Jon Worth's Railway Newsletter

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Feed from Jon's blog / newsletter about railways. Newsletters at 1400 CET Fridays, some posts at other times too. Focus on cross border passenger rail in Europe. This account is […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://jonworth.eu/, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Longform Stories

There are always more international rail lines to discover and understand

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: There are always more international rail lines to discover and understand Bullshit Meter, retrospective: Frecciarossa Milano-Ljubljana in 2025 Good week: Foundati…

5d ago·2 min read·216 words

Italo in Germany. Nice idea, but many open questions.

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: Italo in Germany. Nice idea, but many open questions. Bullshit Meter: Leo Express Przemyśl - Frankfurt train to start in 2026 Good week: Czechia and Poland are se…

May 29·2 min read·217 words

Leo Express Przemyśl - Frankfurt train to start in 2026

1800km! 18 hours! One of Europe's longest scheduled services! Claims Notes from Poland, based on press materials from Leo Express. Ah. One problem. It won't happen, at least not in full. Look on L…

May 29·2 min read·252 words

Jon Worth exclusive! 25% off Paris - Berlin train tickets! (Really, sort of)

On 25th June I need to travel from France to Berlin. One option is to take the once daily direct train from Paris Est to Berlin Hbf. Here's the timetable and the price of that train from SNCF: And he…

May 24·3 min read·551 words

Screaming down the tracks

In the Newsletter this week Rant: Screaming down the tracks Event: Passenger Package Webinar - 28 May Bullshit Meter: Baku - Tbilisi train to restart this month Good week: Turku will get its tram Also…

May 22·2 min read·217 words

Baku - Tbilisi train to restart this month

Trains between the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, and the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, were suspended at the time of the COVID pandemic and have not been re-started. Until this month, probably. At talks…

May 22·1 min read·196 words

Cross-border railway problems are annoyingly universal

At the time of writing, my #CrossBorderRail project has taken me to 419 international railway lines since 13 June 2022. One of the very first borders I went to - on 19 June 2022 - was Haparanda 🇸🇪 …

May 18·3 min read·596 words

EU railway ticketing proposals are out. What now?

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: EU railway ticketing proposals are out. What now? Bullshit Meter: Berlin - Oslo ICE direct train in 2028 Good week: FS Engineering wins a contract in Serbia Bad w…

May 15·2 min read·227 words

Berlin - Oslo ICE direct train in 2028

According to DB there is going to be a daily direct train from Berlin to Oslo, via Hamburg, København and Göteborg, running from summer 2028. DB's news story about it is here. I am not altogether con…

May 15·2 min read·303 words

State railways, what's wrong? CER's perplexing response to the European Commission's Passenger Package

The Passenger Package - three pieces of legislation proposed yesterday by the European Commission mostly to address issues with railway ticketing in the EU - have been a long time coming. No sooner h…

May 14·6 min read·1180 words

How to make the rail ticketing aspects of the European Commission's Passenger Package more workable

In my earlier piece, I argued that the European Commission's Passenger Package is both radical and unworkable when it comes to the rail aspects of it, and explained how the Commission ended up there. …

May 13·1 min read·103 words

How the gospel - the Political Guidelines - left the European Commission with a ticketing proposal both radical and unworkable

Ursula von der Leyen called her disciples, the Commissioners, to gather around. Holding up a bound edition of the Political Guidelines, she conferred a great responsibility onto each of them. Beckoni…

May 13·1 min read·96 words

EU rail ticketing reform proposal is out next week: this is what to look out for

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: EU rail ticketing reform proposal is out next week: this is what to look out for Bullshit Meter, retrospective: Berlin-Warszawa with Flixtrain Good week: Record P…

May 8·1 min read·95 words

Albania's shoddy new railway

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: Albania's shoddy new railway Bullshit Meter: Skopje commuter train service to start 1st September Good week: Hungary gets a good transport minister Bad week: Roma…

May 1·1 min read·77 words

Skopje commuter train service to start 1st September

Skopje is going to get a commuter rail service! Zelenikovo - Skopje! This year! The tracks are being repaired. That bit - from Minister of Transport Aleksandar Nikoloski - might be true. The problem i…

May 1·1 min read·98 words

The longest train journey in the EU

Anyone who has been following my work for a while knows I have long had a rather abstract discussion about the definition of the World's Longest Train Journey. I started calculating this back in 2021,…

Apr 25·14 min read·2704 words

We now know the scale of EU rail ticketing issues. Commission, over to you!

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: We now know the scale of EU rail ticketing issues. Commission, over to you! Bullshit Meter: Italo to run high speed trains in Germany Good week: Nox raises €2 mil…

Apr 24·1 min read·101 words

Italo to run high speed trains in Germany

Stuttgarter Zeitung had the story this week that Italian private high speed rail operator Italo is to enter the German rail market, and will likely buy 25-30 Velaro trains from Siemens to do this. The…

Apr 24·1 min read·99 words

Launch of the new #CrossBorderRail database of international railway lines

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: Launch of the new #CrossBorderRail database of international railway lines Bullshit Meter: Kyiv - Bulgaria trains to start in summer 2026 Good week: Opening of To…

Apr 17·1 min read·96 words

Kyiv - Bulgaria trains to start in summer 2026

When Ukrainian Railways decides to do something, they normally find a way. And this time we have a commitment from the Minister of Transport as well as a provisional map of the route: No one is under…

Apr 17·1 min read·100 words

I'm not that bothered if SNCF Connect is forced to sell Trenitalia tickets, but someone has to be able to offer me both

It has been kicking off in the French Senate in the past few days on the topic of railway ticketing. The Senate wants to force SNCF Connect, the French state incumbent railway's ticketing platform, to…

Apr 16·1 min read·110 words

My railway work: no shortage of meaning, but for the EU institutions that can be uncomfortable

I stumbled across an excellent essay about the EU this week: "Not a messaging problem. Why institutional narratives keep failing" by Meisoon Nasralla and Lilit Poghosyan. They write: "We are told, on…

Apr 11·1 min read·95 words

A tram-train for Nijmegen - Kleve: the option with the fewest downsides

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: The solution for Nijmegen - Kleve is a tram-train Bullshit Meter: Monocab as a solution for rural rail lines Good week: Rail passengers in Lithuania get half pric…

Apr 10·1 min read·94 words

Monocab as a solution for rural rail lines

Another week, another Gadgetbahn. This time one from Germany - Monocab. It's supposedly so important there is even a Wikipedia page about it. This thing is a narrow monorail that is supposed to balan…

Apr 10·1 min read·99 words

Chancers to the left of me, malevolent incumbents to the right, stuck in the middle with... what?

Some days following railway news leaves me shaking my head and wondering what I am doing in this whole business. Today was one such day. First I read the news that ÉcoTrain - a French GadgetBahn - ha…

Apr 9·1 min read·110 words

ÉcoTrain: €3 million to answer the wrong question

It is one of the 100 startups to watch in France, according to Challenges - ÉcoTrain wants to build a new train to run on abandoned branch lines, and they have €3 million of initial funding. They even…

Apr 9·1 min read·98 words

There is a solution to connect Saarbrücken and Luxembourg by train. But France has to play its part too.

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: There is a solution to connect Saarbrücken and Luxembourg by train. But France has to play its part too. Bullshit Meter: Direct Eindhoven - Bruxelles Train Not a …

Apr 3·1 min read·105 words

Direct Eindhoven - Bruxelles Train

There is definitely a more positive spirit around cross border rail between Netherlands and Belgium. But could there be a direct Eindhoven - Bruxelles train, as Thierry Aartsen suggests? Don't get me…

Apr 3·1 min read·91 words

Rising fuel costs due to the Iran conflict give European railways an opportunity - can they seize it?

Go back a couple of short years to the months prior to the 2024 European Elections, and railways were trying to set their political direction. This was is in CER's manifesto (PDF): "the regulatory fr…

Apr 2·1 min read·100 words

Paris-Stuttgart, and Stuttgart-Budapest: two railway worlds

This morning state owned railway companies trade body CER put out this on LinkedIn, stating "YES, booking international train journeys once required a crystal ball, BUT now planning ahead is much easi…

Mar 30·1 min read·94 words

SNCF and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté: a railway that has given up

Tomorrow morning - Saturday 28th March 2026 - I had planned to make a trip I make half a dozen times a year. After a Friday evening teaching assignment in Paris, I would normally take a TER regional …

Mar 27·1 min read·96 words

Remind me, why are we trying to fix rail ticketing in the EU?

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: Remind me, why are we trying to fix rail ticketing in the EU? Bullshit Meter: Zagreb-Sarajevo trains to re-start Good week: European Sleeper launches its new Pari…

Mar 27·1 min read·95 words

Zagreb-Sarajevo trains to re-start

A bunch of people sent me this story - that trains between the capitals of Croatia and Bosnia will re-start. Unlike many of the stories I have assessed in the Bullshit Meter, this one is actually via…

Mar 27·1 min read·94 words

Transport & Environment tries to come up with a position on rail ticketing, but it's very imprecise

Transport & Environment (T&E), the lobby organisation that works to green Europe's transport sector, has today put online a new page about its position on the forthcoming EU reform of rail ticketing. …

Mar 23·1 min read·107 words

A silly idea to prove a point? The European Railway Ticketing Championship

With Regulations to finally sort the problems with purchasing tickets for trains, Europe-wide, due to be presented by the European Commission this spring, there remains a crucial problem: do the peopl…

Mar 23·1 min read·90 words

Quick notes on Trenitalia's new maintenance facility at Maisons-Alfort Pompadour

It's been rumoured for months, and finally this week there was official confimation: Trenitalia has the location for its maintenance facility for its Frecciarossa high speed trains in France. News fro…

Mar 21·1 min read·92 words

New trains are not necessarily good trains

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: New trains are not necessarily good trains Bullshit Meter: Eurostar is not going to maintain 67 trains at Temple Mills Good week: Go GoVolta to Berlin and Hamburg…

Mar 20·1 min read·91 words

Eurostar is not going to maintain 67 trains at Temple Mills

Eurostar's PR machine pitched up in the radio studios of BBC on 13th March - CEO Gwendoline Cazenave was interviewed on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4. There was one particularly interesting, and …

Mar 20·1 min read·96 words

Bundling up tickets and booking horizons: railways are making a problem for themselves

Last summer I faced a peculiar conundrum: the train I wanted to take from Trondheim to Oslo in Norway was already sold out before tickets for the train from Boden in Sweden to Narvik in Norway, an ear…

Mar 19·1 min read·99 words

Rail path dependency: how the oil crisis and the British government left SNCF with a problem in Italian tunnels

When writing my previous post about the loading gauge of SNCF's Alstom built TGV-M Avelia Horizon train being too large for Italian tunnels, I had this nag in the back of my mind: how did they get the…

Mar 18·1 min read·113 words

Confirmed: SNCF's Alstom built TGV-M Avelia Horizon trains are too large for some Italian rail lines

When Les Echos and BFM reported that SNCF's TGV-M trains (branded Avelia Horizon by their manufacturer Alstom) were too tall for Italian tunnels I could scarcely believe it. This news came in the same…

Mar 14·1 min read·106 words

Rail in Slovenia: only new lines can improve it from here

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: Rail in Slovenia: only new lines can improve it from here Bullshit Meter this week: Crossrail 2 starts to be built this year Good week: SNCF gets paths for its OU…

Mar 13·1 min read·97 words

Crossrail 2 starts to be built in 2026

After the success of Crossrail in London, there has been some debate about whether a second such line would be a good idea. TimeOut - a publication with a very tenuous relationship with the truth when…

Mar 12·1 min read·103 words

IRJ tries to explain the EU rail ticketing reform, so I will try to decipher what they were trying to say

The rail trade press - International Railway Journal anyway - has woken up to the fact that there is legislation forthcoming to reform rail ticketing in the EU. You can read their piece here. The pro…

Mar 6·1 min read·115 words

Hungary-Serbia by train, before Orbán's section of the Chinese built line opens

In the Newsletter this week Hungary-Serbia by train, before Orbán's section of the Chinese built line opens Bullshit Meter this week: Berlin to build a maglev to Tegel Good week: Cuneo - Breil s/ Roya…

Mar 6·1 min read·97 words

TGV Les Laumes-Alésia? Astérix is having a laugh

In the Extra Newsletter this week Analysis: Astérix has a view on TGV stations Gadgetbahn of the week: Urbanloop Good week: This RegioJet is going straight to hell Bad week: Berlin's new trams are too…

Mar 2·1 min read·88 words

Berlin to build a maglev to Tegel

At the moment the Land administration of Berlin is CDU (Christian Democrat) - SPD (Social Democrat), and both the mayor and the Senator for Transport are pro-car, anti-tram Christian Democrats. That …

Mar 2·1 min read·89 words

Who is to benefit from the forthcoming reform of the railway ticketing regime in the EU?

"You are not only a rail expert," a friend wrote to me in response to this blog post about multiple rail tickets. "You are also an expert passenger. You cannot expect the average citizen to know all c…

Feb 27·1 min read·108 words

Positive talk about the future of rail between Netherlands and Belgium

In the Newsletter this week Analysis: Positive talk about the future of rail between Netherlands and Belgium Bullshit Meter this week: Bulgaria - North Macedonia Tunnel by 2028 #CrossBorderRail is bac…

Feb 27·1 min read·88 words