3 police officers or border guards, 2 Polish and 1 German as far as I could tell (the one who spoke to me was Polish) boarded train EC 40, the Warszawa – Berlin express, at Rzepin on 11th March 2014. I was in the front carriage of the train, where […]
Analysis
Taking the train rather than the plane for business travel in Europe: does it work?
Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know I take the train for almost all my journeys, and many of these are business trips. Sean Hanley has asked me to sum up my experiences in a blog entry, so here goes. This post should be read in conjunction with the […]
Torn between a retro past and an uncertain future: is the sun setting on Romanian rail?
The two guards on the EN472 “Ister” between Bucuresti Nord and Budapest Keleti pu. set aside their fading hats with the silver trim and the CFR logos and tuck into the dinner they have brought from home in the bar carriage. They crunch what look like home grown, gnarled gherkins, […]
Bike boxes at traffic lights – a little eye witness example
I’ve been sat for 30 minutes at a café on the corner of Great Smith Street / Great Peter Street in Westminster. This is the view of the cycle box on Great Peter Street, going westbound. More than half of the times the lights were red cars stopped more or […]
The future of channel tunnel long distance passenger railway services
A small step forward step in the prospect of long distance high-speed train services using the channel tunnel was taken this week, with Deutsche Bahn granted a ‘Certificate B’ to operate trains through the tunnel. This has been a long time coming – in 2010 DB was talking of running […]
Five types of railway market in Europe
I travel a lot by train. On all kinds of services, all over Europe. As Europe’s rail market supposedly opens up to competition with the 4th railway package, what can I conclude about where competition does and does not work? 1) The profitable long distance route This is the ideal […]