HSR in Spain: Barcelona - France, Alicante - Madrid

[lpetrich]

Strictly speaking, it's Barcelona - Figueres, Alicante - Albacete
But Barcelona - Figueres connects to existing Figueres - Perpignan in France
and Alicante - Albacete connects to existing Albacete - Madrid

Also note: Alicante (Castilian standard Spanish) ~ Alacant (Catalan)

High speed opening dates confirmed - Railway Gazette
Tests begin on Barcelona - Figueres high-speed line | International Railway Journal

Barcelona - Figueres:
Overhead wires will be electrified Nov 26 on the last 18.4 km of the 131 km of the route
Testing now being done
Opening: April 2013
It's standard gauge and with top speed 300 km/h, making it an extension of Spain's HSR network.

Its opening will close a gap in high-speed trackage between Madrid and Paris, leaving Nîmes - Perpignan in France. In that gap, the Nîmes - Montpellier bypass is in late stages of planning:

Loop lines of Nîmes and Montpellier - Réseau Ferré de France
RFF awards Nimes Montpellier by-pass PPP contract | International Railway Journal
Nîmes - Montpellier contract signed - Railway Gazette
Construction should start in late 2013, trackway work should be done by 2015, and the line should open for service in 2017.

No word on Montpellier - Perpignan, however.

Back to Spain.

In Barcelona itself, the Sants - La Sagrera Tunnel is nearing completion. It will link rail lines on different sides of the city, like several other cities' downtown tunnels. it goes near the Sagrada Familia cathedral, and it has provoked concerns of vibration and noise. Its builders are putting some elastic noise-isolating pads underneath the rails. Service should start this year or the next, though the La Sagrera station will open in 2016. This tunnel will connect the existing Spanish HSR network to the new Barcelona - Figueres line.

Elsewhere, electrification is nearing completion on the Albacete - Alicante HSR line, and it should be open for service by June 2013. It will make direct HSR service possible from Madrid, as there already is for another Mediterranean-coast town, Valencia.

[lpetrich]

Test runs start under Barcelona - Railway Gazette (19 December)

RENFE began using the new tunnel between Sants and La Sagrera in Barcelona on December 17, as it commenced test running with Class 103 trainsets on the high speed line between Sants, Girona and Figueres Vilafant.

Barcelona - Figueres time will be lowered from 1h 44m to 55m.

Some of the trains going to and from Figueres will have one-seat rides from and to Madrid.

Figueres also has two trains per day to and from Paris, and with the opening of this line, there will be continuous standard-gauge trackage from Madrid to Paris, most of it high-speed capable.

[lpetrich]

Barcelona - Figueres HS line to open January 7 | International Railway Journal

That seemed a bit too good to be true, so I checked on Renfe to look for announcements. I found some in Noticias - Gabinete de Prensa, only in Spanish.

An article dated Dec 17, 2012 stated
Renfe inicia las pruebas con los trenes AVE entre Barcelona, Girona y Figueres

With some autotranslators, I worked out
RENFE starts tests with AVE trains between Barcelona, Girona and Figueres

It stated that service would start next year, though it was not more specific than that.

[lpetrich]

Checking on RENFE's press-releases page, I found an article dated Jan 2 stating that Barcelona - Figueres AVE service would start Jan 9, and that RENFE is taking reservations for these trains. The service will be 9 trains / direction / day, with 8 also going to Madrid, and 2 connecting to TGV's from Paris.

The trains will have a stop in Girona, with 14 m to Figueres, 37 m to Barcelona, and 3 h 32 m to Madrid. The Barcelona - Figueres time will be 53 m, about an hour less than the previous time.

AVE = Alta Velocidad Española (Spanish High Speed), also the Spanish word for bird. Something that confuses some autotranslators.

Also, dates are in dd/mm format, not mm/dd format, meaning that 02/01 is Jan 2, not Feb 1.

[lpetrich]

Spain opens Iberia's high-speed link to Europe | International Railway Journal

SPAIN celebrated the completion of Iberia's first high-speed connection with the rest of Europe on January 8 with the inauguration of the 131km line between Figueres and Barcelona, which completes the 804km high-speed line between Madrid and the French border. ...

The €3.7bn project involved the construction of 30 tunnels totalling 34.3km, including a 5.8km tunnel under the centre of Barcelona between Sants station and La Sagrera, and 60 viaducts with a total length of 12.6km. The line is equipped with ERTMS and electrified at 25kV ac.

Spain now has nearly 3000 km of high-speed trackage, more than what France and Japan have, and only less than what China has.

[lpetrich]

I checked
Travel By Train In Europe: Eurorail, Eurail Pass & Train Tickets - Rail Europe
RENFE - the Spanish railroad's English home page
RENFE has pages in Spanish (Castilian), Catalan, Valencian, Galician, Basque, French, and English

Neither site was able to arrange a Madrid - Paris trip using the new connection. The RENFE site mentions the "Trenhotel", a 15-hour once-a-day night train between Madrid and Paris. Tt goes to the Gare d'Austerlitz not Gare de Lyon, like the southward TGV's.

But the sites were able to arrange a half each of the trip, renfe.com the Spanish side and raileurope.com the French side.
renfe.com -- Madrid - Figueres: 8 trains, taking 3:48 to 4:15
raileurope.com -- Paris - Figueres: 2 trains, taking 5:25 to 5:33

Madrid to Paris:
05:50 - 09:58 - 10:20 - 15:53
13:10 - 17:08 - 17:20 - 22:45

Paris to Madrid:
07:15 - 12:41 - 12:55 - 17:10
14:07 - 19:40 - 19:55 - 00:02 next day

About 10 hours each way.

In April, one-seat Madrid - Paris HSR service is expected to start.

[lpetrich]

First the bad news: Technical issues delay Paris – Barcelona TGVs | International Railway Journal (April 26, 2013) There was an electromagnetic-interference problem, and there is reportedly a signaling-compatibility problem. But I have seen no more recent news. Checking on http://www.raileurope.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; reveals that its trip planner still plans for changing trains at Figueres.

Now the good news: Spain inaugurates Albacete-Alicante HSL | International Railway Journal Thus making possible one-seat rides between Madrid and Alicante.

Commercial services will start on June 18 with nine AVE services per day in each direction, cutting journey times by 50 minutes to 2h 20min. Renfe is using class 100 and 112 AVE trains for the services, which call at Cuenca, Albacete and a new station at Villena.

The line is a 239km branch off the Madrid – Valencia high-speed line, and the initial 74km section as far as Albacete was inaugurated in December 2010.

Trains will run at 200 km/h on this line until testing of the ERTMS signaling is complete, and they will then be bumped up to 300 km/h.

Video en cabina de Albacete a Alicante en un tren de alta velocidad -- Cab video from Albacete to Alicante in a high-speed train (in Spanish) Its text describes the video, mentioning junctions with future lines to various additional cities. It inlines En cabina: por la línea de alta velocidad de Albacete a Alicante - YouTube -- In the cab: on the high-speed line from Albacete to Alicante. Its captions are in Spanish, and its soundtrack is various bits of classical music.

[jstolberg]

After months of delays, a new high-speed rail service between Paris and Barcelona is underway. The first of the new route’s double-decker TGV trains took off from both the Gare de Lyon station in Paris and the Barcelona-Sants station on Sunday.

Sponsored by SNCF, France’s state railway, and Spain’s Renfe Operadora railway, the direct service takes just under six and a half hours on trains that can run at speeds up to 201 miles per hour.

http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2013 ... lona/?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Two round trips per day to start, increasing to 4 round trips per day in March.

Six hours twenty-five minutes is on the longer end for European high speed rail service.

For the moment, the TGV is in limited speed between Nîmes and Perpignan as it runs on conventional line. The high-speed track is under work between Nîmes and Montpellier (80km) and the Montpellier-Perpignan new track is still not planned by the French government.

When the Nîmes-Montpellier track will be completed, the duration of the Paris-Barcelona TGV trip will only take 5h35.

http://www.frenchmoments.eu/get-on-the- ... barcelona/

[Fan Railer]

http://www.youtube.com/user/videotrencom" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This channel has full route videos of HSR in Spain.

[lpetrich]

Thanx. Let's see what's the average speed of the train on that route.

Distance: 1106 km / 687 mi -- Google Maps highway distance for Paris - Nîmes - Barcelona, a good approximation of the train's route

Now: 6.5 h -- 170 km/h -- 105 mph
Upgraded: 5.5 h -- 201 km/h -- 125 mph
(Nîmes - Montpellier upgrade)

That's a bit long by HSR-route standards, over the air/rail halfway point of about 3 to 3.5 hours. It will be interesting to see how many Paris - Barcelona airline travelers it attracts. But it should do better for Lyon or Marseille or Montpellier to Barcelona or even to Madrid.