So apparently this morning Ségolène Royal, Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, has announced that security gates will be built to access Thalys trains: De Telegraaf interprets this as meaning bag scanners, going further than La Voix du Nord does (although their story also says the gates (portiques) will […]
Tag: TGV
We now have no idea what’s happening with Brussels-Strasbourg TGVs
This blog entry was published on 2nd November, and remains intact below. However, two things have happened since then. First, the Eckwersheim Derailment has led to the suspension of all TGV tests, and will mean the part of the LGV Est that the Brussels-Strasbourg service will use will not open […]
Not always the cheapest train in France, and a sneaky 50 cent Belgian charge
A couple of weeks ago Seat61 had the splash that booking cross-border France-Spain TGVs would cost you more on French language websites than anywhere else (Seat61’s news page here – you have to scroll down as he has no link to individual stories). After a bit of a furore that […]
France’s LGV Rhin-Rhône best serves… Paris. So much for high speed lines of regional importance!
Back when the Rhine-Rhône high speed TGV line (in French: LGV Rhin-Rhône) was being planned it was described that “In contrast to France’s other high speed lines — apart from the bypass round the east of Paris — LGV Rhin-Rhône was conceived primarily as an inter-regional route and not as […]
So you want the cheapest Barcelona-Paris rail ticket? Complex
I have started to plan a journey for late spring 2015, and one part of it will be a Barcelona-Paris TGV trip. How, I wonder, do I get the cheapest tickets on this service? For a start the tickets I need are not yet available – FR-ES TGV and AVE […]
Taking the train rather than the plane for business travel in Europe: does it work?
Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know I take the train for almost all my journeys, and many of these are business trips. Sean Hanley has asked me to sum up my experiences in a blog entry, so here goes. This post should be read in conjunction with the […]
Chamonix – Bruxelles by train. No, no, no.
A new case to add to the long, long list of journeys that should be easy enough by rail, but in the end are such a nightmare that most people will just not attempt them, and will fly instead. I am working in Geneva on Friday 15th March, and will […]
An interesting fortnight for cross-Channel rail travel plans, but we haven’t heard the end of this yet
On October 7th Eurostar announced a £700 million investment plan to purchase 10 new 16 car e320 trains from Siemens that will run from 2014, and from 2011 onwards upgrade the interiors of its existing 28 trainsets. Following that DB showed two ICE3 trainsets at St Pancras on 19th October, […]
Paris, 114 km
The early spring sunshine is setting behind a straggle of clouds strewn across the agricultural plains of that non-descript part of France somewhere between Bourgogne and Paris. In the blink of an eye we’ll be looping around Paris and heading north to Brussels. But before that, a pause, for this […]