The bad news from the timetable change in December was that Deutsche Bahn stopped all its night trains. The good news was that Austrian Railways (ÖBB) has taken over some of the routes under the new brand name NightJet. If you want some background on this change I was quoted […]
Transport
Why Belgium’s plan for PNR for rail and buses/coaches must be stopped
Put yourselves in the shoes of a terrorist for a moment. You need to transport your home made bomb from Frankfurt (Main) in Germany to Brussels in Belgium. You know the plane is no good for this – they’ll check your bag. Loads of documentation is needed to hire a […]
Taking the train is a strain – Newport to Berlin case
My parents live in Newport in South Wales. I live in Berlin. I am going home for Christmas, and so – on 27th December – I want to return to Berlin. All in one day. By train. If I wanted to do this in a few weeks’ time, it would […]
Three weeks in Central Asia – a review
I’ve just returned from a three week trip to Central Asia. This blog entry is part review of what I saw and did, and hence partly a suggestion about what to do, and how to do it. Hence the blog entry is rather long. My rationale for going to Central […]
Walk 500m to avoid STIB’s security checks – that’s not security, that’s a joke
I’m in Brussels today (Thursday 24.3.2016), two days after the Brussels attacks at Zaventem and Maelbeek. STIB, the Brussels public transport network (operator of buses, trams and metro) is operating a limited service today for security reasons. A screenshot explaining the situation is here. Brussels however has one peculiarity – […]
Thalys IZY: market segmentation is not the same as competition
So Thalys – whose rail service always strikes me as the worst combination of anglo-saxon economics and Belgian service – has a new wheeze. A new, lower cost, but slower train between Paris and Brussels, branded IZY (Easy – geddit?) It’s like Thalys’s version of OUIGO, the low cost TGV […]
Is a Rimowa suitcase worth the money?
€529 for a suitcase? A suitcase? Yes. I paid that, back in June 2013, for a Rimowa Topas Cabin Trolley IATA 55cm (model details here). It is one of the very best purchases I have ever made, and now, with hindsight, I do not regret it for a moment. First, […]
A rail postcard from Baden Baden
Dear Violeta, Have you ever changed trains in Baden Baden (in Baden-Württemberg between Freiburg (Breisgau) and Karlsruhe)? I guess not. It’s a pretty unlikely place to have to hop off a TGV and onto a ICE, but that’s what I had to do there today – because of yet another […]
Why securing Europe’s railways against terrorism shouldn’t be attempted
So apparently this morning Ségolène Royal, Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, has announced that security gates will be built to access Thalys trains: https://twitter.com/jul_mm/status/669058150729957377 De Telegraaf interprets this as meaning bag scanners, going further than La Voix du Nord does (although their story also says the gates (portiques) […]
We now have no idea what’s happening with Brussels-Strasbourg TGVs
This blog entry was published on 2nd November, and remains intact below. However, two things have happened since then. First, the Eckwersheim Derailment has led to the suspension of all TGV tests, and will mean the part of the LGV Est that the Brussels-Strasbourg service will use will not open […]
A rail postcard from Köln
Dear Violeta, It’s only a week or so since I wrote the last postcard to you. That one didn’t receive a response – perhaps you were too busy talking to the rail industry, rather than thinking of passengers’ needs? Anyway, today at Köln Hbf things went spectacularly wrong as happens […]
Not always the cheapest train in France, and a sneaky 50 cent Belgian charge
A couple of weeks ago Seat61 had the splash that booking cross-border France-Spain TGVs would cost you more on French language websites than anywhere else (Seat61’s news page here – you have to scroll down as he has no link to individual stories). After a bit of a furore that […]