Once in a while the debate pops up that some country should re-gauge its railways – Finland being the most recent example. In this blog post I am going to delve into this issue, and explain why – in most cases – it does not make sense. But first let’s […]
Latest Posts
SNCF’s half hearted effort to support international night trains in danger of hitting the buffers
In December 2023 the Paris-Berlin night train re-started after a 9 year hiatus. Operated as a Nighjet service by ÖBB, SNCF provided motive power for the train from Mannheim to Paris. They even put SNCF stickers on some of the carriages, and ÖBB lauded the launch of the service as […]
Building a machine-translated railway news aggregator
One of the side effects of the fracturing of the social media landscape has been it has become harder to follow breaking news that has niche importance. If it’s the big questions of war and peace, sure, we all still see it. But what is happening in European railways – […]
Connecting the everyday user experience with the big picture politics of French railways
There is currently an argument in France about the future of the national railway operator SNCF that goes roughly like this: better keep the whole thing together, because then some smaller places that are not profitably served can still have their trains. If we let private companies cherry pick the […]
Green Signals podcast about rivals to Eurostar, and some further thoughts about the challengers
I was a guest this week on the Green Signals podcast about rivals to Eurostar and their chances of success. You can watch it here: You can likewise get it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Also – amazingly! – the comments on Youtube are mostly constructive. That is […]
Does a railway operator need to know about all the legs of my journey so as to offer me passenger rights?
One of the most interesting discussions provoked by my previous post about the European Commission’s passenger rights consultation was whether a railway operator really needs to know about my whole journey to be able to offer me passenger rights. Oliver Blanthorn and Cycling on Rails – two of the cleverest people […]
