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Indeed. There are both Thalys and classical IC trains between Brussels and Amsterdam, and I see no decline in the usage of Thalys between those two cities. I hope that IC trains, as well as some high-speed competition, will re-appear between Paris and Brussels once too.

Railways heavily depend, for their day to day operation, on a well organized and functioning society. Bring social unrest in a country, and railways are quasi always one of the first things that stop working, and one of the last to come back once peace is reinstated. So even with chinese...

And Sudan used to be quite 'serious' too, although I wonder how much of that is still operational today.

Thus is nothing new, it is like that each time we vote in Belgium.

Not today but when the new M7 stock will be operational, yes.

Strange... Today, freight trains take between 3 and 4 weeks to link Europe with China. Passengers only need about 10 days. Even if the freight trains are seriously accelerated, dividing the time they by two seens unrealistic. So what's the point ?

Yes but it was added much later than the 200 km/h in France. And it's not a continuous signalling system like tvm430 or ETCS, but a punctual system using balises, like TBL in Belgium. KVB is not used on high speed lines.

8000 Euros for a return ticket...

Belgium started running a clockface timetable in the 50ies when most signalling was still mechanical too. It's not an issue if block sections are short enough, and passing loops frequent enough on single tracks lines. That's not the case on a lot of lines in France.

Partially to be linked with the fact that lots of french railway lines have a very limited and totally outdated signalling system, thus severely limiting the lines capacity. Not to 3 trains a day of course, but certainly not able to support a clockface schedule.

On week rends, the return (I.e. two way) ticket is at the price of the single... But doesn' t E* still sell the 'any belgian station' ticket ?

TBL2 bas been replaced by ERTMS on the High Speed Line Brussels Liège too now.

SNCB warned that if there are planned electricity outages, trains won't run at all on that day. Nationale : don't bring people to work if not sure you can bring them back, and even one or two outages zones could cause a catenary power cut in the middle of nowhere... The amazing point is that if...

Because the 6 others are out of use, either because of planned maintenance, or because of incidents that took them down and won't allow to restart for a long time...

Almost every european country. I still miss a few, though : Albania, Finland, Ireland, Ukraine, Moldavia, Slovakia, the Baltics. Most iconic trips : Brussels Munich Vienna Budapest Bucharest Istanbul Tehran Mashhad Kerman Brussels Paris Hendaye Lisbon Charleroi Jeumont Paris Lyon Montpellier...

And remember that from Ghent, you can taken a train to Eeklo, where the Stoom Centrum Maldegem operates a tourist steam train. A very serious organisation, the largest collection of railway rolling stock in Flanders. They don't operated every day though, or not even for the whole year, so check...

Expensive ? In western Europe, only Italy bas cheaper trains than Belgium.

Two trains per month. Or at least so it was last time I looked. It is unfortunately a mandatory passage for going from Europe to India by train, something I dream to do once but until today the travelling conditions and lack of most basic security in Pakistan retained my efforts.

I forgot to mention a few wagons-lits from SNCF sent south to form the former, now gone, dostuk-filia express between Istanbul and Thessaloniki. Not sure this train will ever come back - and no way to cross this border by rail anymore now - and no idea what happened to those cars after this...

Yes, SNCF had it. Corail stock, compartiments, 4 seats a side. Did once Limoges to Paris in such a car, pretty awful. I ended up spending most of the time standing in the corridor. Don't know whether those horrible things still exist, but if yes, just avoid them at all costs.