Positive talk about the future of rail between Netherlands and Belgium

In the Newsletter this week
Analysis: Positive talk about the future of rail between Netherlands and Belgium
Bullshit Meter this week: Bulgaria - North Macedonia Tunnel by 2028
#CrossBorderRail is back: Spring tour starts 3rd March
Good week: New Trains for the Lille Metro
Bad week: Manufacturing defects mean deliveries of Norway's new trains paused
Very bad week: Stuttgart 21 delayed again
Elsewhere this week: Confrontations Europe about the problems of France-Germany rail
Photo of the week: Dusk in Tiraspol
Calendar: Launch of European Sleeper Paris-Berlin night train

This is the fifth edition of my subscriber-only newsletter, sent every Friday at 14:00 CET.

Positive talk about the future of rail between Netherlands and Belgium

It was actually at the end of last week that the transport ministers of Belgium and Netherlands met in Antwerpen and agreed to investigate improving passenger rail links between the two countries, but it has taken me until now to structure my thoughts. You can read the news about it in Dutch here, and TripByTrip has a good overview in English here.

Here, I think, are the four levels to assess all of this.

First, the mood. This is the most positive governments on both sides of the border have been about rail between the two countries for years, and it is rooted in a slightly more positive approach to rail policy in general in Den Haag (that applies nationally as well as internationally). The incoming D66 led coalition should be able to pursue this agenda in the coming couple of years, and the door is open to talk in Bruxelles. So far, so good.

Second, what you can do right away. Or more or less right away.

The Ministers floated the idea of a Eindhoven - Antwerpen Centraal - Bruxelles Midi train that would routed like this. The infrastructure exists to run this already, and there are probably enough ICNG trains available to offer this service as well, although finding suitable paths between Antwerpen and Mechelen could be a headache. Making this trip currently involves changing in Breda, and using the slower SNCB train between Breda and Bruxelles. But ultimately, Eindhoven - Antwerpen - Bruxelles, a few times a day, strikes me as a welcome service and also doable within a year or two.

Third is what you could do medium term, and here it gets a little harder.

In terms of passenger rail there are two lines to focus on. The first is Hamont - Weert, here on OpenRailwayMap.

The cross border line between Hamont and Weert is part of what was the Eisener Rhein freight corridor between Antwerpen and the Ruhrgebiet. However unlike the Netherlands - Germany section east of Roermond that is long gone and has no future, the Belgium - Netherlands section between Hamont and Weert is at least still legally active. 3kV dc electrification ends at Hamont, and 1.5kV dc electrification starts at Weert, and there is about 7km without wires in between.

And then when you get to Weert you would need to build an additional platform for trains arriving from Belgium - but there is space to do that.

Eindhoven - Bruxelles Midi, via Weert and Hamont, would route like this, and while routing this way would be a bit slower than via Antwerpen, it would nevertheless be a good option for cross border commuters - allowing people to live in north east Belgium and work in Eindhoven.

You need to electrify 7km of track, and build a new platform in Weert, but the project would not be too complicated to complete. The vast majority of the required works are in Netherlands.

The second line to examine medium term is Bilzen - Lanaken - Maastricht, seen here on OpenRailwayMap. There was a plan in the early 2000s to turn this former railway line into a fast tram route, that then never happened. The question is what to do now instead?

Here the line on the Belgian side has not been used since the 1980s, although the whole route has been preserved. There are two major bridges, this one over the Albertkanaal in Belgium:

And this one with a lifting section over the Maas at the edge of Maastricht in Netherlands - that was threatened with demolition but has earned a reprieve:

What I have never understood about this one is why a tram was the favoured option. This line makes obvious sense as a regional railway, not least as Lanaken is practically the only town along it between the existing railways in Bilzen (Belgium) and Maastricht (Netherlands). And a train line, rather than a tram, would permit the extension of Bruxelles - Hasselt InterCity trains to Maastricht, providing an alternative to the route via Liège that does run today. Here however, and in contrast to Hamont - Weert, the vast majority of the work required would be on the Belgian side.

Then in the long term there are three other lines to consider.

There used to be a line from Eindhoven to Neerpelt, but since this was closed whole neighbourhoods have been built along the route of the former line. This is one such blocked section of Eindhoven - Neerpelt line on OpenRailwayMap. I cannot see how you would easily route around these issues.

There also used to be a line from Tilburg to Turnhout, passing through the middle of the enclaves and exclaves of Barle-Nassau (see that section of the Tilburg - Turnhout line on OpenRailwayMap here), and while less of it has been built on than the line to Neerpelt, it would nevertheless be a major undertaking to re-open it, and the line from Turnhout towards Bruxelles is also slow.

You could, I suppose, forget both of those, and build a new section of high speed line - something like this:

But until Netherlands sorts out its headaches with the Lelylijn at the other end of the country, I cannot see any new high speed plans coming to fruition.

Overall I am not too pessimistic, and an Eindhoven - Bruxelles train would seem to be a decent and achievable starting point!

Bullshit Meter: Bulgaria - North Macedonia Tunnel by 2028

The future #CrossBorderRail line between Gyushevo (Bulgaria) and Kriva Palanka (North Macedonia) is remarkable for how long it has been almost done - more than a century in fact!

Gyushevo station, and the line connecting it with Sofia, was completed in 1913.

Now there is a new effort to finally get the border tunnel complete - this will be done by 2028, according to Bulgaria's transport minister. Sorry, but...

And even if the tunnel is done by 2028, that is not going to be much use, as there is a good 50km without any operable railway on the North Macedonian side - the line from Skopje runs only as far as Beljakovtse at the moment.

Eventually Bulgaria and North Macedonia might finally get all of this done. But it will not be in 2028.

All previous Bullshit Meter posts can be found here.

#CrossBorderRail is back: Spring tour from 3rd March

It's not quite the same as the #CrossBorderRail tours of the past where I have systematically tried to visit new borders every day, but this spring I have a whole bunch of different trips to different parts of Europe - and notably twice to Serbia. And I am trying to take in as many new borders as possible on route.

Each day there will be a live blog on the #CrossBorderRail website, and a thread on Mastodon. The full zoomable map of the trip is here, and the map data browser shows where I am which day. If I am going to be passing where you are based do let me know and I will happily say hello!

Good week: New Trains for the Lille Metro

Lille Metro finally gets its new Alstom BOA trains running!
The only slight problem: a decade late.

Better late than never!

News originally from Trenvista.

Bad week: Manufacturing defects mean deliveries of Norway's new trains paused

Just as Alstom has finally got the metro trains in Lille running, so a different problem has cropped up in Norway. The new N05 EMUs for Norske Tog have bogie defects, and the senior management of Alstom are being summoned to Oslo, and deliveries of the trains are currently suspended.

News in Norwegian here, and thanks Aslak Raanes for pointing me towards this! And oddly I, errr, had predicted this somehow!

Very bad week: Stuttgart 21 delayed again

Until reasonably recently it was assumed that Stuttgart 21, the new underground, through-tracks railway station for the capital of Baden-Württemberg would be opening in December 2026.

But now - as reported by SWR - it is going to likely be 2030 by the time it now opens. The problems are not uniquely about the building of the station itself, although there are defects there (notably with fire safety systems), but far more about the digital signalling systems that are meant to be in place for operations at the start. Hitachi, responsible for those systems, cannot deliver - and has a shortage of personnel, and a lack of possible follow up projects once Stuttgart 21 is done.

I am sure Federal Minister of Transport Schnieder and senior DB InfraGo executives will express their displeasure, but what to actually do about this fiasco is harder to work out. Since the demise of Deutschlandtakt as a sort of guiding principle for what German rail should aim for, the piecemeal nature and insecure medium term financing for German rail makes getting projects like this done fraught with difficulty and complexity.

Oh for stable financing and competent political decision making!

Elsewhere this week: Confrontations Europe about the problems of France-Germany rail

The problems with rail connections between Germany and France have been the topic of a lot of my work over the past couple of years, and indeed were the central issue in the first ever edition of this newsletter.

The think tank Confrontations Europe has an edition of its magazine about France-Germany relations within the EU, and commissioned me to write an article about the topic - you can find that in French here.

Photo of the week: Dusk in Tiraspol

Each week I am going to include a photo from my archive in the newsletter. These are going to be places that remind me of the joy of this railway work, or are simply good picture or beautiful places. But each time there will be a reason.

In 2019 I was in Moldova, and made a trip to Transnistria - there by bus, and back to Chișinău by train - which was still possible then, and might be possible once more in the medium term. A pedestrian bridge crosses the tracks, a bridge from which I took this picture in 2025. Tiraspol, its railway and trolley buses, and its problematic politics, will be the subject of the analysis piece in a future newsletter.

Calendar: Launch of European Sleeper Paris-Berlin night train

26th March at 17:45 the first European Sleeper night train will depart Paris Nord, bound for Berlin. Bookings for the service are open now. After the ÖBB-SNCF service was axed in December (after the French government cut the subsidy, and SNCF Voyageurs saw no way to carry on without it - more about that here), it's the turn of European Sleeper to have a go. The trip time is very long, and the carriages are going to be rather ancient, but better a night train than none!

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

Alstom BOA Metro: Depart de la rame Altom Metropolis BOA n°218 train de la station Triolo, Bmazerolles, 14 February 2026, CC BY 4.0. Alstom N05 EMU: Type N05 at Oslo Central Station in 2025, Premeditated, 2 December 2025, CC BY-SA 4.0. All other photos in this edition are taken by Jon Worth. Bullshit Meter images always have photo rights listed directly on the image.