A train trip between small or medium sized towns at opposite ends of France by train normally works like this: TER regional train to the nearest city, TGV at high speed across the country, and then a TER for the last leg. So let’s take a worked example – Haguenau […]
“EU High Speed Network Plan Announced” screamed the headline on the Community of European Railways (CER) LinkedIn page this week. It caused me to scratch my head a bit, as there is no such plan yet – this was CER getting a bit carried away with one line in the […]
I’ve been struggling quite a lot recently with negative reactions to what I write about railways, but not in the “you’re wrong” sort of way, but a more insidious kind of casting doubt about my ability, my motivation or my knowledge. So here I am going to lay out some […]
Sometimes ideas are borne from frustration. After reading for the umpteenth time on LinkedIn that Portugal will relaunch night trains to Spain in 2025 (it likely won’t), I snapped. I have hence come up with a simple system to call out bullshit stories about railways – the Rail Story Bullshit […]
A story entitled “I love to travel Europe by train. But here’s what a joined-up 21st-century network needs” by María Ramírez was published by The Guardian yesterday. ‘I don’t disagree with the piece’ was the gist of my answer when asked about it on social media, but the piece does […]
When – from a passenger point of view – I make the case why the EU ought to pass a Regulation to fix cross border railway ticketing, the reaction from the railway industry (especially state owned railway firms) is essentially “why should we make booking easier, because our cross border […]