4K Cab Ride NL Groningen – Assen – Zwolle / Snow Ride / IC 742 / 11-12-2017

Train Drivers View on a wonderful winter ride with the intercity service from Groningen to Zwolle. As you can hear the original noise in this video has been cancelled. This was the same in last week’s video because the recording was done during route learning with another train driver. Because of his privacy there’s been added a soundtrack made by P C III (link below). Because of the snow I thought you might like this video without the normal sound anyway. ROUTE LEARNING As a train driver you must know all the specs from the tracks ahead. Things like: - Local track speeds - Where are the signals located - Where can you find junctions in what direction - Where are the stations located - Are station announced or not - Where do you start slowing down for the stations - And lot of other particularities For me the study starts on the tablet or computer. Here we can login to a system that gives us access to the maps of the tracks. All info can be found there. After making notes you go outside and take a drive over the route with another train driver. The other driver is already known with the route and he or she can always give some extra information about the route. In my case I also record the whole route so I can look back when I’m at home. When you know all there is to know there’s an exam you have to pass before you can drive your own trains at the route. THE RIDE: It’s a very relaxing an steady ride to Zwolle from Groningen. We depart perfectly on time from our starting point and will make only one top on our way to Zwolle. In Assen. We drive with 10 carriages of DDZ in this video. The snow you see in the video has fallen the day before. About 10-20cm fell from the sky creating a stunning winter wonderland in Holland. On our approach in Zwolle you can see it starts snowing again. Right after this ride another 15-30cm of snow fell out of the sky, creating the white landscapes you can find in last week’s video. Until Assen our speeds are 40 – 60 – 80 – 90 – 130 and then 140km/h. We keep that speed until we approach Assen. Assen railway station has been completely renewed this year. All tracks have been removed and replaced in a time amount of only two weeks! A great job done by ProRail. They’re now working on a brand new roof for the station, that has been placed over the tracks a few weeks ago. The new infrastructure makes it possible to run more trains in our new train schedule for 2018 (started on the 10th of December 2017). After we’ve departed from Assen we speed up to 140km/h and then let the train do the rest of the work until the 120km/h mark. The speed is lower on that point because of the curves in the tracks. As soon as we’ve passed those we may speed up to 140km/h again. In Hoogeveen and Meppel the speed lowers to 80km/h and on the rest of the tracks the speed is 140km/h. On our arrival in Zwolle we get the message this is the final destination for today because of some difficulties between Zwolle and Kampen Zuid. I hope you’