h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: TGV - The French high speed train service - A686793
Author: Spaceman Spiff (MP) - U185155

This is my first time submitting an 'all-my-own-work' entry to your tender mercies. I have have followed the threads in here and commented on plenty of other people's though, so I know what to expect. Fire away!

Just one thing: I tried to find some recent passenger volume figures but couldn't find anything I could use. There is something about passenger miles (?) but I don't know what that means. Any ideas?

seeya
spiff

As I said in the Writing Workshop, Good Entry!

Some minor typos and omissions:

south-east, south-west etc. should be written southeast, southwest etc. without hyphens.

Should "Ligne Grande Vitesse" be "Ligne à Grande Vitesse"?

For passenger figures, just put in "a multitude of "

MEPS going from Brussels to Paris? I thought the European Parliament was in Strasbourg. If I'm right, change this to "Eurocrats".

You talk about Eurostar as if everybody knew what it was. You should explain the first time you mention the channel tunnel that this service is known as Eurostar:

"go through the Channel Tunnel and on to London in the service known as Eurostar"

Do you really mean St Pancras station in London? That's on the North side of the centre of London. Does the train do a big loop or does it go underground?

You should describe Jonction Est as "relatively small" rather than "relatively minor". Minor suggests unimportant. It can't be key and unimportant at the same time.

Since all your speeds are given in km/h first and mph second, you should put your distances the same way:

621.4 miles (1,000 kilometres) should be 1,000 kilometres (620 miles). I doubt it is exactly 621.4, so you shouldn't use that level of accuracy.

"smooth and passengers" should be "smooth, passengers". There are too many ands in that sentence.

If you put instead of , your table of journey times will be much more readable.

Good work!

trés should be très

Found @ a tgv info-page 1: 100 million passengers per year are served through the six international stations.

Found @ SNCF info-page: more than 50 million passengers per year.

I think the last figure as a more cautious estimative could be more reliable. It's still a huge nnumber.

HELL

Excellent entry

One query though...

"Of course, old trains can use the new LGVs. "

I think the TGV network is closed to all other traffic, no other trains can go on TGV lines. Ok, physically, the rails are the same width so theoretically other trains could use them, but I thought one of the reasons for the TGV's safety record is that it is the only train to use it's network, no goods trains or slower passenger trains allowed access.

I could of course be wrong, but I really thought this was the case.


whisky

Thanks for the comments everyone,

I have been through the entry and made some changes; I may have missed out some by accident, but here are the ones I *didn't* pick...



I have kept hyphens in my compass points; I know MS spellcheck doesn't agree, but my Economist style-guide is adamant and I'm sticking with The Econ. So sue me!

I *did* mean MEPs - they don't spend much time in Strazzer, I can tell you! - but just that they would be at work in the morning, get a train at 11h30; Lunch in Paree for 13h; back behind the old desk by 15h30 and no-one any the wiser! In any case, Eurocrats works better no matteer what, so I did change it in the end.

Think I made Eurostar clear now. Yep, St P's it is! I must find out a little more about this tunnel, but that is sposed to be the general idea. Wonder what they'll do with all that lovely stuff they've got at Waterloo...

Dang! Thought I'd got all those km (miles) things ironed out! You should have seen it at one stage; every figure in a different format!

Smoothed out the passengers and made the table look better,

How can I still be getting *très* wrong after all these years?



Hi Hell,

I looked all over the place for decent figures! Where did you find them? I haven't put them in yet coz I don't quite get it. Are external links still allowed? (btw, did that all go well? No dodgy link posters? Just wondering) If so, you can slap it on here and I can go see. that would be



Salut Whiskey,

Er, well, my understanding is that the conventional services *do* still sometimes use the LGV track. They aren't separate tracks, and some conv trains *do* run on those routes, so how else could it work?




btw, although I have nothing against trainspotters (much of the info in this entry comes from that very source, so it would be frankly ungrateful of me to take the pus!), I am not really interested in trains at all. I just like the TGV service, use Eurostar regularly and wanted a nice neutral, factual subject to do a guide entry about.

No matter how hard I try, the para above makes me look bad! Never mind, I'll leave it in for character reference purposes anyway!

seeya
thanks again for feedback
spiff

Links are and have always been allowed in Edited Entries, but they have to be to repectable dependable sites. You won't be allowed a link to a site that is off-line half the time, a site written by some crackpot or one that it is full of advertising. Also, you shouldn't link to a site that is likely to change regularly.

Oh, I meant in the threads. Surely they were allowed just provisionally for Feb? I was hoping Hell would give me the links for the TGV passenger figures.



spiff

Relax... relax...

I don't have them links bookmarked, but let me see... Ah yes...

Number one:
www.mairie-paris.fr/parisweb/EN/Info/

Number two:
www.delta.com/prog_serv/worldwide/sncf/

Number three:
www.parisexo-2001.com/uk/

Check 'em out,

HELL

Thanks for posting them, but I didn't have much luck with them there links, I'm afraid.

The first two were dead, but I was able to go to the main page of the Mairie de Paris one. Couldn't find any much info on TGV though.

Delta wasn't having any of it.

And I don't know whether there is a typo in there (I tried adding a 'p'), but it took *me* to the official site of the 2001 World Sexology Conference!

What am I doing wrong?

seeya
spiff

Add: 'transport_uk.html' to the parisexo-2001 URL

Add: 'index.jsp' to delta

Add: 'eng_atrain.htm' to mairie-paris

Sorry, I thought the incomplete adress above was enough. I am afraid complete URLs get moderated away automatically from the posts.

Sorry, good luck, bye,

HELL

ATM, urls like http://www.dotsurfer.co.uk/ etc. are allowed aren't they, or is the trial over? *goes to check*.

Think about capitalising the title correctly:
TGV - The French High Speed Train Service

Whoami?

You still haven't corrected the trés to make it très.

You also haven't changed Ligne Grande Vitesse. Could this possibly be because it is correct?

Hiya G,

I knew there was something I was forgetting!

Trés done now - LGV too. Ta for the reminder,

seeya
spiff

Very good Entry, very useful, I thought.

I have a few small points:

"Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer"
I thought the 'F' in 'SNCF' stands for Français, as in 'Chemins-de-fer Français'. Otherwise it could be Belgian or something.

"The service opened to the public as a record-breaking super-train and reached 10 million passengers in its first 10 months"
Not sure if you really mean it reached them (came near enough or available to them) or actually 'attracted' or 'carried' them.

"This was (and remains) the world speed record for a non-electric train."
It remains a record only for now. It will probably be broken at some stage, the way world records usually are. You could just say 'This was the world speed record...', adding if you wish something like 'and remained so for a number of years / quite some time'.

"There are three trunk lines leading out from Paris"
And how many leading in to Paris? Do you mean 'terminating in Paris'?

Footnote 5 (re SNCF) is redundant.

"In 1989 the new TGV Atlantique line south-west went live, carrying passengers to destinations southwest of Paris"
Again, I assume it's to as well as from the capital. Suggest 'linking Paris and the southwest / Paris and southwestern France / southwestern destinations'.

"You can almost see those Eurocrats popping down to Paris for an all-expenses working lunch!"
Should this be 'all-expenses-paid', or 'a working lunch on expenses'?

C'est très bon. Formidable!

I think the British side of the channel tunnel rail link is going to approach London from the East, stopping via Stratford on the way to St. Pancras.

I only know coz they are making a big fuss about the regeneration propects it might bring to Stratford, and the fact that there's loads of construction work going on round here for the tunnels.

There's info on it here: http://www.ctrl.co.uk/

Frankie

Good news, your entry has been recommended for inclusion in the Edited Guide! Congratulations

Congratulations!

Cool!

Thanks for the feedback and help everyone,

I never did get those passenger figures sorted - have to sort it out for the subed, I spose.

Anyway, first fully-fledged Spiff entry,

seeya
spiff

Oo-oo Spiffy!
Congratulations.


The 'goods' trains are the ones all the illegal immigrants are jumping on and riding into the UK. These frieght trains are much slower and are obliged to shunt off to sidings, before they enter, and at one-third and two-thirds distance inside, the Chunnel, to allow the Eurostar(s) to fly by. The stow-aways climb on as these trains idle at French sidings about a mile or two away from the Chunnel entrance where of course all the security guards and Customs types are stationed.

~j~