A look into the mash-up of Slovak train design by Dalibor Itze and their proposal to fix some of its flaws.

Last Thursday the annual Christmas tree gift from Austria to the European Parliament arrived via the NightJet in Brussels. The post is credited to Elias Van Deun on Bluesky. This is an annual tradition, from an article in The Brussels Times, the first year the tree was delivered by train was 2021. At that point a tree had been gifted 23 times before, that makes this years tree the 27th.

Thibault Lapers reports on some interesting rumours that an announcement of the EuroCity Brussels is not far away. We saw this service during the Olympics this summer between Brussel-Zuid and Paris Nord. Thibault mentions that in addition to a stop at Mons, we can also expect stops Aulnoye-Aymeries and Creil with an overall trip time of approximately 3 hours. The rolling stock would be the HLE 18 locomotive and I11 carriages.

Extending the RE13 to Eindhoven has been in discussions for many years now. In 2021, the concession was awarded to Start, a subsidiary of DB, to work together with Arriva Nederland who is responsible for the Dutch portion of the service.

This hourly service, scheduled to starting in December 2026, will use 20 new Stadler FLIRT3 XL train sets. They will be capable of three power systems, 15kV DC, 15kV AC and 25kV AC, according to the presentation with three train protection systems ATB, PZB, and ERTMS. It seems the first train has already been constructed with three more scheduled for 2024 and the rest to started by Q4 2025.

Title and all quotes translated from Dutch to English by Google Translate, minor edits for readability made by me.

As ProRail employees are on strike in different regions of the Netherlands this and next week. Even though these strikes are bound to various ProRail control centers, they affect traffic much broader than their region. Since NS runs a lot of 'long lines' across the country which may cross strike affected areas. NS has even started using new digital signage earlier this year to help passengers navigate these long routes. Tim van Leeuwen, Director of Operations Control at NS, explains why these long lines are needed:

[Long line services] are a direct consequence of how our small country is structured. In contrast to other countries, the Netherlands does not have one dominant urban area where employment and education are concentrated. Think of Paris in France, for example. Everyone has to go there in the morning and leave again in the evening. The French railways (SNCF) therefore base their timetable on this.

What you sometimes hear is true: the Netherlands is more of a large city than a small country. Not all residents of Den Bosch work in Rotterdam and not all residents of Groningen want to go to Amsterdam. You could actually say that everyone in the Netherlands has to go everywhere. And that is what NS is setting up its network with long lines for.

A major advantage is that NS is making optimum use of both the infrastructure and the train equipment. Due to the long lines, few trains have to turn around in Utrecht and that saves platform capacity and therefore space at Utrecht Central, a place in the middle of the city where space is limited. It also ensures that 80 percent of our passengers do not have to change trains.

Ivan Rivera writes about the derailed Renfe S-411 near Chamartín in which both occupants where safe. It's most likely that a train drifted downhill across two tight curves with speed limits for 45 km/h.