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It appears Romania and Bulgaria will become full Schengen members from 1 January 2025, lifting border controls between them and with Hungary and Greece. They were partially admitted to Schengen in April 2024, but only at air and sea borders. It remains to be seen if there is any speed up at rail...

HS2 Ltd has announced the winners of the contracts to supply its rail systems (track, power, signalling etc). https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/news/hs2-confirms-rail-systems-contract-winners The winners are: Track - Ferrovial/BAM Nuttall JV - rail will be supplied "via" Network Rail, slab base...

Shipping giant Maersk has announced it is moving its Felixstowe port traffic to London Gateway in February 2025. I imagine that will have a major impact on the rail freight business, with more traffic using the North London Line and less travelling via Ely. Maybe someone who understands the...

The independent report on this major ATC outage has been published. It led to many cancellations and delays as a result of ATC being only able to operate in manual mode, around 10% of normal, for a period of 6 hours. Apart from being very interesting of itself, it is relevant to other major...

Looks like another five international interconnectors are going ahead, after Ofgem "greenlighting". With nine links existing and two more under construction, that makes 16 to be in service by 2032. These will have a combined capacity of 18 GW, but they are 2-way links so GB is never going to...

There was a debate in the Commons yesterday on railway performance, kicked off by a statement by SoS Louise Haigh. It was the ideal opportunity for her to tell us how GBR will be organised and what its business model would be. Instead she reeled off some improved performance statistics for the...

I've been looking at the railway infrastructure on the Leipzig-Plauen-Hof route (Saxony-Bavaria), using the S&W 2012 atlas as a guide. It shows electrification south from Leipzig to Reichenbach, and then has notes on the rest of the route saying electrification is in progress ("im bau"). But the...

The pictures of flood damage in the Valencia region are horrific, and the situation is still unfolding. Road and rail transport has been badly affected, including the demolition of some key infrastructure. Adif (Spanish infrastructure manager) has put out this status report...

Looks like there will be an interesting addition to Chester station, with planning approval for a statue of Thomas Brassey. Brassey was the contractor who built many of the UK's railways, including Chester station and most of the lines radiating from there...

TfW has awarded Hitachi a contract to provide a journey planner for Welsh transport, covering all modes including rail. https://www.railwaygazette.com/uk/hitachi-to-develop-multimodal-journey-planning-and-booking-system-for-wales/67362.article My bold. I'd love to know how this fits in with...

Back from their hols, the Commons will debate the Passenger Rail Services Bill today. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0003/240003.pdf Edit Sept 9: The format of the linked parliamentary bill, which consists of edits to existing legislation, makes it impossible to extract...

Tracking a family member's flight back from Singapore to Heathrow, I noticed considerable variation in the routeings of different airlines. The flight I was monitoring was BA12, an A380. Taking off just before and after were QF1 and SQ322, both also A380s heading to Heathrow. But instead of...

Evidence that Louise Haigh (now the Rt Hon) is moving "at speed" to progress rail reform. She met the rail union leaders yesterday, and next week is calling in the management of the failing TOCs (Avanti and TPE mentioned) and their Network Rail equivalents. The King's speech on Tuesday is...

As might have been expected, Louise Haigh has been appointed Transport Secretary in the Starmer government. She's MP for Sheffield Heeley, and has been in the Shadow role since 2021. A lot is now riding on her decisions on the rail industry...

I don't quite know what to make of this article in the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/liverpool-manchester-train-rail-plan-b2549588.html It appears to be an announcement by the Metro Mayors of Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester (Steve Rotheram and...

SNCF and CAF have unveiled the new trains for these non-high-speed (up to 200km/h) routes from Paris Austerlitz/Bercy, replacing Corail loco-hauled trains. They are branded Oxygène (formerly Confort 200). The order with CAF is for 28 10-car articulated sets, with options for another 75 sets...

After selling its UK arm to its management team (forming Transport UK), according to Reuters NS has divested itself of the rest of its foreign operator Abellio to BeNEX of Germany which is part of infrastructure company IPP...

I had some trouble today trying to buy a PlusBus ticket covering the West Midlands Metro. The current PlusBus site says that the whole West Midlands zone is covered by both the PlusBus Birmingham and Wolverhampton tickets, and WM Metro is one of the participating operators. Starting from...

I was richly amused today when I was checking fares on the ČD web site (cd.cz). The Czech language home page came up, and I know there is an English option which you can select from a drop down menu. However on this occasion I clicked the "translate" option on my Microsoft Edge browser, and it...

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/transpennine-route-upgrade-and-electrification-updates.88054/ Well I doubt 802s will pan up/down for the short transit through Leeds. The OHLE may well not be configured for it anyway, except when stopped at Leeds station. The...