“Jon, did you know?” a friend asked me today. “There’s now Eurostar Brussels to Amsterdam and it’s cheaper than the Thalys!” As a rail nerd I did of course know it exists but I have not had the chance to take it yet. But that gave me the idea for a […]
(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 too regularly […]
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 going […]
So Thalys – whose rail service always strikes me as the worst combination of anglo-saxon economics and Belgian service – has a new wheeze. A new, lower cost, but slower train between Paris and Brussels, branded IZY (Easy – geddit?) It’s like Thalys’s version of OUIGO, the low cost TGV […]
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: https://twitter.com/jul_mm/status/669058150729957377 De Telegraaf interprets this as meaning bag scanners, going further than La Voix du Nord does (although their story also says the gates (portiques) […]
I have just completed the booking of the tickets for a rail trip in April, just under 3 months ahead of my departure. Booking the trip required so many tricks and odd tactics that I’m writing this blog about it, in the hope that others can learn from it, and […]
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 […]
I’m lucky enough to have received an invite to The Apeldoorn Conference on UK-Netherlands dialogue, taking place 6-8 March in Rotterdam. An easy and high speed train journey – perfect! The route is Eurostar to Bruxelles Midi, then Thalys on the new HSL-Zuid to Rotterdam Centraal. Total journey time is just […]
I need to get to Billund in Denmark for work in December, and as I’m trying to be green this year I’m going to take the train. I’m in Brussels the day before, so will leave from there, and I need to get to Vejle, the town closest to Billund […]
I have a reputation as a blogger that gets things done – I don’t just have opinions on things, I try to transform my thoughts into practical action. Campaigns such as Gender Balanced Commission and the Atheist Bus Campaign have grown from posts on this blog. So when @kattebel stated […]
Tragedy hit the Belgian railways today with the crash of two commuter trains at Buizingen. There’s nothing I can add to what has been written about that already – any loss of life is always devastating, and I just hope this crash was not caused by linguistic issues. But instead […]