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I have not fact-checked, this it is something I was told by a rail fan I got into a conversation with at a rail fanning event in Britain. He was telling me about the old LNER, company, which was one of the four private companies, who prior to nationalisation of the railways in 1948, had between...

I guess its a bit like the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. The idea is very old and it took lots of false starts before it finally happened. As far as I know a tunnel to Morocco was already proposed in the early 1980s, and the idea has come back several times since. Before that...

Completing the tunnel in time for the World Cup seems optimistic to me. It would probably take years to just get the financing sorted. I would treat that part as propaganda. In the longer term there are geopolitical arguments. Northern Africa will grow in importance economically, with a rising...

I know the cafe car was part of the initial proposal, but I haven't heard it mentioned for a while. Is it still being pursued?

There was the Talgo train, which could change gauge while moving (albeit at slow speed). There were Talgo night trains from Madrid to Paris as well as from Barcelona to Paris, Zurich and Milan. Furthermore there was a day Talgo with TEE branding called "Catalan Talgo" from Barcelona to Geneva...

Standard gauge doesn't come to Algeciras, but the gap to be bridged would be quite doable. And here is the Moroccan system. The map is somewhat out of date as the initial high speed line is now operational. International trains to Algeria are presently suspended due to a dispute between...

I think it was the other way around. well, almost. In the initial post-war years there was no Berlin Wall of course, and the city was just basically one city divided into four occupation sectors (American, British, French and Russian). Trains thus ran between these zones more or less as if...

The angular trains, which were supplied for the original electrification I believe, as well as the more rounded "Olympia" trains that were added during the national socialist period were still in use in large numbers when the Berlin Wall came down and their use continued well into the 1990s. On...

They break even after counting subsidies received as income. Inter City trains are supposed to operate without subsidy (at least on paper), but all commuter and regional services are subsidized by local and / or federal government. SBB declares a profit if they end up with money in hand after...

As far as I know, the oldest Talgo units to still see regular use in Spain are the Talgo IV, which were introduced from 1980, making them 44 years old now.

I once toured the workshops of the streetcar operation in Freiburg Germany. My tour guide was a senior technical expert who had been involved in the speccing and purchase of different batches of streetcars over several decades. He said aluminum is much more precise. He said if you order steel...

Fascinating. Do you have any idea how much movement there is annually. I was once lucky enough to go on a tour of a tunnel in Freiburg, Germany, which crosses between two tectonic sub-plates. The Rhine valley here effectively is a rift valley that is not only growing wider very slowly but also...

My personal opinion is that if you're used to the likes of Ryanair, even the most spartan US carrier is luxury and highly customer-focused in comparison.

Many of these perceptions are not necessarily down to stupidity or malice but just to lack of exposure. I guess many people have the impression that rail is a fringe thing that exists only for the pleasure of some foamers and in some especially favorable situations, and that it wouldn't really...

I think traditionally new cars have always been delivered as available from the factory, meaning mixed consists were the norm during transitional periods. I guess this also allows for training and familiarization of both operational and maintenance staff to be phased over a longer period. It...

It looks like the Etangs de Mer on the coastal line between Montpellier and Perpignan. Look for the station called "Leucate la Franqui" on Google maps (it might be more precise if you type "Leucate la Franqui gare"). Switch to satellite mode and Identify the rail line. Then scroll up and down...

I don't think there is a shelf to buy off. Siemens Velaro is by definition variable in terms of width and height. Every one of the customers who has bought a Velaro so far has ordered something slightly different. Thus Siemens likes to speak of the Velaro as a "platform" rather than as an...

The conditions of the Schengen agreement do allow countries to temporarily re-instate border checks if they have a good reason. The French seem to be more creative than others in making use of this right. They have been doing checks on and off for one reason or another for quite a few years now...

Yes they used shunters, steam and then later diesel. An alternative method if you didn't want to use shunters would have been to use a cable to pull them onto the ship. I am not aware of this ever being done on ferries but it was done to move freight cars within factories and the like in...

Some of the photos show class 33 diesels, whereas others show class 73 electro-diesels. Class 71 electrics were also used in the earlier years; and this was definitely the more typical situation. Class 71 was withdrawn in 1977, so in the final years of the train there would have been a mix of...