This article from the South China Morning Post covers the Iran-China railway link between Almaty in Kazakhstan through to Tehran in Iran. At the time this was published, I assume 2017, it had been a year since the first the first freight train connecting Iran and China ran through neighbouring countries Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan in February of 2016. Traveling along the Silk Road taking only 14 days it provided a quicker route than ships between the two countries.

The arrival of this train in less than 14 days is unprecedented,” said President of the Railways of the Islamic Republic of Iran (RAI), Dr Mohsen Pour Seyed Aghaei. “The time spent by this train” to reach Tehran “has been 30 days shorter compared with the maritime route, which starts from China’s Shanghai port and ends in Iran’s Bandar Abbas” port city, Dr Pour Seyed Aghaei noted. He added, "This is an important step for the revival of the Silk Road and the train has travelled 700 km per day, saving 30 days compared to normal time that takes to go this distance.”

Part of this route towards Europe became a "life channel" during the COVID-19 pandemic as it required fewer health checks than road transport since the train uses local crews in each country. Halting flights and increasing maritime freight prices put this rail alternative in a good spot.

Interestingly, the UIC in another article.

It's clear there's a lot of activity in this area I'm not familiar with but it is interesting to learn more.

India has accelerated its rate of electrifying railway lines in the last few years, this article covers some of the numbers and current progress.

“The pace of electrification has been the highest in the last 15 years: between 2011 and 2020, about 20,000rkm of railway lines were electrified, and another 20,000km of route kilometres have been electrified between 2020 and November 2023,” says Sharif Qamar, associate director at the Energy and Resources Institute, a Delhi-based research institution.

As of 1 September 2023 91.49% of the railways have been electrified according to the Indian Railways.

Having just shared the Eisenbahn-Planer, I have to post about the Treinposities rail agenda. This is a curated list of rail events in the Netherlands that gets updated regularly by the site administrators. The site has many more interesting pages, with details on rolling stock in the Netherlands and other countries, live map of trains in the Netherlands, details on train routes with expected rolling stock, and much more.

Eisenbahn-Planer tracks events with a focus on historical and/or heritage railways. There are quite a number of filters you can apply with multiple language options.

Switzerland is often referenced when discussing good public transit systems, Jokteur does a good job describing of the country uses clock-face scheduling to reliably connected different locations together. A good read with clear examples illustrating the concept along with follow-up reading in case you’re interested in the subject.