When I went to Kumanovo in June of 2024 and found a railway station half complete, I must admit I did not think trains would run there any time soon. But this week I was proven wrong – the first part of the line that will eventually connect Skopje ion […]
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Finally I am done sorting and uploading photos from #CrossBorderRail South East Europe 2024 In this post there is one photo from each of the days, and a link to the full Flickr album from that day – to give an idea of this weird and wonderful journey! Day -02 […]
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The railway line from Thessaloniki (Greece) to Bitola (North Macedonia) via Florina has a long history. It was completed in 1894, before the Balkan Wars in 1913 resulted in the final 17km ending up in Yugoslavia. Trains continued to run on the cross border section until 1987, and then ceased, […]
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The research phase of #CrossBorderRail 2024 is done, so now it is time to start to assess what I learned. The first conclusions will be presented in a public webinar at 19:00 CEST on 9th July. The webinar has now concluded, and you can view it here: The slides that […]
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Sunday 26 May, at about 6am, I will hop on the faithful Birdy folding bike and cycle from Ravières to Montbard – the first of about 125 stages of #CrossBorderRail. Over the 5 weeks that follow I will travel more than 13000km, and investigate 35 new railway borders, most of […]
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Previously in Yugoslavia, and today in Serbia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina these locomotives are known as class 441. In Croatia they are class 1141. In Romania class 43 and 46. They are operated by Srbija Voz, TENT, MŽ, ŽFBH, ŽRS, HŽ, CFR and some private freight operators too. […]
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As was the case in 2022 and 2023, I will be organising and attending a variety of events throughout #CrossBorderRail in 2024. Although the 6 non-EU countries in South East Europe are my focus for 2024, I am nevertheless making a rather large diversion to Tallinn at the start of […]
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During my #CrossBorderRail projects in 2022 and 2023 I sent postcards throughout the trips. In 2022 European Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean even received a postcard from me every single day of the project! For #CrossBorderRail 2024 I am going to be repeating the postcards, with a slightly different format. […]
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My 2023 projects might not have had the one-off “wow, some dude is crossing all of Europe’s borders in one go!” effect that 2022 had, but looking back the past 12 months have both been a lot of fun and has been politically interesting too. After the 83* borders crossed […]
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