arvidsjaur.

It was better than I was expecting, so glad I did it.
 

rmt4ever

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I have just returned from this trip which was good, yes the train did reverse direction in Arvidsjaur.

It was better than I was expecting, so glad I did it.

How did you find the buffet cars and silly anti booze rules ?
 

STEVIEBOY1

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How did you find the buffet cars and silly anti booze rules ?

On the Inland railway, which was a single railcar, the staff were selling drinks on board, but only tea, coffee, coke, juice etc, there was an opportunity to buy wine & beer at the restaurant where we stopped for 45 mins in the afternoon, but this had to be consumed in that establishment.

I normally like to buy 1 or 2 of those small bottles of wine to drink during a long railway journey, but it was not possible in Norway or Sweden, some buffet cars on the main lines did sell wine, but in large bottles and again they had to be drunk in the buffet cars, not taken back to your seat. I presume it would have been the same for beer too.

I did go into supermarkets in both countries and although soft drinks, cider and beer were plentiful, wines & spirits were nowhere to be seen. I could not even find any off licences. The only booze I drank were either in pubs, restaurants or hotel bars.

I had no idea there was a problem buying alcohol in those two countries. I also heard that Norway had prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s like they did in the USA.

I am going on a steam charter in the UK Next week and already have bought my supplies. :D
 

Billy A

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They're quite odd about drink in Scandinavia. In Sweden the equivalent of an off licence is a chain called Systembolaget which at least originally had restrictive opening hours so you couldn't buy drink on a whim. The staff used to be dressed in white coats so you got the feeling you were going to a chemist for a prescription.

Must be cutbacks on the Inlandsbana. I went six years ago (I was on it this day six years ago in fact) and they had two units for the Mora-Ostersund stage and one for part of the northern leg - we lost one at some stage.

Do they still let people wander in and out of the cab?
 

JonasB

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We have quite restrictive laws on alcohol in Sweden. As others have said, restaurants are not allowed to sell alcohol before 11.00, and all alcohol bought in a restaurant must be consumed there. And you may not drink alcohol bought somewhere else at a restaurant.

And yes, Systembolaget is the only place you can buy alcohol stronger than 3.5 % (apart from restaurants and pubs). But they sell small bottles of wine, although nothing smaller than 187 ml. But I'm a bit surprised you weren't allowed to buy a bottle of wine in the train and take it back to you seat. People do that all the time.
 

STEVIEBOY1

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They're quite odd about drink in Scandinavia. In Sweden the equivalent of an off licence is a chain called Systembolaget which at least originally had restrictive opening hours so you couldn't buy drink on a whim. The staff used to be dressed in white coats so you got the feeling you were going to a chemist for a prescription.

Must be cutbacks on the Inlandsbana. I went six years ago (I was on it this day six years ago in fact) and they had two units for the Mora-Ostersund stage and one for part of the northern leg - we lost one at some stage.

Do they still let people wander in and out of the cab?

Yes, we could stand just outside the cab behind the drivers.

It does seem to depend on booking levels regarding if it a one or two car unit.

It seems that the very southern part of the Network from Mora is year round and up to now, the northern sections only operate a short summer season, however there is talk of a winter service for the northern part, no doubt for skiers etc. Wood traffic also operates in the north in the winter so we were told.
 

Blillpers

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I work in the signal box at Mora from time to time. :) As Steve said the southern part of the route (Mora-Östersund) has a regular passenger service the year around nowdays. In the winter it's more commuter oriented with an accelerated schedule and connecting with the mid-day InterCity to and from Stockholm . In additon an local Mora-Orsa service is running 4 times daily.
 
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