Luxembourg – the SNCF strike

After arriving safely at the railway station in Luxembourg I faced the problem that was the SNCF rail strike. I decided to keep my trip to France, rather than changing to Germany, as the media had reported over recent weeks that support for the strike was falling and that more services were operating.

After checking with a staff member, they said that the trains to Thionville were running every hour, with the half hourly ones being cancelled. That was my expectation from the SNCF web-site, so I went to buy a ticket from a machine. The machine only let me buy tickets on services that were operating, so all seemed well.

Then the board never updated the platform that the train was going from and it then got “deleted”. I went to speak to the staff at the main information kiosk at the station and they confirmed I’d need to wait an hour for the one after.

There seemed something strange about this that didn’t quite ring true, as I didn’t see why so many trains would be cancelled to Thionville, especially as they had just sold me a ticket. So I went to the international departures desk and asked them.

The lady there was very helpful, and she was rather bemused at the situation as well. After a long conversation with her colleagues she said that she thought that the train was running and the information boards were wrong. She then suggested to go to platform nine and see if the train I had booked onto was running, and if not to speak to the conductor on the TGV service to Paris (which stops at Thionville) to see if they’d let me on.

As I got to the platform I could see the train that I had a ticket for was there and wasn’t looking very cancelled. I found a staff member who told me to get on as it was about to leave, which I did, although I was a still little unsure of whether this was actually the right train.

However, the right train it was and my trip to Thionville began. Luxembourg railway station is the first place that I took Dylan to, so happy memories of the place, although it was rather more stressful this time. Still lots of pigeons that looked like they might “get squished”.

The train was double decker and looked modern and well presented, although it was unclean and had rather a lot of litter on the floor. The prices for the train also weren’t that cheap, more expensive than the UK for the same distance. However, I got to Thionville safely and happily, so the end result was all very positive.

Thionville railway station.