TL;DR – whatever you read in the press about future long distance train services through the Channel Tunnel is at best only part of the truth, because the reality is complicated Periodically stories appear in newspapers, on radio and television, and also in the dedicated railway trade press, about future […]
Tag: Rolling stock
Policy proposals to fix Europe’s railways
My previous post was a kind of hopeless “well we know the problems with railways, but what do we do?” Here – and motivated by Justin Scholz who has been pushing me to write this sort of thing for months – here are a series of policy proposals to fix […]
A different solution for night trains – a flexible leasing and operations company?
From the start of my Trains for Europe campaign I have argued that the absence of enough couchette cars and sleeping cars is the main constraint on the expansion of night train services. You cannot run more trains unless you literally have more carriages. I do not deny there are […]
Night trains, scale and standardisation
I listened in to the Back on Track Belgium conference last week, and the founder of a startup night train company said something interesting. “The reason we are against things like night train rolling stock pools,” he stated, “is that means we cannot configure the trains the way we want […]
Where we stand with the need to order new night trains: the EU, every government, every operator assessed
When I started Trains for Europe in mid-2021, the demand was that the European Union organises the procurement of a fleet of new night trains. Now – 8 months on – it is time to take stock of what has(n’t) happened in the interim. We started with the assumption that […]
Midnight Trains – we wish them well, but where are the carriages needed going to come from?
A new night train company has launched today. Paris-based Midnight Trains has launched with a very slick website, and promises a deluxe night train experience – private compartments with showers. The renderings are all soft furnishings and are akin to a smart hotel. RTL news has a report about the […]