Belgium Archives - Jon Worth

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

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

European Sleeper Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Berlin – you better know it exists!

In rail nerd circles we’ve had our eye on the launch of the European Sleeper service for some time – the new privately operated night train that will run Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Berlin, and eventually will be extended to Prague. As was announced recently in the company’s newsletter, tickets starting with the inaugural[Read More…]

20.02.2023 0 comments

You are invited to the funeral for the Mons ?? – Aulnoye-Aymeries ?? train

One of the strangest experiences in my #CrossBorderRail trip this summer was as the only passenger on the Mons to Aulnoye-Aymeries train – it even features in my summary video. Given that the one I took departs Mons at 06:04 then I suppose that was no surprise. And then, as[Read More…]

07.12.2022 0 comments

Bruxelles – Köln, and decision makers’ disconnection from reality

There is no international railway line I have travelled more often than Bruxelles – Köln. A good part of my life since my teenage years on language exchanges in the mid-1990s in Verviers and Lahnstein, through to professional life today in my early forties as a self employed person living[Read More…]

27.11.2022 1 comment

Mons-Aulnoye – Belgium and France close a cross border passenger railway line

It was one of the most surreal experiences of the #CrossBorderRail project: to be the only passenger on an international train for its entire trip. It even made it into my summary video. It happened on Day 1, at the Belgium-France border, between Mons and Aulnoye-Aymeries – and you can[Read More…]

11.11.2022 1 comment

A look ahead – what’s in store for night trains in Europe in 2022?

It’s a new year and it’s time to look forward. Here at Trains for Europe we’ve looked into the crystal ball and in this post are going to have a look at what’s coming up in the next 12 months in the world of night trains in Europe. What the[Read More…]

05.01.2022 5 comments

Subsidise night train services? Or sort out the market conditions to enable night trains to run?

Back in September 2020, Swedish transport authority Trafikverket sought to award contracts to run two international night trains from summer 2022 – Stockholm-Hamburg and Malmö-Bruxelles. Sweden’s state owned railway firm SJ won the contract to run Stockholm-Hamburg (with rolling stock provided by RDC), but no bids were received for Malmö-Bruxelles, so[Read More…]

25.10.2021 0 comments

A rail postcard from Brussels

(this is part of my Rail Postcards to the Transport Commissioner series – you can find all the other postcards here) Dear Violeta, I’d hoped to not have to write another one of these postcards to you so soon after my last one. But things go wrong all too regularly[Read More…]

18.02.2017 9 comments