Hi I'll be traveling from Stockholm to Copenhagen by train. Ive found 2 different train companies. One is sj.se & the other is snalltaget. The sj.se site has a price of 1065 SKE for a trip with one stop & it seems no direct train is available. The snalltaget has a price of 537SKE for a direct train. Any insights into the difference? Ive never traveled in Scandinavia so I have no frame of reference for their train system. Thanks
Posted by
NorthCarolina
1026 posts
check out seat61.com
Lots of great info and photos there.
Plus, you can email the owner of the site and he will respond.
Posted by
Switzerland
406 posts
Snälltåget uses older train stock and is a little bit slower. Sometimes the “vintage” trains are downright old school but the price is usually so much cheaper that I book them anyway. They also offer fewer trains per day. They do have baggage limitations (check their faq) although no one has ever checked when I have been on board. However I have only ridden them during off peak days when there are not many passengers. They are kind of like a budget airline - fewer frills and options, but great price and gets you where you’re going. Always been clean and perfectly fine when I’ve ridden with them. You can pick your seat during booking and they are a bit more flexible than SJ with rebooking even the cheap fares.
SJ is the government owned railway. They offer more perks and more/faster connections, as well as a bigger baggage allowance.
Hope that helps!
Posted by
Sweden
6848 posts
The difference is that SJ is the big national company that usually has seven daily high speed trains between Stockholm and Copenhagen, but at the moment many departures include a change in Malmö due to bureaucracy at the border. When is the trip?
Snälltåget uses older coaches, from the 1960s and 1970s. Although they have been refurbished. They have sort of branded themself as a low cost option, cheaper tickets but maybe not as fancy as SJ. While their trains are nice on the interior, it's hard to avoid the fact that they are older. They do have a very nice restaurant car though, not a bad place for dinner or lunch. They are a bit slower as mentioned and only has two daily trains between Stockholm and Copenhagen, and only one of those trains stop at the central station in Copenhagen, the other departure stops in the suburb Ørestad instead.
Posted by
OP
9 posts
Thanks for this info. Our trip is July 29. I'll have to look a little closer at the station it arrives at. But the Snalltaget is considerably cheaper & direct which seems like a no brainer!
Posted by
Malmö, Sweden
160 posts
The luggage size is the biggest problem with Snälltåget, 55x45x25 cm is not much larger than airline cabin luggage.
Posted by
OP
9 posts
Will they turn us away if we have tickets & luggage? Man in seat 61 responded to my question & said its their job to carry luggage. No where on the website does it say anything about the luggage requirement until you go to the FAQ's which i happened to look at bc I'm traveling with my special needs child & was curious about a few things.
Posted by
Malmö, Sweden
160 posts
No where on the website does it say anything about the luggage requirement
You need to accept the T&C when you purchase a ticket: https://www.snalltaget.se/en/terms-and-conditions
Posted by
Wengen
2330 posts
I though that the reason that there are not through trains run by SJ is that they lack enough rolling stock, not border formalities. There are cross border trains after all.
Maybe somebody local can tell more?
Posted by
Sweden
6848 posts
The only ones that know the real reason are probably the traffic planners at SJ, but I can make an educated guess. SJ has a shortage of trains, that is correct. Demand for train travel has gone up a lot in the last few years and they are struggling to meet that demand. Something that is being made worse by the fact that they are updating their X2000s at the moment so a couple of the trains are out of service.
The updating has also made things worse for trains to Denmark, it is a very thorough upgrade. Basically they are removing everything inside the shell and rebuilding it. Not only the interior, but also all the things in the machine room. It will be great for passengers. But, that has led to problems at the border. The Danish authorities have decided that they are new trains and hence need new approval to run in Denmark, and that hasn't happened yet.
It will get better though. Hopefully the upgraded X2000s will be approved in Denmark soon. And SJ has 25 new high speed trains on order that are planned to enter service in 2026.
Posted by
Wengen
2330 posts
I suspected it had something to do with the X2000 renovation. I know they were completely replacing the electrics/electronics. And if you do that you indeed need to re-certify your train. You don't want the train to mess with lineside electronics. I have some personal experience there.
Posted by
Sweden
6848 posts
I know they were completely replacing the electrics/electronics. And
if you do that you indeed need to re-certify your train.
And doing that in Sweden was easy but, as always, it's Denmark that complicates things.