This week’s schedule: Tuesday – train Berlin-Bruxelles Wednesday – train Bruxelles-Maastricht-Bruxelles Friday – train Bruxelles-Berlin Three countries. Borders I have crossed dozens of times before. But not altogether simple when it comes to the railway connections. At least I know that for all of these countries all trains will reliably […]
Netherlands
Border stations in national tariff systems – a simple change with a meaningful impact
At opposite ends of Germany there are two cross border railways where tickets for the trains are wonderfully simple – from Gronau (Nordrhein-Westfalen) to Enschede (Netherlands), and from Freilassing (Bayern) to Salzburg (Austria). At two other borders – Kehl (Baden-Württemberg) to Strasbourg (France), and Forst Lausitz (Brandenburg) to Żary (Poland) […]
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 […]
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 […]
The next problem for night trains in Netherlands: the locomotives are too heavy (or the track too unstable)
We’ve previously examined the headaches finding rolling stock (i.e. carriages) for the new Zürich – Amsterdam NightJet that will run from December this year, but now another problem has come to light – the locomotives, and specifically that they are too heavy. We’ve been pointed towards this PDF issued by […]
Rolling stock for a new night train: even SBB and ÖBB have plenty of difficulties
As we reported yesterday, Swiss railways SBB are keen to increase their night train offer. But they, like every other player in this market, have the same rolling stock problems to overcome as anyone else. In this post we are going to look at the new NightJet service due to be launched […]
