Today we're going to be trying out the strange looking train between Sweden and Copenhagen,
riding in the smart First Class area, across the spectacular Øresund fixed link.
Let's ride the Øresundståg!
Welcome to Malmö Centralstation, in Sweden's third largest city, situated on the Øresund.
This station is a beautiful building, being a grand red brick construction of 1890s vintage.
The pleasant design continues inside, with the entrance having a very cosy and warm feel to it.
There are a lot of cafés and restaurants in this area,
though strangely they all seemed to be closed.
It seems strange to me that they wouldn't be open in rush hour travel periods.
Moving through to the main departure hall, we're met with a rather less exciting structure.
However, there were at least plenty of shops and fast food outlets open in here.
My train today is number 1033, the 08:53 from Malmö to Copenhagen, Denmark's capital city,
just across the border. The train has already travelled over three hours from Gothenburg.
The above ground platforms here are used solely for domestic traffic,
to many parts of Sweden, with various different operators to choose from.
The most striking of course is the high-speed X2,
which runs to Stockholm and Gothenburg at regular intervals throughout the day.
Frequent commuter trains also depart from this part of the station,
in the form of the Pågatågen, serving all parts of the surrounding Skåne County.
Finally, the station gets service from Snälltåget,
a private operator running to Stockholm, and operating overnight trains from Sweden to Germany.
The Öresundståg departs from the more modern underground platforms,
where the carrying of balloons is strictly prohibited.
This area of the station is relatively new, opening in 2010 for the City Tunnel project.
It allowed for the construction of three new commuter stations,
as well as providing a faster direct route across to Denmark.
A nice little touch here was the projections on the wall,
which emulate a train window and show various scenes passing by.
Here comes my train now. It's formed of some Swedish type
X31K electric units, built specifically for this route.
If it wasn't so dark down here, you'd be able to see this train's very strange appearance.
But why does it look like this?
Well, whist it might look a little bit daft at first, this is actually a well thought out idea,
allowing passage between units, when they're coupled together, as they often are.
My train today is formed of 3x of these three car units,
making for a total length of nine carriages.
We'll board through the middle carriage of this unit, which has a level-boarding area and is the
train's multifunctional carriage. Here you can find two dedicated wheelchair spaces,
as well as room for bikes, pushchairs, and luggage, and the train manager's office.
The majority of the train is Second Class, in a 2+2 seating layout,
with both airline style seating and bays of four around a small table.
At one end of each unit, you can find the First Class cabin,
consisting of 2+2 seating, but with more legroom and comfort.
I'll take Coach 11, Seat 11, which is an unreserved forward facing window seat.
On the Öresundståg, only a few seats throughout the train can be reserved
at the time of booking for a nominal fee. If you are booking a shorter trip,
including Malmö to Copenhagen, then you won't be able to reserve at all.
Today's route will take us from Malmö, in the south of Sweden.
We'll first travel through the City Tunnel to reach the amazing Øresund fixed link. This
consists of a bridge for the first section, before transforming into a tunnel for the second section.
It's then just a few minutes until we work our way into Central Copenhagen.
This trip is scheduled to take 36 minutes to cover the 40 kilometres, or about 25 miles of track.
The train departs at 09:04, running eleven minutes behind schedule.
We remain in the tunnel through central Malmö, calling at a few stops along the way.
The most memorable is Triangeln, if I'm honest
I only remember it because of the triangle pattern on the walls, but hey!
This station is named after the nearby 'Triangle Square', now that's an interesting name.
Anyway, let's have a look around the interior here in First Class.
So first up, as you'd hope for an international train serving busy cities and of course a major
airport, there is plenty of luggage space in the form of luggage stacks.
You can also find sizable overhead luggage racks, and a dedicated cloakroom area too.
So this is actually the refurbished interior of these trains,
part of a programme running from 2018 to 2022, to refurbish all 111 of the Öresundståg trains.
I actually really like the interior feel of these trains, it's got an understated classiness to it,
even despite the 2+2 seating layout being the same as in Second Class.
It's a lot better than the old interior, which was beginning to feel very tired,
and was too similar to Second Class as well.
Back to our journey then, and we're now speeding along towards the Øresund strait,
at up to 180km/h (110mph), our train's top speed.
The Øresund Bridge opened in 2000, after ambitious proposals for a fixed link had
already existed for some 90 years. We'll go more into its design later on in the video though.
For now, we'll look at the seat. As I've already mentioned earlier, here in First Class the seats
are still in a 2+2 layout, the same as Second Class. But thankfully, they do offer some decent
comfort for regional trips like this one, and also have a winged leather headrest.
The legroom is also really decent, still allowing for a spacious trip despite the seating layout.
And there's also an adjustable footrest for extra comfort.
This is quite a pleasant interior for this kind of journey, but looking at the route map,
it's clear that Öresundståg operates much longer trips, some of them lasting up to
four hours - I'm not sure how comfy this train would be on that kind of journey.
Anyway, back to the seat. All seats have folding armrests,
and these are reasonably well padded too.
Beneath the seat, you can find the lever for the seat's modest recline.
Up on the ceiling you can find a European power socket, though thankfully you can also find
one for each seat in the more sensible location of beneath the seat as well.
There's a reasonably sized seatback table with a cupholder,
as well as a smaller shelf towards the top of the seat, perfect for watching videos on your phone.
Down below, there's a small storage net,
and a folding coathook can be found on the side of the seat.
Also, there are multiple bin bags attached to the wall at every seat.
This is standard practice in Nordic countries, but it did confuse me when I first saw it.
All windows have these large sun blinds.
Unlike on most trains, these can only be in three positions; up, down, and halfway.
Above the seat, you can find the bright individual reading lights.
Finally, the train is equipped with free WiFi, which was easy to connect to.
Our journey to Denmark continues. The total crossing takes about ten minutes.
We've now arrived at Peberholm, an artificial island roughly halfway between Sweden and Denmark.
The name means 'pepper island',
which was named in reference to the nearby Saltholm, meaning 'salt island'.
We actually enter a tunnel here on the island, to continue the journey to Denmark.
There are three reasons for this rather strange design.
Firstly, is that the bridge could not be too high,
as it would foul Copenhagen Airport's obstacle free area.
Secondly, the bridge could not be too low, as that would potentially obstruct
large ships from passing. The full crossing as a tunnel would make sense,
but tunnels are expensive, which is our third reason.
We're now arriving at Københavns Lufthavn Kastrup, or Copenhagen Airport.
I should probably also mention that the trains are equipped with two toilets,
a regular one next to the First Class area, and an accessible one in the middle coach.
These were in good condition overall, with the soap and water working fine,
and paper towels provided for drying your hands.
As we leave our final intermediate stop, it's time to run through how much this journey costs.
So for this trip I had an Interrail pass, and I just got on for free with this. However,
a normal one-way first class ticket would have cost 186 Swedish Krona. There are no discounts
for buying in advance, nor are there youth or senior fares, so this is the only price really.
On today's 25 mile journey, that gives a price per mile of about 62p.
There's no getting around the fact that this is seriously expensive,
even if the train is nice. However, when you consider that the toll for the bridge
crossing by car is €65 one-way, maybe the train at under €20 doesn't seem quite so bad after all.
Overall, I think that the Öresundståg is a great way to get between these two cities with frequency
and comfort being a big positive. Despite the high costs, it's actually probably the best
value choice here too. Of course I only did a short trip, so I don't know if I'd be quite as
impressed if I was on a four hour ride, but for this route, it's a good service indeed!
We're now on the approach to Copenhagen's main station,
or Københavns Hovedbanegård. We arrive at 09:34, now running just five minutes late.
So what do you think of the Öresundståg? Would you ride this train between cities?
As always, let me know in the comments what you think of this commuter service.
For a look at the Netherlands' strange looking trains, then click on-screen now.
Thanks for watching, and I look forward to seeing you again on my next journey!