Once – in all my years travelling by rail – I left a bag on a train by mistake. It was sometime between 2005 and 2007 when I was working in both London and Sunningdale (50 mins west of London), and unusually I had a bag with a suit in […]
United Kingdom
The future of long distance train services through the Channel Tunnel
This blog post has remained unchanged since it was written in 2024. It has largely been superceeded by my #CrossChannelRail Project Final Report TL;DR – whatever you read in the press about future long distance train services through the Channel Tunnel is at best only part of the truth, because […]
If there’s to be a rival to Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel, it’s not going to be Mobico (or Evolyn) with new trains in 2025
Update 12.10.2023 – this will not now be called Mobico, but a new brand called Evolyn but with the same backers – see Sky News and Railway Gazette. The Evolyn website is very sketchy. Alstom – the supposed manufacturer of the trains – has said nothing yet. So – honestly […]
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 […]
How to use Deutsche Bahn’s De Connect tickets for train trips between Germany and London
Background Deutsche Bahn used to sell tickets called London Spezial that offered incredible value train tickets from Germany to London, changing onto the Eurostar in Brussels. These tickets were discontinued in March 2020, officially due to a change of Eurostar’s IT systems, but more likely because they were sometimes so […]
The EU should place a blanket ban on trains being scrapped
This week we learned that part of Europe’s night train renaissance is going to be built on… some couchette carriages that date from 1965. Yes you read that right – some 56 year old carriages are going to be deployed by ÖBB for its new Wien-Paris night train. This further […]