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🇸🇪 Sweden /Economy & Trade

Letter: A Train Journey in Dalarna Was Much Better in the 1950s

From Dagens Nyheter · () Swedish

Translated from Swedish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Opinion Named sources Context piece
  • Ingrid Best says she avoids summer travel between Mora and Stockholm because SJ trains lack ventilation and their windows can no longer be opened.
  • She contrasts current conditions with childhood journeys in the 1950s, when trains had dining cars, table service, openable windows and water carafes.
  • Best calls SJ’s advertising about its investments provocative because, in her view, it does not reflect the Stockholm-Mora route.

Ingrid Best says she no longer dares book a summer ticket between Mora and Stockholm after SJ sealed the train windows.

As a child, Best travelled the route many times with her grandfather during the 1950s. She remembers dining cars with white tablecloths and table service, windows that opened in every carriage, and water carafes.

Best later lived and worked in Dalarna for 25 years and commuted between Uppsala and Avesta from 2010 to December 2018. Those years, she writes, taught her what to expect from SJ. She adds that the rail company taught her patience.

Over the past year, the SJ app has warned that ventilation is unavailable when she tries to book a journey to Mora. She says the problem remains unresolved. After experiencing a train stopped in intense sunlight, she refuses to travel that way during summer.

Best recalls lending a hand fan and a battery-powered fan to families with young children while she was commuting. At least then, she says, passengers could open the windows. Information from acquaintances who travelled on the trains during summer has convinced her that the windows are now sealed.

She calls SJ’s latest television advertising about its investments provocative. If the campaign concerns routes to Gothenburg or Malmö, she writes, the company should say so. “It is definitely not the Stockholm-Mora route.”

It is definitely not the Stockholm-Mora route.

· Ingrid BestShe criticized SJ’s advertising in relation to the route she uses.
About this summary

Originally published by Dagens Nyheter in Swedish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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