Jon Worth, Author at Jon Worth

Crowd-funding for #CrossBorderRail 2023 – all of Germany’s borders – is now open!

In the summer of 2022 with the #CrossBorderRail project I crossed all of the EU’s internal borders that you can cross by train. This video sums up what I discovered: Rather than one huge project, this year I am going to be doing a series of smaller projects to document[Read More…]

15.03.2023 0 comments

Quoted in the FT “‘We are full’: the rebirth of Europe’s sleeper trains”

Before we can really scale up night trains in Europe, someone (other than ÖBB!) has to order some new trains. This is the argument I have been making for some time on my Trains for Europe site. So it was good to have the FT examine the subject. The piece[Read More…]

13.03.2023 0 comments

Will there be a direct train from [insert city] to London through the Channel Tunnel? Probably not

Basel, Switzerland. The latest city for which a direct train to London has been proposed. It is unlikely to get it, as are Geneva, Köln (CDU-Green NRW coalition agreement Page 132), Frankfurt and Bordeaux. And Marseille and Lyon are unlikely to get their direct trains to London back. There are[Read More…]

13.03.2023 4 comments

Meeting Michael Peterson with Die Zeit, and quoted by CNN about shift from planes to trains

I was one of three regular railway passengers asked by German weekly paper Die Zeit to meet head of DB Fernverkehr Michael Peterson to discuss Deutsche Bahn’s current woes. The interview appeared in the printed paper on 9 March 2023, and is online here (paywalled). “Worth: Den Ärger, den ich häufig in[Read More…]

09.03.2023 0 comments

Make international rail cheaper? Capacity on a route is the crucial issue

It’s a common refrain: more people would take the train – especially on international routes – if only it were cheaper! That line of argument assumes that there are actually more trains to take. In other words that there is spare capacity. The problem is that – in many cases[Read More…]

06.03.2023 1 comment

TimeOut makes a right hash of the new Milano-München trains story

Christian Hunt (I was a guest on his podcast) just sent me this article from TimeOut about proposed Milano-München trains, and asked me if I could do some quick analysis of it. I have already written one piece about this proposed route here, but TimeOut makes such a complete mess[Read More…]

01.03.2023 0 comments

Quoted in Berliner Zeitung about the Brenner pilot project

I spoke to Peter Neumann of Berliner Zeitung about the plans for new, faster trains on Italy-Germany routes over the Brenner Pass – explained more in English here. This is a quote in German: “Das sind dicke Bretter. Doch Trenitalia, die ÖBB und die DB pflegen eine „gute Kooperation“, berichtet[Read More…]

28.02.2023 0 comments

Viral rubbish about railways, this time about trains in Italy

This popped up in my Facebook feed just now: It links here. The graphic has 2.5k reactions, 375 comments, and 468 shares. The problem? Yeah, it’s pretty much ALL wrong. Mi O My Italy who posted it posted the right km/h to mph conversion in their text above the pic,[Read More…]

23.02.2023 0 comments

Faster trains between München and Milano, and München and Roma? Possible, but not quite in the way Merkur frames it

Over on Mastodon, Gregor Herrmann pointed me towards this story in German publication Merkur about German, Austrian and Italian railways planning faster rail connections between München and Milano, and München and Roma. ORF and Die Presse covered the story in Austria, but here I am going to focus on the[Read More…]

21.02.2023 0 comments

Stadler’s new day-night trains for Norway – I have some questions

A few days ago it was announced that Stadler has won the contract to supply new long distance trains to Norway. The official press release from Norske Tog in Norwegian is here, and there are articles from IRJ and Global Railway Review in English as well. While this tender only[Read More…]

20.02.2023 11 comments