Check in luggage in trains
 

IIs it possible to check in luggage in trains . I am thinking of Spain. I could not find the pertinent information in the Renfe website.
I understand there must be a charge, .....has anyone done this ?

Trains don't have checked luggage. It's yours and you have to deal with it (carry it up the steps to the train and either lift onto the overhead rack or put in the luggage area at the end of the car - depending on country and type/class of train). I know some trains may let you check bicycles or things like that (at least in Switzerland - don;t know about Spain).

Like nyt, I've never heard of checked luggage.

That step up to the train can be a bear. My friend and I often laugh at the spectacle of her trying to lift/drop her 29" suitcase on those steps. (And I don't think I've ever seen a "gentleman" offer to help.)

In other words, you handle your own luggage...best to pack with that in mind.

You can't check in luggage on trains, at least, here in Spain. You have to deal with it yourself :) Also, in most long distance trains the luggage has to pass through security checks like at the airports.

Is that something unique to Spain? I've never had bags checked or scanned when traveling by train between Netherlands/Germany/Switzerland/France...

I don't know for sure, but maybe it's only here the scanning thing. They began to do it years ago (before the 11M) because of ETA. It's a bit absurd because they don't do it in short distance trains where commuters go and are supposed not to carry lugagge but that's not always true.

Spain is the only place I've had my bags scanned before getting on the train, also, but I think it was because of those Madrid bombings a few years go. I was in Spain right around then, and I remember having my bags scanned when I went from Seville to Madrid by AVE, and there had been a bomb on that line just a day or two before.

I think I've read about some real deluxe service where you can have bags checked on some trains somewhere (but I can't recall where), but it's definitely not the norm, and I could be remembering wrong.

No, it happened since a few years before Madrid bombings, I swear it :)

Thank you all, I guess what I was really thinking off if the luggage could be sent to the city one is going to. Like dispatched as non accompanied .
I have taken a few trains here and there in Europe, including Spain and although we pack light I think the same you do, it is a nuisance to pull up the steps a suitcase even if it is small , and then to travel keeping an eye on it is even worse.
What can we do? Nothing is perfect. This year by the way we took the Ava from Seville to Madrid and they did scaned the luggage.Not a bad idea considering.... only once I had the luxury of a porter picking up my suitcase this was in the hotel train Madrid Paris. At the time (2002 ) the dollar was higher than the euro and we traveled in the Gran Clase which is very nice.Dinner, breakfast and of course the luxury of the porter.

There ar ecompanies that will forward your luggage for you, but they are generally quite expensive.

In France it's possible to check luggage one day in advance, at least on some of the TGVs.

>Like nyt, I've never heard of checked luggage. <

When Uncle Ira was much younger they did have checked luggage on trains, in both the US and Europe.

See "The Ladykillers" (1955), for example.

((I))

oh, yes, Uncle Ira. When Kenderina was a little girl you could check in the luggage here in Spain too :) Until some mad people decided that the luggage wagon was a good place for bombs...

<<< Until some mad people decided that the luggage wagon was a good place for bombs... >>>

Explain to me why that's a worse idea than putting luggage in with the passengers?

"Explain to me why that's a worse idea than putting luggage in with the passengers?"

Because, for the past 50 years, the psychopathic murderers among the ETA, IRA and Baader-Meinhoff's fascist cronies haven't done suicide bombings. Nor did the Madrid train bombers.

In theory, ensuring all luggage remains with passengers should mean non-suicide bombs get spotted. And, as London's paranoia about packages lying around shows, the public often is very dilligent about this: see what happens if a stray suitcase is spotted on a train on the lines I use.

This doesn't guard against suicide bombers. But no safeguard is universal: it just limits what the lunatics can do, and lets the police concentrate on those threats. They can - and, however controversially, do - stop practically any travelling young South Asian male. Pisses them off, but we've had no transport bombs since the policy started.

Touch wood.

Let us touch on wood, because anyone can leave a suitecase tied up in the racks at the end of the wagon and get off right away in the next stop.
But I understand that the measure of no checking in luggage is a step forward in security.
The truth of the matter is that if I star thinking of what is going on in Europe, or in the world for that matter
i.e. India, Somalia, Sudan, even Venezuela and also here I would not travel. However I love to travel and here I come Europe.
For how long Europe will remain without suffering enormous changes is hard to imagine.

<<< Because, for the past 50 years, the psychopathic murderers among the ETA, IRA and Baader-Meinhoff's fascist cronies haven't done suicide bombings. Nor did the Madrid train bombers. >>>

The Madrid train bombers put the bags on the train - among the passengers - then got off the train. No need for anyone to be a suicide bomber.

So explain to me again why is it worse to put luggage in a separate compartment rather than among the passengers? Sounds to be that whoever thought of it was either an ETA sympathiser or an idiot

The whole thing has to do with the way they manage the luggage thing. I mean, you could send every kind of luggage even if you were not a passenger. At those times there were still no courier services here in Spain, and people used the trains for that matter. No scannings yet. So it was plain easy for anyone to put some packet and say it was a bomb, many times they weren't.And they were also used for drugs. I suppose the inspections were costing too much money to the trains company at that moment and they just decided not to have luggage wagons. You can leave a suitcase on the train and leave, but that suitcase at least has been scanned. As I said before , the absurd thing is that they don't do the same on short distance ones...or in some cheaper long runs... but before the Madrid bombings, ETA had never threatened that kind of trains because they said "they don't want to harm workers" ... another nonsense.