Launch of the new #CrossBorderRail database of international railway lines
In the Newsletter this week
Analysis: Launch of the new #CrossBorderRail database of international railway lines
Bullshit Meter: Kyiv - Bulgaria trains to start in summer 2026
Good week: Opening of Tornio-Haparanda now in sight, and it will allow a new record to be set
Bad week: Damage to 30 trains in Denmark
Very bad week: Level crossing accidents in Slovakia and Austria
Elsewhere this week: DW about night trains, RAIL about high speed trains
Photo of the week: A pope train at Valença do Minho
Calendar: New Bratislava - Praha open access service from Leo Express to start 30th April
Newsletter 013, Friday 17th April 2026.
Subscriber-only newsletter, sent every Friday at 14:00 CET.
Launch of the new #CrossBorderRail database of international railway lines
Since summer 2022 I have painstakingly been visiting, photographing and analysing international railway lines at European borders in my #CrossBorderRail project. In live blogs, threads on social media, and some Flickr albums I have been documenting some of the work as I went along, and giving plenty of presentations about my work, but I nevertheless had not until now tried to draw together all the information I have gathered into a structured and searchable format.
But this week - thanks to work I have been doing together with the Europäische Akademie Berlin - I have a new map and database of every international railway line in Europe.
Click on a pin on the map, and then information about that border crossing is presented in a standardised format - the state of the infrastructure, what services run, and photos from the place (if I have been there).
The map covers all internal borders of the EU, and the whole of the Western Balkans, UK, Norway, Switzerland, and the EU's external borders towards Ukraine, Moldova and Turkey.
All sorts of lines are mapped - existing lines, dismantled lines, future planned lines, even tramways and narrow gauge lines. Lines that cross the same border multiple times are also mapped correctly. The total is 603 markers, and the total is 516 once lines crossing a border multiple times are reduced to being listed just once.
While I am happy to get a first version of the map and data launched, there is still a lot more work to do. There are only photos for a hundred or so borders so far - we are working to add a lot more. Much of the data comes from the excellent 2017 European Commission DG Report Comprehensive analysis of the existing cross-border rail transport connections and missing links on the internal EU borders, but some of that data needs updating, and my map also features more than 100 more borders than the Commission checked.
The purpose of the map and data is essentially political. It should help campaigners and political decision makers know what there is at any given border, and some of the issues and hurdles that might need to be overcome. It provides a basis, a starting point, for being able to take political decisions to improve connections in these places.
In my own advocacy it will help with my work to identify the border lines where the greatest progress can be achieved the fastest and with the most limited investment.
The map is not intended as a travel guide, but given there are plenty of interesting photos for many of the borders I am of course very happy if people use it for travel inspiration too!
Bullshit Meter: Kyiv - Bulgaria trains to start in summer 2026
When Ukrainian Railways decides to do something, they normally find a way. And this time we have a commitment from the Minister of Transport as well as a provisional map of the route:
No one is under any illusions here - the train would have a trip time of about 30 hours to Varna, the same as a bus. But horribly slow trains operate from Ukraine to Moldova already for example. And some carriages where you can change the wheels (from 1520mm broad gauge to 1435mm standard gauge, at Vadul-Siret at the border to Romania) must be available somewhere, not least as the service used to exist in the 2010s. So I think this one is more likely than not to happen!
All previous Bullshit Meter posts can be found here.
Good week: Opening of Tornio-Haparanda now in sight, and it will allow a new record to be set
We should finally have passenger trains from Finland to Sweden this summer - Finland's transport minister says trains between Tornio and Haparanda (OpenRailwayMap) will start in a few months, as reported by YLE. Given the renovation of the cross border bridge was completed last year, it is a bit peculiar it has taken this long, and with only 2 trains a day it is not going to be a very regular service. But you have to start somewhere.
And for the wannabe record breakers among my readers, the opening of the connection between Tornio and Haparanda allows a new record to be set: the longest train trip between two places in the European Union using multiple trains. Kemijärvi (north of Rovaniemi) to Lagos in Portugal has a Geodesic distance of 4008.33km, surpassing the previous longest in the EU that was Riksgränsen (Sweden) - Lagos at just 3855.54km. Check the distances for yourself using this calculator.
Given the world's longest train journey (on multiple trains) is not possible at present, this one might provide an alternative!
Bad week: Damage to 30 trains in Denmark
To damage one pantograph may be regarded as a misfortune, to damage 30 looks like carelessness. Or incompetence.
But that is what happened in Denmark this week, where a section of overhead wire that was too low ended up causing serious damage to 30 trains, before Banedanmark identified where the problem was.
"It’s something that happens very, very rarely. I can’t recall anything like that ever happening" said DSB's spokesman, as reported by RailTech. No, a competent railway would have realised the problem sooner, so no, I cannot recall a case quite this severe either.
Very bad week: Level crossing accidents in Slovakia and Austria
When I wrote in last week's newsletter that the train driver dying in a level crossing incident is rather rare, and it is drivers of road vehicles who suffer more often, I cannot have imagined how soon this would come to pass - this week in both Slovakia (in a truck) and Austria (in a car), passengers in the road vehicles died in level crossing accidents. There were injuries but no fatalities in the train in Slovakia, and as far as I can tell no injuries on the train in the Austrian case.
Elsewhere this week: DW about night trains, RAIL about high speed trains
I am quoted in RAIL Magazine in the UK about contrasting approaches to high speed rail in different European countries, and provide some analysis about the night train conundrums in Europe in this video from Deutsche Welle Planet A:
Photo of the week: A pope train at Valença do Minho
As I am going to visit the railway line at the Vatican next month, so my mind turned to a different connection between the pope and railways. When I was last at Valença do Minho - the first station on the Portuguese side of the border on the Vigo - Porto corridor - it turns out the locomotive hauling my train had once hauled a train carrying John Paul II.
Calendar: New Bratislava - Praha open access service from Leo Express to start 30th April
30th April is the date for the entry into service of the new open access Bratislava - Praha service, operated by Leo Express. The carriages are old Talgo sets no longer in use in Spain, passed over to Leo as Renfe owns a share in the company. You can book tickets for the new service here.
Everyone better hope this works out better than fellow Czech firm RegioJet's entry into the Polish market, where the company pulled the plug before things even really got going - as reported in last week's newsletter.
If you would like to stay up to date with what I am doing, there are public calendars to which you can subscribe: Jon Worth - Speeches and Events ICS | Jon Worth - Travel ICS | Jon Worth - Other Rail Dates ICS And if you'd like me to speak at an event or run a workshop, contact me about that.
Photo Rights
All photos in this edition are taken by Jon Worth, except the Leo Express Talgo picture - that is a press photo from Leo found here. Bullshit Meter images always have photo rights listed directly on the image.