Pages tagged: SNCF

July 2023 sees changes to train services in Italy, France and Spain with a number of important new routes launched. They include Naples to Bari, Madrid to Marseille and Lyon to Barcelona.

Each year in early autumn, rail operators across Europe unveil details of new services, and then release tickets for beyond the date of the timetable change in mid-December. We take a look at ticket release dates for train services from mid-December 2021 on into early 2022.

As high-speed lines go, the Paris to Lyon route (LGV Sud-Est) is actually very attractive. Part of its appeal is that it doesn’t tussle with the landscape in the way that some new-build high-speed routes do. We recall the opening of France first high-speed railway line forty years ago in 1981.

This past week has seen new direct overnight services on three key routes, one a French domestic service and the other two both international routes. We'll take a closer look at the offer which brings new night trains to Nice, Split and Amsterdam.

SNCF has today announced that the proposed reopening next month of two branch railways in western France has been postponed: that from Nantes to the coastal communities of Pornic and St Gilles Croix de Vie.

If you are like us and five-star hotels are not quite your style, then it may have escaped your attention that a number of Europe’s most celebrated and expensive hotels were quietly rebranded this past spring. They have lost the Orient Express branding.

SNCF quietly expanded its TGV network today with the introduction of a seventh cross-border TGV service from France to Germany. The new service connects the university city of Freiburg im Breisgau in south-west Germany with Paris.

When British Railways introduced the Inter-City brand in 1966, no-one could possibly have anticipated how the idea would be emulated and adapted by railway administrations across Europe. Today, the term Inter-City (or IC) is used for a variety of train services – we take a closer look at the Inter-City brand across Europe.

Cast back fifty years and St Pancras station in London had plenty of trains to stir the imagination. The Palatine still ran from St Pancras to Miller’s Dale and The Waverley to Hawick. But during the 1980s and 1990s, St Pancras was a dull place for devotees of interesting trains. It’s hard to get excited about the slow train to Luton or the semi-fast to Leicester. This most august of London termini fell into deep decline.