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.