Passengers can't complain about trains they cannot take because they don't exist: in defence of German rail
In the Newsletter this week
Analysis: Passengers can't complain about trains they cannot take because they don't exist: in defence of German rail
Bullshit Meter: European Sleeper & RDC Bruxelles - Malmö Sleeper in 2028
Good week: Cross-border link Daugavpils - Turmantas - Vilnius finally to be fixed
Also a good week: 10 trains a day Berlin - Warszawa from December
Good week, probably: Finally a direct train Madrid - Lisboa?
What were they thinking this week: Financing of new trains contingent on Alstom delivery and approval on time
Bad week: Online ticketing scandal in Montenegro
Painfully bad week: Christian Democrats trying to claim security resilience to stop a new railway line
Photo of the week: Oradea, 17km
Elsewhere this week: Quoted by The Daily Telegraph and The Brussels Times about Virgin's entry into the Channel Tunnel market
Calendar: 5th October opening for the Wunderline Groningen - Leer
Newsletter 028, Friday 27th August 2026.
Subscriber-only newsletter, sent every Friday at 14:00 CET/CEST.
7th September I will start the record attempt - Longest train journey in the EU. Find out about the project here! Project merchandise is now available too, and with 20% off this week with the code crossborderrail!
Passengers can't complain about trains they cannot take because they don't exist: in defence of German rail
A friend sent me a link to a wonderful animation this week - showing train movements in Western Europe. Do go watch it before reading on.
What struck me immediately is how empty France is, except Île-de-France. You can barely tell where Marseille even is - there are that few trains from France's 2nd or 3rd city (depends how you define city). By contrast Germany is a dense network, with long distance and regional trains connecting at nodes (cities, basically).
But at the same time there is a common old trope, on LinkedIn in particular, about my forthcoming Longest journey project. "I hope you left loads of time to cross Germany!" people tell me. Over and over.
But generally, an individual passenger does not complain about a train they cannot take, and cannot take because it does not exist. They only complain about ones they can take and do not work as they should.
You cannot really commute into Marseille by train because there are pretty much no commuter trains.
You can commute into Frankfurt (Main), or Berlin or Göttingen or Freiburg (Breisgau) or a dozen other German cities by train. And when reliability of those trains slumps people complain, bitterly. And understandably.
But pretty much no one complains about a train they logically should have, but have never had. To know you should have a train needs a comparative perspective, some understanding of someone else's rail system.
At the individual level those people in Marseille bought cars, and abandoned the train long ago. They're not going "hey, hang on, why are our trains so lousy here?"
This then is my defence of German rail: while reliability might be poor, and people are correct to be annoyed by that, it is also a sign of a dense railway network with a hell of a lot of trains, when people want to take trains, and trains that are heavily used. It is a sign of health of the railway system.
In other words, what Germany is trying to do is right.
And for the Longest journey it is similar. I am taking a NightJet night train to cross Germany from Hamburg to Offenburg, just across the Rhein from Strasbourg. I am taking a night train because there is one. There is not one between Strasbourg and Barcelona, or between Lyon and Madrid, or Barcelona to Lisboa. Because in France, Spain and Portugal everyone has given up on that sort of thing. Yes, in France there are a few night trains from Paris to places you cannot reach by TGV, but those do not help me here. And if, as might happen, my NightJet gets delayed or cancelled, I have alternatives - ICEs in the night time or even a series of regional trains that will get me to my destination. In some discomfort, sure, but those trains will get me there.
However if the Renfe AVE that runs once a day Lyon - Barcelona, or the CP Regional twice a day from Badajoz - Entroncamento, break down, then I am stuck. The same in northern Finland and everywhere in Sweden north of Stockholm. There are no alternatives in those places.
Give me the German rail system over the French one every day. Even now.
Bullshit Meter: European Sleeper & RDC Bruxelles - Malmö Sleeper in 2028
The press was jumping up and down about this one, and you can read about it on European Sleeper's website here. 3 departures a week each way from Bruxelles and Amsterdam to København and Malmö. And - unlike the seemingly ever postponed plans for a train to Barcelona - I do think European Sleeper will be able to do this Malmö route, in the main because of the partnership with RDC who know how to get carriages approved to run through Denmark.
This is going to leave European Sleeper with four routes:
- Bruxelles - Amsterdam - Berlin - Praha
- Paris - Bruxelles - (Hamburg -) Berlin
- Bruxelles - Köln - Milano
- Bruxelles - Amsterdam - København - Malmö
And none of them running every night, and all of them running with a motley collection of carriages from the 1970s or older. Maybe there is no other way to do this, and to give European Sleeper its credit, they do get trains to go. But I am left wondering how sustainable all of this really is.
All previous Bullshit Meter posts can be found here.
Good week: Cross-border link Daugavpils - Turmantas - Vilnius finally to be fixed
It was one of the most ridiculous days of my first #CrossBorderRail project - cycling on dirt roads from Daugavpils (Latvia's second city, 77000 population) to Turmantas (first village in Lithuania, 209 population), because since 2017 no trains were running between the two. Despite there being a track, and a suitable train. Here it is, in Turmantas - from where it ran 5 times a day to Vilnius:
Since then I have told the Turmantas story dozens of times. It feels like I have made that village famous in my narrow railway circles!
But anyway now, finally, it looks like from December this problem will be fixed - news story inc. a map here. Not only will there be trains from Daugavpils via Turmantas to Vilnius, but (reading between the lines) one or two of these will be extended to Mockava for connections to Warszawa. And in the other direction, an existing Tallinn - Rīga train will be extended to Daugavpils as well.
This is all possible because electrification of Tapa - Tartu in Estonia and Kaišiadorys - Klaipėda in Lithuania means there are a few spare diesel trains that can be used for the extension of these services, with the prospect of even more once Latvia's battery-electric trains enter service towards the end of this decade.
Also a good week: 10 trains a day Berlin - Warszawa from December
PKP IC wants to up the number of trains a day it runs from Berlin to Warszawa from the current 7 to 10 daily departures, as reported by Rynek Kolejowy. I don't for a moment doubt that PKP IC wants to do this - long distance rail travel is booming in Poland. And they probably also have enough carriages to be able to make the service happen, perhaps even with some carriages they purchased second hand from DB.
The problem remains the state of the infrastructure, German side, where Berlin - Frankfurt (Oder) will remain a building site throughout 2027, and Germany has refused to make upgrading Berlin - Kostrzyn a priority.
Good week, probably: Finally a direct train Madrid - Lisboa?
News from Trenvista this week that Renfe and CP are investigating how to re-establish a direct daytime train between Madrid and Lisboa. But then Portugal Ferroviário poured some cold water on it, wondering when the Evora - Caia high speed line might finally be approved for operation. That line is already years delayed.
The idea is to run the Madrid - Lisboa service with locomotive hauled Talgo VI sets, approved to run at 200km/h in Spain and 140km/h in Portugal. Locomotives would be Renfe 334 diesels Madrid - Badajoz, with the locomotive changed there for CP 5600 electrics to run Badajoz - Lisboa.
While a direct train would be nice, it presents some headaches. 140km/h rather than 200km/h for which more than 150km of the line in Portugal is built will add 20 minutes to the trip time there. And 200km/h with a diesel locomotive rather than 250km/h electric between Plasencia and Badajoz on the Spanish side is peculiar too (bi-mode Talgo 730 trains run Madrid - Badajoz currently, but are not approved to run in Portugal).
But something is happening here, and it is long overdue. Maybe sometime in 2027 this might finally work, somehow?
What were they thinking this week: Financing of new trains contingent on Alstom delivery and approval on time
A peculiar story from The Rail Agenda this week: Bulgaria must approve 12 Alstom Coradia EMUs to run by 31st August, otherwise the country will lose EU funds for financing that part of the 35 strong fleet that has been ordered.
But some things do not add up here.
First, despite Alstom officially saying just 2 months ago that the EMUs were in Bulgaria, here is a video from the end of September 2025 (so more like 11 months ago) showing one being towed into Bulgaria. How long have the trains even been there?
Second, the contract to buy these trains was signed 25 April 2025, so just 16 months before the deadline to supposedly have them approved and 12 of them running. Yes, the Coradia type is a proven design, but the type has never run in Bulgaria before and I don't know who in their right mind would trust Alstom with such a tight time frame. It took Škoda 23 months.
There must be more to this story than meets the eye at the moment.
Bad week: Online ticketing scandal in Montenegro
When I last took the Beograd - Bar night train in April this year I went to the station to get a ticket on paper, old style. That was the only way back then.
However the new digital ticketing system introduced in July by Montenegro railways ŽPCG has been rocked by a scandal this week, as reported by Vijesti here - the new ticketing portal tickets-zpcg.me has been selling tickets for seats that do not exist, and selling berths on night trains that are occupied by other passengers, and also charging more than it should. ŽPCG has responded to the newspaper's story here, claiming all of this to be no more than teething problems.
Anyway, until this is all sorted out, do not trust any online tickets for ŽPCG!
Painfully bad week: Christian Democrats trying to claim security resilience to stop a new railway line
There is this word in German - peinlich - that is somehow worse than embarrassing. Rainer Rempe of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in Harburg, south of Hamburg, is really peinlich.
Trying to find a possible route through Harburg for a future high speed railway line towards Hannover is hard, because land that is easy to use is so scarce. The current proposal is that the rail line would cross two motorways at the exact point where those motorways cross each other.
Complex, but surely a way to reduce the number of people disturbed by the new line, you would think.
No! A security risk, according to Rempe, who is writing to Germany's minister of defence, claiming the plan makes that point particularly open to sabotage.
This is German rail infra planning in a nutshell: you go to great lengths to limit the impact on inhabitants, and then some other spurious argument is deployed instead.
Photo of the week: Oradea, 17km
Most of the track of the former cross border line Oradea 🇷🇴 - Vésztő 🇭🇺 is still in place. But as you can see here at Toboliu, close to the border Romanian side, it would need a lot of work to re-open! On OpenRailwayMap here.
Elsewhere this week: Quoted by The Daily Telegraph and The Brussels Times about Virgin's entry into the Channel Tunnel market
Finally, steadily, slowly it feels like the rhetoric is being turned around with regard to the future of the Channel Tunnel, and that leaving Eurostar to run services as they please is not a good outcome for passengers. This week I was quoted in this piece in The Daily Telegraph about Virgin's plans, and The Brussels Times explored the same issue (although they also quoted some Belgian expert who seemed to rather miss the point as well).
Calendar: 5th October opening for the Wunderline Groningen - Leer
It was in last week's newsletter that Groningen - Leer is due to re-open in October, but I did not know the precise date. Now I do know! Monday 5th October. Background here. I don't think I can personally get there on the re-opening day though...
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Photo Rights
All photos by Jon Worth, except Coradia Stream EMU - press photo from Alstom, and Renfe 334 diesel locomotive, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Nelso Silva, June 18, 2018
Bullshit Meter images always have photo rights listed directly on the image.