On 20th August the European Commission heavily promoted (Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon) its public consultation on the revision of the Rail Passenger Rights Regulation. As a few people asked me what I thought of this process, here’s my response – part analysis of the problem, and part list of ideas of […]
Latest Posts
Deciphering the “Virgin Trains to order 12 Alstom trains for Channel Tunnel” stories
OK, we have three pieces of “news” to go on – a story from The Times, a Richard Branson column in The Times, and this from Rail Magazine – that Virgin Trains is to order 12 high speed trains from Alstom. The central point: Virgin Trains is one of three companies […]
Quick mid August stock take – statistics, photos, and a conclusions tour plan for the autumn
A week ago the #CrossBorderRail 2025 finale ended, and I am writing this post back in Ravières, and this is a kind of quick stock take. The finale encompassed 25000km on 168 trains, more than 1000km on the Birdy folding bike, and a mass of experience and lessons learned that […]
A quick stock take before #CrossBorderRail starts again on 1st July
On 6th June, the #CrossBorderRail finale started – with the first part of the trip continuing until 24th June. Now, the day before the trip starts again it’s time for a quick recap of what happened so far, and what I learned from it. The map of the whole route, […]
The €2bn question: why has Eurostar still not ordered any new trains?
Is there space for a further Channel Tunnel operator at the Temple Mills depot off the HS1 line at Stratford? The issue rumbles on, with ORR expected to make a decision on the issue by this autumn according to The Times today. But what if the extra capacity at the […]
Evaluating trains with emojis 🤔 – explaining what all the symbols mean
Over the next two months during my #CrossBorderRail finale every one of the 145 trains I will be taking will be analysed with a Mastodon post like this (this is the predicted evaluation for tomorrow morning): #CentralEuropeFinale Train 1 of 145 TER 91371 06:39 Nuits-sous-Ravières – Montbard 06:48 SNCF for […]
