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Understood, my use of "deplore" was indeed unwarranted. Assuming you mean SNCB/NMBS, as it is a Belgian public service company, the language policy that governs customer interactions is bound by the Loi sur l'emploi des langues en matière administrative (the Belgian official language law). I...

Yes, but remember that the initial reference to languages in this thread was made by the OP, referring to the driver’s announcement: “in French only, of course”. Well yes, of course. The driver’s announcement is an agreeable bit of information for railway buff customers but it has no actual...

TGV drivers indeed sometimes indulge in gay banter, obviously in lower workload situations such as cruising along Montereau. These are individual initiatives but they are sometimes encouraged by local management teams.

SNCB/NMBS is regulated by the _Loi sur l’emploi des langues en matière administrative_. Announcements must be carried out in the respective language(s) of the specific territory of a station. As an operator, SNCB has literally no leeway in the way it uses languages.

My mistake, I had not seen it! After careful reading I notice that the Bosphorus crossing has not been mentioned either. Vapuring towards Sirkeci at night is also quite beautiful!

Surpised no one has mentioned Venice. Slowly steaming up the Canal Grande on ACTV line 1, especially at night, is right up there in the list of wonders.

Yes there were, here is the 1886 Chaix (*), you'll want page 100 for the Paris-Nice timetable https://wikiplm.railsdautrefois.fr/wikiPLM/documents/Chaix_1896_Hiver_RS.pdf Paris-Nice train 10, Nice-Paris train 7, 1st class only between Marseille and Paris (*) The filename says 1896, but the...

I am a born and bred Parisian, practiced enough that I could navigate Chatelet-les-Halles after too many drinks and wearing a blindfold, and I wouldn’t consider a transfer shorter than 30 minutes between PNO/PLY, and that’s an absolute minimum.

Much of the stock that was operational in 1976 is now enjoying its reincarnation in the form of tuna cans, to be honest. The sole survivors are MF67 trains on Lines 3, 10 and 12, MP73s on Line 6 (currently being pushed out), and a handful of MP59s on Line 11 which will be gone by the end of this...

Thank you for this wonderful suggestion. I perused that forum and thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment. There are several pages (!) of heart wrenching distress cries from responsible middle aged men with enviable situations because… they were only offered a choice of orange juice or champagne as...

But they'd probably laugh upon hearing someone say "Salop"!

If you are talking about the "Ligne des Alpes", train services resumed in Dec 2022:

Charles has just postponed the Paris city break that he had planned for next Monday, but you should be fine in August!

Indeed, diverging routes with 30 or 60 km/h speed limits are indicated by colour light signals (double horizontal yellow for 30 km/h, double horizontal flashing yellow for 60 km/h). The execution point is marked by a downward-pointing arrow called "chevron". But junctions with higher diverging...

Online voting, even more so than electronic voting, raises a major concern that you miss with this focus on "safety": the auditability of voting results by all citizens, which is a fundamental democratic principle. No technical skill of any kind (*) is required to observe ballots being...

You can certainly read it and top it up using your phone (even an iPhone!), with the "Bonjour RATP" or "IDF Mobilités" apps.

You're not doing anything wrong. It is unfortunately not yet possible to load IDF Mobilités tickets on iPhones. There is hope though, the "talks" between IDFM and Apple have eventually come to a fruitful conclusion and tickets should be available on iPhones sometime in S2 2023. Île-de-France...

If you understand French, they do actually comment on the driving experience. There is also a 1990s professional cab video of a Paris to London journey, in the "Aux commandes de…" series of La vie du rail narrated by a journalist or voice actor, with neat technical commentary on the train’s...

Most Swiss “private” operators are entirely or majority-publicly owned, though (usually by a combination of the Confederation, the cantons and the communes served). And yes indeed, Sncf was incorporated on January 1, 1938. The grouping of French mainline railways into 6 big companies had been...

Oh it’s not your sense, it’s an established reality!