Voyage, voyage
Plus loin que la nuit et le jour (voyage, voyage)
Voyage (voyage)
Dans l'espace (TGV) Inouï de l'amour

#tgvtuesday

…and, thanks to the terrible coverage between Perpignan and Barcelona, where for practical purposes you are offline, I sat down and brainstormed more stuff for #iceagechallenge, and basically enjoyed a comfy chair and a desk and Synthwave on the headphones.

I arrived at Barcelona more or less […]

I made it to Paris at 13:44, 73 minutes after I was supposed to. I had 57 minutes to change from Gare de l'Est to Gare de Lyon, and that barely game me enough time to navigate the metro system, including a change in train, and to grab something to eat on the train, which sadly was Chez McDó - a […]

The Cloudflare outage stopped me from posting this #tgvtuesday lens flare.

...And we've just overtaken the stuck TGV.

High Speed Lines have regular sidings along the route that are basically stopping points that can be used for when this sort of thing happens, or to park maintenance vehicles when they need to get out of the way. There are also regularly spaced points […]

This SNCF Jingle post is brought to you by a massive delay whilst stuck at Strasbourg Station. Having previously been Bahned this morning on the german side of this trip, we've now been thoroughly Chemin de Ferred. Apparently a train that was ahead of us on the high speed line has broken down […]

Of course, #tgvtuesday is not only marked by the wonderful sound of Synthwave, but also by the SNCF Jingle, which has subtly different versions depending on which type of train you're on, or whether you're on a platform.

These four notes in all its variants are instantly recognisable to anyone […]

Mesdames, Messieurs, je commence cette annonce en Français par-ce que nous sommes déjà en France. Mais ne vous inquiétez pas, je ferais la même annonce en allemand tout de suite...

#crossborderrail #tgvtuesday

@torgo #jetlagthegame is also real. And very much caffeine-fuelled.

So, rather than the planned ICE4, @darkphoenix noticed we could catch a TGV Euroduplex from Frankfurt down to Karlsruhe. It turns out you don't need reservations on TGVs when in Germany.

So, we decided that a high level view of the sunset sounded like a fun idea.

We got on the train, found […]

This is plainly aimed as a shot squarely at SNCF - the Ouigo Spain and TGV InOui Euroduplexes can only do 320km/h, whereas the Renfe Velaro S103s can go at 350km/h, and the Iryo Frecciarossa e1000 are designed for 360km/h commercial speed, though not yet certified past 300.

Most of the other […]

Der nächste Bahnhof ist Aachen Ost
The next stop is Aachen West
La prochaine station est Aix-la-Chappele Ouest… #crossborderrail

Deutschland, ich bin wieder in dir! #crossborderrail

(We can tell from the pantograph clunks)

Finally, the last train of the day, an Arriva 3-car FLIRT with a terrible semi-constant tone coming from the engine under the first class compartment that was making us tear our hair out. So we’ve moved to the completely uncrowded second class section, for the sake of our follicular health

The next VIRM is at least, fairly empty, so we get to share a nice corner seat again…

Having now compared statistics with @darkphoenix, it seems I do need more training…

On the upside: Rotterdam to Eindhoven is on one of the new ICNG trains.

On the downside: it’s standing room only

I’m approaching 60,000km in over 215 trains in 15 months, Al, and you want me to Train More?!

I’d like to see how well you’ve done…