Germany bringing back their famous Train to Oven experience.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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traingang
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god damn dude
Maybe not tagline material but only because it needs the context of a post. Though I guess one could greentext it.
Before I saw your comment I was pleased with my idea of making a TramSauna joke.
Sustainable public transit at the expense of comfort is the most uneducated idea. The entire point is to reduce private vehicle use as much as possible, having AC on is worth it because it makes more people want to catch a tram instead of driving their car. Bunch of absolute clowns.
Ah, but you're assuming their goal is to get people to use public transport rather than waste a bunch of money and fuck it up so much they can declare it "unprofitable" and privatise everything.
this is a reduction of comfort, i do not want to minimize that
MFer the heat has already killed 10,000 people in Germany this summer, if you call this "Komforteinbuße" you are already minimizing that you are cooking at risk groups and accept that they may collapse from the heat on your trains.
The state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, which is where Dortmund is located, has already solved this in the heatwave about a month back: due to passenger safety concerns they've simply suspended all regional trains. Like all of them. Wasn't a train going anymore for a day or so. I think this was mostly based on if people collapse on the trains that's a them problem, if people don't have trains to get on and therefore collapse somewhere in a podunk NRW town that has no shades or benches or anywhere to get water at the train station, it's not
My train girl just informed me that this isn't because the trains don't have AC, it's that the AC is so weak-ass underpowered that it doesn't properly work above 26°c.
oh damn they've been downgrading, I remember a decade or so back there was an understandable scandal about the ICE AC system not working above 32°C
This is for Regios, not for the ICE
I still feel like a decade of modernity should've given us, like, better train AC across the board and not -6°C working conditions for regional trains.
Like fucking 26°C degrees? That's temperatures you'd have here before the climate got all loopy with it
Sometimes over here in the states they cancel local trains during heat waves because our rails were not build to anticipate the amount of thermal expansion from the record heat. Perhaps Germany has the same issue?
I assume this was part of it, all the train infrastructure is barely holding it together in like 15°c weather at this point but the stated, publicized reason was as above. So probably less "we'd derail our entire shit" and more "You'd be stuck in a train where the AC broke in the middle of nowhere" and then that just gets resolved to "be stuck with no AC somewhere you need to leave and collapse there"
"With AC we can only do 3° C less than outside" Well you fucking dingus, the tram does not have outside temperature without AC but up to 10° C more. These clowns should be kept in a hot tram all day without something do drink and standing as well. But I bet this shit head has a nice comfy office.
A nice comfy office and a Mercedes that drives them to work with full AC.
The fact that the municipal utility company (DSW21) has opted against installing air conditioning for these reasons is being criticized by, among others, the Dortmund Green Party, led by their parliamentary group spokesperson Kathrin Lögering. This, in turn, angers the DSW21 operations manager. He argues that, along with other parties in the Dortmund city council, the Greens in particular have consistently pushed for the utility company to become CO2 -neutral "by a certain date ." However, he maintains that installing air conditioning is anything but sustainable.
Meanwhile, earlier in the article the first argument the utility company gives for skipping AC is saving money, which fuels my theory that "systainability" is a fig leaf for the real reason that is infrastructure spending and austerity.
I think in this specific case it's more the deeply entrenched thought that AC = bad. Cars were always an exception here once AC became a standard thing but the country is still building new hospitals without AC.
the reason this line of thinking is so entrenched is because all major german societal organisations and political parties are so deep in the car industry’s pockets that they might as well be front groups.
Each article vaguely related to heatwaves has to include a paragraph about someone being surprised that the Green party is favor of ACs and has been for a while.
With typical German efficiency, financial soundness, and long-term orientation, they will now retrofit the tram fleet with AC units.
Every HVAC nerd in the world will be quick to tell you that heat pumps get like 500% efficiency through what's basically magic but yeah sure comfortable conditions is just a boondoggle
Euros, you people don't know what hot summers are like, y'all ain't seen shit yet. The lack of foresight is astounding. You aren't going to survive weeks of 100F 80+ humidity without A/C, other extreme measures (like basement/structures built to keep cool, things you can't prepare the day of), or just getting lucky with your life while the less healthy die
I get very frustrated when I see Europeans act like it's some moral thing, this weird British stoicism (but seemingly affecting the continent) of "A/C is nice and all but we're not going to contribute to the problem!" as if the electricity used for A/C is the only waste they can fathom or imagine foregoing and as if they literally cannot imagine circumstances in which they might die without it
no this isn't just me justifying spending money to replace our hvac system why would you think that
The closest I've come to heatstroke was on a dinky German tram with no opening windows in 30± degrees heat
distinctly remembering being stuck on an ICE waggon where the AC was broken, the conductor coming in and telling us we have to move out of there due to passenger safety (which no one did) followed by an announcement to please stop moving around the train as it's full everywhere
They don't even have fans?
Germany needs recognizing East Germany central planning was the best model to be followed after reunification. It is the most rational system.
Politicians under neolibetalism do not use public transport so they dont give a fuc% to plebes.
No uh, it was a 1986 orwellian authoritarian stasi tankie communist state capitalist regime that was democratically dismantled fair and square and definitely not annexed. Free market neoliberalism might be insufficient in guaranteeing basic necessities for most of the population despite overproduction and directly lead to the extinction of our species but it's the best system that could ever be conceived in the history of mankind so we are just doomed. Now continue to consume and not question the narrative too much, otherwise we might have to revoke your free speech rights and ruin your life.
Some slop-bro billionare must re-invent it first at a TEDx talk.
But I'm sure they will still heat to 30°C in the winter when everyone is wearing jackets anyway.
This is unlocking memories of riding the school bus in the tropics. The school district was slowly upgrading the fleet to models that had A/C, and the first day riding on one of those on a sweltering September afternoon was like a revelation from God. Then late in the month, one of the old buses showed up, and we ended up riding that one for the rest of the semester. It's hard to put into words how resentful and discouraged everyone felt about that, it sucked so much more after we experienced what a bus ride with A/C felt like.
They're really cooking with this one
Hm... needs largeish 18'C PCM iceblocks that can be slid into trains for passive cooling and then out into underground cooling slots to refreeze.
Just a total redesign of all train carriages and stations, several hundred extra kilos of saltice per carriage, and a few decades of testing. But easy, problem solved!
Or you set up to hand out PCM ice-bottles at stations so passengers can sit with it for the journey and then give them back to refreeze in a big fridge.
PCM iceblock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqxjfp4Gi0k
I've made one so far, and it works pretty well. Avoids the freezerburn of an actual iceblock, doesn't need a freezer, and it's easy to make.
"I don't want to catch a cold." - some german drinking a hot soda on a steamy tram
while another is sneezing him in the face.. "Gesundheit!"