Welcome to today's thread - #CrossBorderRail 2026 Tour Day 17 - 11 Apr - Ravières - Paris - Stuttgart - München - Budapest
New borders:
None
Borders already crossed:
Kehl 🇩🇪 - Krimmeri-Meinau 🇫🇷
Freilassing 🇩🇪 - Salzburg Taxham Europark 🇦🇹
Nickelsdorf 🇦🇹 - Hegyeshalom 🇭🇺
Not really a project day, but as it is such a long and complex trip it deserves a live blog and a thread! Ravières – Budapest in one day. 1808.1km!
Today's routes on the routes map:
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2026-spring-tour_1361108#7/48.348948/10.744629
No intro video this morning as this one wanted some attention before my departure! #CrossBorderRail
Odd situation at Nuits-sous-Ravières, my local station. 6am on a Saturday, only one passenger other than me is there and he is perturbed. "Which platform does the train to Paris depart from?" he asks me. "Always the far one" I tell him.
There are works ongoing at the station currently, some idiot has... 🥁 hung up the wrong sign!
Both platforms now say Dijon! 🤦♂️
As part of the works there is a new LCD screen. But that hasn’t shown the right information ever since they installed it! So that absolutely didn’t help my fellow passenger. #CrossBorderRail
#CrossBorderRail 2026 Spring Tour Train 58 of 111
TER 17750
06:21 Nuits-sous-Ravières - Paris Bercy, diverted via Corbeil 08:50
SNCF for TER Mobigo
Train type: Alstom Régiolis EMU, 2x 6 short carriages
⚡️ (1.5kV dc)
🚲: ✅
🦽: ✅ (step free if station allows)
🛜: ⛔️
🍽️: ⛔️
🧳: 🙂 (although they have removed the best racks for larger bags 🤷♂️)️
🧽: 🙂 (clean this morning)
Interrail: 🙂 (accepted)
TER 17750
06:21 Nuits-sous-Ravières - Paris Bercy, diverted via Corbeil 08:50
Distance: 236.9km
Average speed: 95km/h
6 stops:
Tonnerre
St-Florentin-Vergigny
Laroche-Migennes
Joigny
Sens
Paris-Bercy
This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2026-spring-tour_1361108#9/48.287249/3.297270
Trundling into Paris. Diversion was timetabled in, but not enough. No worry, I’ll get my connection.
But typical SNCF 🤷♂️ no information whatsoever provided on board here.
The Birdy is equipped with a better stand for this trip. And the bags are mounted ready for a quick trip across Paris to Gare de l’Est in the spring sunshine.
Also the delay into Paris doesn’t bother me. There’s no tight connection here as the Paris - Strasbourg timetable is so thin anyway. #SNCFlogic
So between 0900 and 1000 there are no Paris - Strasbourg trains (and only 3 long distance trains total, and Frankfurt is via Saarbrücken). Between 1000 and 1100 there are 3 - a SNCF OUIGO, a SNCF inOui just 17 mins later, and a SNCF-DB TGV to Stuttgart (that’s full, and cut off my screenshot) #SNCFlogic
Ah. Not as if you’ve got a dozen spare platforms or anything (because there are *so few trains*) but they’ve put both Strasbourg trains on the same platform #SNCFlogic (the inOui isn’t announced, but I’m 95% sure that’s it in front of the OUIGO)
Ah. Now we’ve got a SNCF employee at the ticket gates - that are obviously set up to scan any ticket - shouting at passengers that it’s only the OUIGO boarding, not the inOui too. 👏 #SNCFlogic
And we’re going to have the really *amazing* crush here. The inOui platform will be announced 2 mins BEFORE the OUIGO leaves (20 mins vs 18 mins). So anyone running for the OUIGO is going to be stuck behind a crush of inOui passengers 😆 #SNCFlogic
Ah the idiots have announced the platform but not opened the ticket gates. Well done! #SNCFlogic
However my point above was wrong - they did board the OUIGO and inOui from separate platforms 👏 They then just hadn’t opened the gates 🤷♂️ #SNCFlogic
However you’ve got to admire ticket gates that are staff intensive, do not work well for passengers (QR codes often don’t scan half the time) *and* do not prevent you getting on the wrong train. Which is silly anyway when you have two brands of train run by the same company a few minutes apart, but with incompatible ticketing. #SNCFlogic
Meanwhile as LGV Est is so damned boring* I found the time to finish a little essay about meaning and communication in EU politics.
The essay, unlike the line, should not be boring!
https://jonworth.eu/my-railway-work-no-shortage-of-meaning-but-for-the-eu-institutions-that-can-be-uncomfortable/
* - I am not taking replies to this point, I am still of the view it is more boring than LGV Nord
#CrossBorderRail 2026 Spring Tour Train 59 of 111
TGV 12119
10:25 Paris Est - Strasbourg 12:11
SNCF Voyageurs
Train type: 1x Alstom TGV Réseau, 8 short carriages, 2 power cars (rated, it's where I am), plus 1x Alstom TGV Euroduplex, 8 short double deck carriages, 2 power cars
⚡️ (25kV ac)
🚲: ✅ (3 bike spaces - one of the few TGVs with it!)
🦽: ✅ (lift on platform)
🛜: ✅ (and it works)
🍽️: ✅
🧳: 😐 (not good for big bags)️
🧽: 🙂
Interrail: 😐 (needs compulsory reservation, costs at least €10)
TGV 12119
10:25 Paris Est - Strasbourg 12:11
Distance: 439.6km
Average speed: 249km/h
1 stops:
Strasbourg
This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2026-spring-tour_1361108#9/48.915280/5.050964
Hmm. Bundespolizei are on the platform at Strasbourg. Are they going to do their illegal controls more efficiently, on a moving train? 🤔 #CrossBorderRail
******* Bundespolizei #CrossBorderRail
It’s going to take a while to process what happened. But they’re both shits, and ineffective. Takes some doing. #CrossBorderRail
OK, so what happened with the illegal border controls
Bundespolizei, 3 German officers, boarded at Strasbourg, they got to my carriage when we were STILL IN FRANCE
So I asked them: under what legal framework are they controlling me in France, when it is Germany that has Schengen illegally suspended here, not France?
This was, it turns out, quite a good way to ask it, as the policeman was confused for a moment
This was all conducted in German BTW, translated here
"We are joint France-Germany control team!" he said
"Yes, but only Germany has the Schengen suspension!"
"Stop interrupting me," he snaps back, in that annoying what-the-hell-you-mean-you're-challenging-my-authority way.
"We do joint controls here, because of the Prüm Treaty," he continued.
"Yes, but Germany has a Schengen suspension and here you are controlling me in France. How is that possible?"
His colleague comes along. "But there are no stops on the train between Strasbourg and Kehl!" That's pretty weak, honestly.
@jon Ah, so there's the answer to what we asked ourselves last summer on the DE-AT border between Kiefersfelden and Kufstein where Bundespolizei was awkwardly waiting on the Kufstein platform for their RB towards Munich just to stick their necks when the train stopped in Kiefersfelden. There, they did a thorough visual check of everyone disembarking (insert Family Guy brown skin meme here).
I suppose they continued for a few more stops to take the train back to Kufstein where they waited awkwardly again.
The whole thing is such a legal pile of BS because once you entered the country's soil you're entitled to claim Asylum if you choose so, so they'll have to process it anyway. It's at best a waste of Bundespolizei's time, at worst racial profiling on a train.
Needless to say that was the same Valley where they would check cars on the motorway but on the Bundesstraße just a few meters away you could pass along unchecked. 😌
Apparently, Germany still has too much moneys...
Same nonsense at Salzburg-Freilassing border with trains and Autobahn. I you take one the smaller roads in the area to cross the border, most time nobody checks you. But they still manage to send back every day a low number of people, so it's a "success".
@cweickhmann Yes it's that. And that over and over and over and over. And damn am I tired of it.