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Went through Gare du Nord the other day on a journey home. Had to scan my passport and have my photo taken three times - at the new machines, the French gates, and the UK gates. I don't think there was any fingerprint scanning though, unless I missed it! Although it all went pretty smoothly...

Incidentally, trying to add €2,55 to my Navigo pass at Gare de Lyon the other day, I found that none of the machines was accepting cash. Not sure if this was just a local/temporary problem or if cash payments are being phased out generally? I queued up at the ticket office to hand over my...

If it had stops at Sway and Hinton Admiral to supplement the current hourly service it would be quite useful...

It's been a fair few years since I travelled in this part of the world, but I do recall a lot of smoking happens on the trains there, often in non-smoking carriages, so if you don't like that sort of thing you might not enjoy your trips... Bosnia in particular gave me the impression of being the...

Oh, I hadn't realised that the line was not electrified throughout - presumably one reason for the fairly infrequent service (3 a day)... Still for €8,90 I suppose one cannot grumble too much.

Travelling around the Santander area today (after a disappointingly cloudy eclipse the day before) I was quite pleased to glimpse some dual-gauge sidings around Requejada-Barreda. The little 3-car EMUs are not the most comfortable trains in the world, although the air conditioning seems to be...

So out of interest, if it were rebuilt along the existing formation, how fast could a modern DMU do the 70 miles between Bath & Bournemouth? Presumably that could tackle the gradients with more force than steam - are the curves particularly sharp and slow?

Had a look into this, out of interest. The loco in the video is "Эp796-46" and there is a page of photos of it here: railgallery.ru There are several photos of it hauling hefty freight trains in 2025 and 2026, and on one is the comment "This is a run-in of locomotive under load after repair"...

It does seem odd that cab access relies on old-fashioned keys - I just Googled 'BR1' expecting to see something modern, and instead saw something that Sherlock Holmes would have recognised. Cannot cabs use electronic 'key cards' to open the door? And if a physical override system - a...

I'm neither wealthy nor profligate, but I wouldn't consider that an excessive amount to carry, although I would normally carry less than half of that in the UK. It can soon get eaten away during holiday activities - €25 for a preserved railway trip here, €10 for a tower viewpoint there, €15 for...

Not really sure why any traveller wouldn't want to carry a reasonable amount of cash with them... I usually take around €150 out of a bank's cash machine with my debit card, and burn my way through that until it's gone and I do it again. I only expect to do the big (hotel) payments by CC...

At least it survives - one of the saddest railway things I saw, when I was a youngster, was a TV programme showing an APT being smashed up in a scrapyard - I can't remember it all that well, but I think someone was smashing the windows from the inside with a sledgehammer... it's probably on...

There seem to be two 'safety staff' (not sure of their exact job title) on the platforms most of the time in recent years- I don't know if they're there into the late evening? If not presumably the lifts will get vandalised fairly quickly... As an aside, what's the new two-storey building being...

If the comfort aspect is important to you, worth noting that the Soton-Portsmouth services will either be a hideous 'Turbo' DMU, or a clapped-out overheated 158 with no legroom - both of these frequently stuffed to the gills for a full-on 'third world' travel experience - or a...

Quite a few years ago I rolled up at Oslo station with my pre-booked ticket to Åndalsnes - causing much confusion when it became apparent that the ticket was for a train that didn't exist. They popped me on a train to Lillehammer, with a voucher for a taxi to take me on to Åndelsnes - taxi...

I recall the Triang-Hornby 1970 catalogue had the current requirements of each loco specified in a natty little graphic - in the 300mA range for plastic locos, 500mA for the Wrenns. However unless you are building a layout the size of the one in Hamburg, as mentioned above it's microscopic...

I'm not sure I agree with that, if I understand your point aright? Surely railways in the UK should be run in the best and most efficient way, which is probably a single centrally controlled network, and pay no particular heed to boundaries drawn on maps that have no relevance to railway...

We can still do something similar at Southampton Central: Dark green - full & standing with free hearing damage Light green & white - you must be hallucinating, it's cancelled Grey & red - stinky Anything else - thank the lord.

In this environmental day and age, shouldn't we be painting all train roofs white, or at least a light colour, to reflect the sun and cut down on air-conditioning costs? But it looks as though GBR will be going for black roofs throughout. I'm not sure I even like the colour combination of Red...

Actually BA had some 'livery controversy' back in the 90s, where garish designs attracted opprobrium from Mrs Thatch herself - "We fly the British flag, not these awful things" - not sure what she would make of the GBR designs :)