What does it mean when a train is said to have "a high load?" I see this for some regional trains, such as one going between Frankfurt Flughafen and Koblenz. The number of expected passengers is usually indicated on DB with the icon showing multiple people, so what does "high load" indicate?
Thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience.
the same thing.
low - few
medium - medium
high - lots
I take it, then, that just means “busy?”
For someone who’s not familiar with insider train terminology, I could otherwise only guess that “high load” might mean it’s carrying lots of freight, or maybe uses high-voltage electricity to run the engines.
So maybe saying “Usually Pretty Full” would be a less arbitrary term for some of us.
I assume here that "high load" is a term used by some middle-man seller of rail tickets and not a DB-site term. DB uses "high demand" on its English pages, a proper translation from the German for this context.
"High load" sounds like a bad translation of "Hohe Auslastung", which is what you find on DB's German pages - "Hohe" means "high", and "Last", the German root word inside the second word, means "load." German does a lot of word "repurposing" by creating compound words and using lots of prefixes and suffixes...
If I see the description "Hohe Auslastung" applied to a specific dep. time, I look for another dep time, if possible. To me seeing "Hohe Auslastung" means that particular ICE train will be packed., ie, getting a seat reservation will be difficult.
At the Reisezentrum to buy a seat reservation, I always ask, "Wie ist die Auslastung?" (basically, how is the seating capacity) for the dep I want.
Thank you, Nigel. I expected that answer, unfortunately.
Things happen when translating. We speak in idioms and short hand phrases that don't always have universal meanings.
"a high load?" I see this for some regional trains, such as one going between Frankfurt Flughafen and Koblenz.
Such prognoses are often worthless for regional trains because there is no seat reservation for them. Only for peak times are such statements reliable, because, of course, experience shows that a commuter train is always full in the morning or evening. If possible, be at the platform in FRA a few minutes before departure, and when the train comes to a stop, go immediately to the next door to have a good "starting position". And if you still can't find a seat right away, look around and see where one of your well-mannered fellow passengers thinks his backpack should sit on the seat next to him, and tell him that you would like to occupy that seat.
