Border crossings

[MedwedianPresident]

Does anybody have experience with building border crossings or stations in TrainZ? I imagine that routes involving borders and border crossings would be interesting, especially due to the fact that border stations are often large and complicated. Especially when the countries involved in the route use different gauges (Has anybody recreated Brest yet?), crossing a border by train becomes a challenge.

 

[pware]

My only experience of a border crossing railway station was at Niagara Falls (USA - Canada). A single track-level platform, a single nondescript building with a waiting room full of all the trains passengers (everyone had to disembark and wait - the cafe there was doing a roaring trade). Apart from the official yellow tape marked "US Customs Do Not Cross" (or something similar) strung between moveable bollards you would never had known it was a border crossing. It was so "low key" that I almost accidentally crossed into the "forbidden" zone.

If you use movies as a guide, Customs and Immigration officials board the train at the last stop in country A, check all the passports and papers while the train is moving, then leave at the first stop in county B - no station involved.

Here in Australia we don't have any border crossings but have had plenty of experience with change of gauge stations. From the passengers point of view they were simple but annoying. A train of gauge 1 pulls into one side of an island platform. Waiting on the other side of the platform is a train of gauge 2. Everyone with all their luggage leaves train 1, crosses to the other side of the platform and enters train 2 to continue their journey. At least that was the situation until the mid 1970s when the standard gauge (4ft 8.5in) track finally linked up most of the nations state capital cities - the last link was made about 10-15 years ago. We still have 4 change of gauge stations but they are terminal stations in major capital cities.

 

[Vern]

Pre Schvenigen, most border controls on trains in Europe were done on the train itself, with the officials passing through checking documents. At certain locations (Basel in Switzerland) part of the station was deemed to be in France and you passed through passport control and customs on the platform. However it was nothing elaborate, just a couple of windows where the officials sat behind and looked at your documents. There were no barbed wire enclosures, crack troops with guns or people being fitted with black bags over their heads and spirited into some foreboding concrete bunker. Quite mundane.

 

[oknotsen]

I once took the train from Seattle (US) to Vancouver (CA).
The train didn't stop at the border but instead drove into a fenced area (a cage if you like) at Vancouver station. That one platform was considered the US when the train arrived and you passed customs / the border in the station.

If you take a look at the border between the US and either Canada or Mexico, you will usually find a few (empty) tracks. I guess most trains are checked (and sealed / unsealed) at their stop before or after the border and rarely actually at the border.

 

[pware]

It is a similar story at airports for flights between the USA and Canada. At Toronto's main airport, you pass through US Customs and Immigration before boarding your flight to the USA.

 

[nicky9499]

Before the Malaysian Railway cut their line into Singapore, rail passengers crossing the border had to go through 2 customs checks. There was a dedicated platform on the Singapore side where everyone disembarked with their baggage, went through the station to have their passports stamped then got back on the train. On the Malaysian side customs officials would board and check everyone's passports while the train sat in the station. The latter alot more convenient for the traveler but it's less secure. Structurally they were both nothing fancy, just part of each side's immigration complex. If you go back further in time customs for both sides were done at the terminus station in Singapore. More efficient but not sure why they stopped doing it.

 

[RW912]

I remember, in the early 80's, traveling by train from Paris to Madrid. At the border station Hendaye, which was incredibly big, with a huge depot, turntable, etc. the locomotive (French) was replaced by a Spanish one and all the coaches which were to enter Spain, mostly couchettes and sleeping cars, had to be lifted from their bogies (standard gauge in France) and placed on (wide gauge Spanish) bogies waiting on the track next to the train. It all went extremely smooth without any shaking or bumping at all.
Outside the main station there was also a narrow gauge railroad, it crossed the border into Spain too (connecting to the extensive narrow gauge system in northern Spain, FEVE) and had it's own border station with customs. Passengers boarded the narrow gauge train ( I think it was a railcar, it looked somewhat like a tram/streetcar, old style ) and it brought them to a tiny station which was exactly on the border between France and Spain. Passengers had to get off the train there, enter the building in which customs employees checked passports and luggage and after the check they had to leave the building through another door, on the same side as the first door, and they had to enter the train again. The narrow gauge train continued into Spain and ended on a mid sized narrow gauge station called San Sebastian, there people could change to other narrow gauge gauge trains traveling deeper into Spain.

 

[RW912]

If you go back further in time customs for both sides were done at the terminus station in Singapore. More efficient but not sure why they stopped doing it.

Oh I remember that...each time I had to walk through that narrow corridor to pass the customs, who were standing in cages with a large gun in their hands and each officer being accompanied by a ( not so tiny either ) german shepherd dog, on both sides of that corridor, I prayed the dog wouldn't bark at me because someone might have put something illegal in my bags during the trip from Bahau to S'pore and back. I so hated that part of the trip, lol.