15 June 2022, and it is Day 2 of my very first #CrossBorderRail tour, and it is a gorgeous sunny morning in Nijmegen in Netherlands. I unfold the Birdy bike and cycle off towards the 6th border of the project at that stage, the dismantled line between Nijmegen and Kleve […]
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OK, I have to face it: I bit off more than I could chew. When I conducted the research for my #CrossChannelRail Project in March and April this year I thought I would be done with the report from the project by the end of May. And it is the […]
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As I am still finalising the report from my #CrossChannelRail project in March and April, it has not stopped me getting the message out about the future of long distance through services through the Channel Tunnel, and examining the sort of lingering feeling of the tunnel somehow being an amazing […]
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When in some post-lockdowns, post-Brexit, where-do-I-invest-my-political-energy moment of inspiration (or madness?) I thought of crossing every internal border of the EU you can cross by train in one journey to investigate how we better improve international rail connections, little did I know I was starting something that would be a […]
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Three short years ago when planning the first tour that was known as #CrossBorderRail, little did I know this would be the start of a project that would become a good part of my professional life in the years in between. That list of 95 rail borders investigated in 2022 […]
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There is no way to sweeten this: my original conclusion that Alstom’s Avelia Horizon (known as TGV-M with SNCF) is not legal at higher station platforms outside France was incorrect. Because transparency and correcting my errors matters to me, you can read the original blog entry in full here – […]
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It was inevitable the question would come: why is my #CrossChannelRail project taking me nowhere in the UK other than London, and along the HS1 line between London and the Channel Tunnel? The simple answer is that I had to draw a line somewhere – I cannot in a three […]
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For the past three summers, #CrossBorderRail journeys have happened every summer. So far I have been to 288 international railway lines in Europe, and – with a bit of experience now! – I know how to run these projects. But, I wondered, why not apply the same method to one […]
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While the #CrossChannelRail project for March-April is my main short term task, I have also been wondering about “completing” the #CrossBorderRail project in 2025. There are about 80 railway borders in Europe that I have not examined yet that are worth looking at, and the vast majority of them are […]
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In the summer of 2021, in between COVID lockdowns and needing all sorts of paperwork as a result, I made a trip from Berlin to Beograd, Serbia. I will only come to your event, I told the conference organisers, if I can make the trip by train and bus. I […]
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