At the start Trains for Europe had two major questions: how could the European Union organise the procurement of a fleet of night train carriages, and how many carriages would you even need to run enough lines for which there is a market in Europe? We’re still working on our […]
Analysis
Open Letter – Trains to Kaunas
Back in January a post on the TrainTracks.eu blog by Sebastian Wilken caught my eye – the post rated how easy it was to get to the three European Capitals of Culture this year (Esch ??, Novi Sad ?? and Kaunas ??) by train. I can confirm the trip to […]
Reflections on rail advocacy in EU politics
That the European Union needs to get more passengers and freight onto its railways is a no-brainer. Europe has a dense network of railways, with a lot of them in reasonable condition, a decent percentage electrified, and plenty of lines allowing trains to run at a good speed. With roads […]
What Germany needs to do about night trains
The governments of France, Italy and Sweden are actively thinking about how they can renew night train networks in those countries. Austrian Railways ÖBB, notably in partnership with Swiss Railways SBB, is investing heavily in new night train carriages and proposing to open new routes – and is backed by […]
Where we stand with the need to order new night trains: the EU, every government, every operator assessed
When I started Trains for Europe in mid-2021, the demand was that the European Union organises the procurement of a fleet of new night trains. Now – 8 months on – it is time to take stock of what has(n’t) happened in the interim. We started with the assumption that […]
#CrossBorderRail – crossing every border in the EU you can cross by train
This entire blog post has been superceded by a separate campaign website! Please consult that first! When, in a quiet moment late last year, I wondered what had come of the missing rail links Michael Cramer had proposed to fix when he was a MEP, I could not have […]