Recent content by jamesontheroad

This week's winter storm caused a lot of disruption to the Norrland night trains. SJ decided to cancel their trains completely, but on Tuesday night Vy pressed ahead, diverting trains away from the Västernorrland coast but still ending up with three out of four trains becoming stranded in...

I could probably suggest a few stations in South Africa, although I have not travelled extensively enough to know them personally. Johannesburg Park Station has a reasonable concourse, but the platforms are not pleasant. It is worth remembering that the nineteen-sixties era development was, in...

Mark Radcliffe played a track on BBC Radio 6Music this morning from a collection of electronic tracks by the artist 'Ciclismo'. This isn't the first mention on the forum, @lyndhurst25 mentioned it last November on the "now playing" thread. Thought I'd share it again, however, because it's rather...

From our base in Umeå, in northern Sweden, I want to sample both the new Norrtåg passenger service between Boden and Haparanda (starting in April 2021) and the new Wasaline ferry which will start sailing between Vaasa and Umeå (starting in May 2021). So I'm sketching out a circular trip from...

I saw one of the prototypes (from the outside) in Switzerland in the very early 1990s. Was travelling as a child with my parents, and I doubt that they would have encouraged me to try it out!

Thanks! THe SnowHotel appears closed this season. The Ice Hotel in Sweden is open... but at around 6000kr a night I might have to give it a miss!

Hello. We are tentatively planning a circular trip around the Gulf of Bothnia next Easter - using the new Norrtåg service from Umeå to Haparanda, then exploring a bit of Kemi and Rovaniemi before heading south to Helsinki on one of the two VR night trains. Spending a few days there before we...

Thanks for sharing the photos @Shikansenfan. I consider myself to be very lucky in that, despite being from Britain, my first ever trip to the USA was not by plane but by train from Montréal into New York. Arrived on a dark and rainy October night in 2005, which made the arrival into a gloomy...

This is another reminder of why not only the IC3 itself but also the IC3 concept was - and is - so innovative. It is perhaps the most successful demonstration of how multiple units can be used to successfully complex routes with multiple destinations AND get the trains on and off ferries...

New York Penn station and Paris Châtelet Les Halles are two examples of terrible planning and extremely poor usability. I know the latter has had some improvements to access, but they are both confusing and illogical for 99% of passengers to navigate.

Juho Hannukainen, the Director of Long-Distance Planning at VR, reminds us in a tweet today that Allegro, the high-speed train between Helsinki and St Petersburg is ten years old today. :cake:

This is my periodic opportunity to express the sincere opinion that the DSB IC3 is one of Europe's most utterly interesting trains. The IC4 débacle serves to emphasise just how innovative and original DSB and ABB Scandia were in designing a completely new and unique diesel train from the ground...

As per an article on Järnvägar (in Swedish) this week, Flixtrain has announced an agreement with the Swedish operator Hector Rail to drive and staff their new services in Sweden. Having applied for train paths on both the Stockholm-Malmö and Stockholm-Gothenburg corridors, Flixtrain will now...

Apparently, people like to go shopping today. :rolleyes: If, like me, you value travel over material possessions, you might like this sale: twenty per cent off all global InterRail passes. Buy from today 27 November 2020 until 4 January 2021, and start travel "any time in the next 11 months."...

I shall! I tend to make very long tweet threads of my European railway journeys... Still need to scope it out, but current plan is Umeå (or more likely Tvärålund) to Haparanda and Kemi on 1 April; Rovaniemi for the day on 2 April, then VR night train to Helsinki for the remainder of the Easter...