Quick takes

A collection of 55 posts

Hungary

Budapest to Belgrade by train - from 28 November 2023

In the summer of 2021 I made a trip from Berlin to Beograd, Serbia (this blog post resulted from the trip) - with as much of it by train as possible. At that stage Budapest-Kelebia-Subotica, and Subotica-Novi Sad were both possible by train, but Novi Sad-Beograd had not been re-opened

Belgium

Why DB Reiseasukunft on the web is still my main train planning tool

This week's schedule: Tuesday - train Berlin-Bruxelles Wednesday - train Bruxelles-Maastricht-Bruxelles Friday - train Bruxelles-Berlin Three countries. Borders I have crossed dozens of times before. But not altogether simple when it comes to the railway connections. At least I know that for all of these countries all trains

France

When the only way from Wissembourg to Strasbourg is... through Germany (with 3 changes of train)

52.2km as the crow flies. 67.3km train route kilometres. Those are the distances between Wissembourg (Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France) and Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France). And I want to travel between the two by train after dinner on Saturday 21st October. Fair enough, surely? France the country of good food

European Union

Strasbourg? Karlsruhe? No - Saarbrücken? Where the future Paris-Berlin ICE stops is not the issue

There are two high-ish speed routes between Paris Est and Frankfurt(Main)Hbf by train - the shorter one in terms of route-km but with less high speed infrastructure via Saarbrücken (mapped here), and the 70km longer one but with more high speed lines via Strasbourg and Karlsruhe (mapped here)

Quick takes

Toute l'Europe - a future night train map that's very, very bad

This cropped up in my LinkedIn feed earlier today. At the time I commented on it, simply saying it was bullshit. Now I am going to take it apart, and break down why it is bullshit. The map comes from this article from Toute l'Europe. We've

Austria

TimeOut makes a right hash of the new Milano-München trains story

Christian Hunt (I was a guest on his podcast) just sent me this article from TimeOut about proposed Milano-München trains, and asked me if I could do some quick analysis of it. I have already written one piece about this proposed route here, but TimeOut makes such a complete mess

Italy

Viral rubbish about railways, this time about trains in Italy

This popped up in my Facebook feed just now: It links here. The graphic has 2.5k reactions, 375 comments, and 468 shares. The problem? Yeah, it's pretty much ALL wrong. Mi O My Italy who posted it posted the right km/h to mph conversion in their

Belgium

European Sleeper Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Berlin - you better know it exists!

In rail nerd circles we've had our eye on the launch of the European Sleeper service for some time - the new privately operated night train that will run Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Berlin, and eventually will be extended to Prague. As was announced recently in the company's newsletter, tickets

Denmark

When DPA gets it wrong about railways, the whole of the German media gets it wrong

Süddeutsche Zeitung. Hamburger Morgenpost. Bild. Stern. T-Online. NDR. RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland. Zeit. FAZ. They all wrote yesterday about the "new" night train Hamburg-Stockholm that - according to all the stories - had its premiere yesterday. The problem? The train has been running since 1st September 2022. Nothing new happened

France

Taking apart Euronews's puff piece about the new TGVs

One of the aims of this new "Quick takes" category here is for me to write things something longer than a toot or tweet, but not as well thought out as longer-form blog posts. So here goes. This toot - boosted into my Mastodon home feed by Aarne

Germany

Bike parking at Berlin Hbf

Today I made a rather unusual trip to Berlin Hbf - I was not actually departing on a train anywhere! Instead the purpose of my trip was to a meeting for some media work - I will post more about that in due course. But the trip gave me the

Quick takes

A new departure: transport commentary has its own site

For a long time all my analysis of railway policy was bundled in with the rest of the things I have written over the years about other topics - Brexit, EU politics, UK politics and technology. But as I want to work more on railway issues, and develop campaigns and

European Union

ChatGPT vs. Adina Vălean - the machine does a solid job

One of my repeated frustrations when working on railway policy in the European Union is how imprecise and woolly the communication from policy makers in the area is. This is in particular the case when European Commissioner for Transport Adina-Ioana Vălean talks about railways. So as ChatGPT is now available

Belgium

You are invited to the funeral for the Mons 🇧🇪 - Aulnoye-Aymeries 🇫🇷 train

One of the strangest experiences in my #CrossBorderRail trip this summer was as the only passenger on the Mons to Aulnoye-Aymeries train - it even features in my summary video. Given that the one I took departs Mons at 06:04 then I suppose that was no surprise. And then,

European Union

Bloomberg publishes new interactive website about night trains in Europe

Entitled "Europe Asks Travelers to Ditch Planes for Night Trains", Bloomberg has published a sort of interactive guide to night trains in Europe, and what the European Union is trying to do to solve the night train conundrum. It's not all quite right in the technical

European Union

A rail postcard from Passow (Uckermark)

Dear Violeta, It has been a little while since I last wrote you a postcard from one of my cross-border rail trips. But this week I took a little journey from Berlin to Szczecin / Stettin in West Pomerania in Poland, represented in the European Parliament by Bogusław Liberadzki - who

Belgium

A rail postcard from Brussels

(this is part of my Rail Postcards to the Transport Commissioner series - you can find all the other postcards here) Dear Violeta, I'd hoped to not have to write another one of these postcards to you so soon after my last one. But things go wrong all

Belgium

A rail postcard from Aachen

Dear Violeta, Today I am writing to you from Aachen, and I am not here for the Christmas Market. I am here because I am stuck due to the immense incompetence of European railways and the lack of basic collaboration between them in the interests of passengers. This story is

European Union

A rail postcard from Baden Baden

Dear Violeta, Have you ever changed trains in Baden Baden (in Baden-Württemberg between Freiburg (Breisgau) and Karlsruhe)? I guess not. It's a pretty unlikely place to have to hop off a TGV and onto a ICE, but that's what I had to do there today -

European Union

A rail postcard from Köln

Dear Violeta, It's only a week or so since I wrote the last postcard to you. That one didn't receive a response - perhaps you were too busy talking to the rail industry, rather than thinking of passengers' needs? Anyway, today at Köln Hbf things

European Union

A rail postcard from Berlin Südkreuz

Dear Violeta, I have had plenty of time to contemplate this postcard to you. Most of the day in fact, as I've wasted that long trying to get to the bottom of what ought to be a rather simple cross-border railway problem. Later this week - on Thursday

European Union

A rail postcard from Mannheim

Dear Violeta, Since my postcard from Forst (Lausitz) in December I've travelled the length and breadth of Germany by rail (even stopping off to hear you speak at the Schwarkopf Stiftung in Berlin), and today I am sending you a virtual postcard from Mannheim. I have no idea

European Union

A rail postcard from Forst (Lausitz)

Dear Violeta*, I'm a regular long distance rail traveller, and when things used to go wrong with EU-wide rail I would write postcards here on my blog to your predecessor, Siim Kallas. You can find old postcards from Hendaye, Göteborg and Liège. This is my first postcard to

Belgium

A rail postcard from Liège

Dear Siim, I'm writing to you today from Liège. In one way this is a surprise, in that I am not supposed to be in Liège, but judging from experience I suppose it was inevitable I was going to have to write to you from here at some

Quick takes

A rail postcard from Göteborg

Dear Siim, I hope you liked my last e-postcard from Hendaye. Today I am writing to you from Göteborg, Sweden. I’m only writing this from the comfort of the train south of Sweden’s second city because I’m lucky – my train from Oslo arrived 2 minutes early, at