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Jon Worth

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Jon Worth

European, originally a Brit, became German, moved to France. Runs #CrossBorderRail project, writes a newsletter about railways. Green, lives happily without a car Normally stuck on a train, stuck in a village, or escaping either on a folding bicycle

Monocab as a solution for rural rail lines

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 balance on a single traditional rail track, and has a gyroscope to keep it upright.

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

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 - has managed to raise €3 million. But it's the track and

ÉcoTrain: €3 million to answer the wrong question

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 brought their prototype to the Elysée, and you can find more background

Direct Eindhoven - Bruxelles Train

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 wrong: this is a good idea. The question is how you do it, and indeed if

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

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 framework today is not fair, with railways carrying many costs and obligations not

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

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 easier." Typically for me I was actually this morning trying to do this, booking seats for a

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

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 train from Paris back to Nuits-sous-Ravières in Bourgogne on a Saturday morning.

Zagreb-Sarajevo trains to re-start

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 viable: The problems are more financial (I am pretty sure tickets are not going

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

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. They were pushing it on LinkedIn as well. You can find everything I have

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

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 people who are drafting this legislation (in the Commission), deciding on it (in the Council of the EU and the

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

CrossChannelRail

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 from Railway Gazette here. And it will be at Maisons-Alfort Pompadour. Here on OpenRailwayMap. Zoom out a bit,

Eurostar is not going to maintain 67 trains at Temple Mills

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 particularly disingenuous, line from her in the interview - that Eurostar would maintain 67

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

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 earlier leg of my trip, were even available for sale. The reason? Different

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

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 themselves into this tangle? And it is not the first time

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

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 week as SNCF received some good news that they can get a package of

Crossrail 2 starts to be built in 2026

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 it comes to any railway topic - reckons Crossrail 2 will start to be

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

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 problem is the piece jumbles up a number of the key issues, and I am

Runway and apron of the former Tegel airport

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 means any idea to avoid building tram lines, and anything that can be built without looking like they are

Drone pic of a small road crossing a small railway line

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 companies and manually come up with their connections through separate