JSGB

I am a Kiwi used to minimal public transport at home and coming to Europe for the first time next month for the RWC. Am trying to finalise train reservations. Anyway I need to get from Brussels to Lille early morning Sept 7th and am booked on TGV 9832 arriving in Lille at 12:03pm. I am meeting my daughter who is coming from London on ES9116. (She arrives at 11:26). We both then transfer to TGV5115 to head off to Marseille. BUT I have 12 minutes to get from TGV9832 to TGV5115. I have NO IDEA how many platforms are at this station or how I find them. Is this 12 minute time-frame do-able??? Plus as I have been told by the booking agent that you can't walk through the train how can I make sure I sit next to my daughter? If anyone has done this 12 minute thing and can advise about Lille Railway station I would appreciate it.

Gavin

I would like to have a bit more time but it should be OK if everything works. Lille Europe is not all that big a station by European standards. Be aware that there is another main station about 400 m away, Lille Flandres.

JSGB

OK thats encouraging. Its the "if everything works" bit thats the biggie of course. Can't afford the Brussels train to be running late. Thanks for that Gavin.

stormbird

Hi JSGB,
This was on your original post - not sure if you'd ever go back there again so I have copied over to here for you. Sure hope it helps.

Author: LMGSONIC
Date: 08/04/2007, 12:10 am
Okay, I have not yet been to Europe, so I don't have any first hand information for you about the Lille-Europe station, but I read and re-read the email that you received from the reservation company, and I think maybe you are misinterpreting it. Hopefully someone else on this board will confirm what I am thinking.

This is the email that you posted earlier:
This train (from Brussels) joins at Lille to another train numbered TGV 5115 to make up a double set. Your daughter will already be sitting on this train having arrived at Lille earlier than you! You cannot walk through the train so you must get off and walk down the platform to the second bit of the train. You have only 12 minutes to do this. Your daughter could wait on the platform but you should not arrange to meet in the entrance hall or you may miss each other. Platform numbers at Lille are announced at least 20 minutes before departure.

As I understand it, your daughter will arrive at the station first. She will get on board TGV5115 in her assigned car and seat.

When your train from Brussels arrives, it will be physically connected to the train in the station that your daughter is on, making one big train (a "double set&quot. Where the two trains are hooked together, you cannot walk through, so you have to step out of your train car and walk down the platform to get onto the train car that your daughter is in.

That is how I interpret the email. If that is truly how it works, then I would think that 12 minutes would be adequate to walk down to another train car, provided you are prepared to exit your car immediately when the train gets into the station.

Can someone else confirm my line of thinking?

kerouac

12 minutes is more than plenty. Many minor stations throughout Europe have trains with the infamous 2-minute stop on the main lines, and yet they manage.

flanneruk

Lille-Europe is relatively small (from memory, there are only 4 platforms), but it's been organised with Gallic logic, which is rarely transparent to the rest of us.

The email seems to say your train turns into 5115, and goes onto Marseille. Whether that's true or not, there are video monitors along each platform which show the next few hours' departures (Lille Europe has at most only a dozen or so departures an hour) and the platform numbers for the next half hour or so's departures.

If your train does indeed turn into the Marseille train, that will be clear from the monitor. If not, you might have to get a lift or stairs up to the concourse, then down again to the right platform - though it seemed to me, last time I did a connection like this, that all southbound trains used one or other side of the same platform.

Any southbound connection longer than 10 minutes will have most of us twiddling our thumbs in boredom: changing platforms can't take more than 5 mins, and Lille Europe is about as uninteresting and charm-free as it's possible to imagine. But given this complication about not being able to walk through the train, making sure you've both got your phones switched on might be a wise precaution.

rkkwan

Both 9832 and 5115 departs Lille at 12:15, stops at CDG2 13:04-13:10, and arrives Lyon Part Dieu 15:05.

It's the same train.

At Lyon, it's split into 9833 to Perpignan, and 5115 to Marseilles.

That's the logical conclusion I got from the timetable, not personal experience.