Chancers to the left of me, malevolent incumbents to the right, stuck in the middle with... what?

Some days following railway news leaves me shaking my head and wondering what I am doing in this whole business. Today was one such day.

First I read the news that ÉcoTrain - a French GadgetBahn - has managed to raise €3 million. But it's the track and the public finances, not the train, that are the problem, as I explain here. Chancers, really.

And then comes the news that RegioJet is throwing in the towel in Poland, and their list of complaints why they had to in this piece from Zdopravy reads like some sort of liberalisation 101. Not getting ticket offices? Eh come on, Italo faced this one in 2013 in Italy. Trying to open a service without adequate maintenance facilities? Trenitalia had headaches in France with that one when a line was blocked in 2023. Sure there is malevolence from parts of the Polish railway system here, but there is obvious incompetence from RegioJet as well.

As if that was not enough, then comes news that Renfe - having bought what turned out to be the awful Talgo 106 series meaning they had to throw in the towel to operate high speed in France - have another plan, and it is even worse: to bid for the tender to run TER trains in Bourgogne including on the line through my local station. There is pretty much only one company I would want less to run TERs here than SNCF Voyageurs, and that is Renfe - the only company that seems to take more pride in making regional trains compulsory reservation and with terrible timetables than SNCF itself does. And I can just seen Michel Neugnot won over by "pour le confort de tous, nous allons mettre en place un système de réservation obligatoire."

Meanwhile Renfe has a controlling stake in the other main Czech private operator, Leo Express, and so they are sending their old rotting Talgo sets to them - to run Praha - Prešov and Praha - Bratislava open access services with those sets. Services are starting on 30th April (book here if you dare), and the timetable requires 3 Talgo sets to operate and they have been sent... 3 sets. What could possibly go wrong?

And I am reading and digesting all of this and I am left with what exactly? Writing ranting blog entries like this, and receiving infuriation GIFs from friends when they likewise are perplexed by the news.

Would anyone maybe like to team up on some project to make railways better, somewhere in between the chancers and the malevolent ones?