Welcome to today's thread - #CrossBorderRail 2026 Tour Day 32 - 5 May - Strasbourg - Rumelange - Kirchberg - Wiltz - Libramont - Bruxelles
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@jon
Did you tell them to ask all the others whether they got to Luxembourg by train?
@notsoloud Mine was the first non-Webinar meeting!
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@notsoloud Mine was the first non-Webinar meeting!
@jon
An acceptable state of things -
After 75 minutes being grilled by the Court of Auditors for a report they’re writing about railways, I’m on my way again. Next: Wiltz
And this - as ever - is unpaid. Everyone else the Court will speak to has a job to allow them time for this. But as I’m self employed it’s just me, me giving my time. It’s nice to be asked of course!
In the end on the Court of Auditors thing, it is once more a problem of being a freelancer in a sector with no freelancers, and so once more I am doing complicated intellectual work for free
BUT when they ask me a question about a railway topic I can answer it straight up. No need to defend what a company tells me, what a senior manager decides. I think a few unvarnished comments about the problems are helpful for them to frame their work
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@jon Oh right, that might be why Connect fails to create a ticket. It might be looking for a tariff for Bettembourg frontier > Bettembourg, finding none and thus failing to create a price. While the région is using an inventory system (the one that creates tickets) that knows to just skip that segment.
We don’t integrate directly with SNCF Connect, but if it is possible to select border points in the API it might be possible as a reseller to get a ticket that way.
@stefanlindbohm @jon @jeanbaptistemarie Maybe it already has been mentioned (sorry, reading all the posts since the last 2 days whilst I'm in Taiwan), there is a dedicated page from TER Grand-Est. Well, it's still some kind of non-userfriendly "Gebastel", though… https://www.ter.sncf.com/grand-est/tarifs-cartes/tarifs-transfrontaliers/billets-Luxembourg
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In the end on the Court of Auditors thing, it is once more a problem of being a freelancer in a sector with no freelancers, and so once more I am doing complicated intellectual work for free
BUT when they ask me a question about a railway topic I can answer it straight up. No need to defend what a company tells me, what a senior manager decides. I think a few unvarnished comments about the problems are helpful for them to frame their work
But the crux is this: the Court of Auditors does not mess around. When they check things, they check. They dig. They work. Their report on high speed rail infra a few years ago was excellent.
So hopefully something solid on rail services, cross border, will emerge from this.
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But the crux is this: the Court of Auditors does not mess around. When they check things, they check. They dig. They work. Their report on high speed rail infra a few years ago was excellent.
So hopefully something solid on rail services, cross border, will emerge from this.
@jon Thanks a lot for contributing your expertise, and your time!
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In the end on the Court of Auditors thing, it is once more a problem of being a freelancer in a sector with no freelancers, and so once more I am doing complicated intellectual work for free
BUT when they ask me a question about a railway topic I can answer it straight up. No need to defend what a company tells me, what a senior manager decides. I think a few unvarnished comments about the problems are helpful for them to frame their work
@jon
Organizations don't like dissenting opinions. I also make myself unpopular from time to time, to a slightly lesser extent. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7457134592383320065/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28ugcPost%3A7457134592383320065%2C7457172433134026752%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287457172433134026752%2Curn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A7457134592383320065%29
(LinkedIn is a collection of whitewashing.) -
But the crux is this: the Court of Auditors does not mess around. When they check things, they check. They dig. They work. Their report on high speed rail infra a few years ago was excellent.
So hopefully something solid on rail services, cross border, will emerge from this.
@jon What is the report they're working on about more specifically? Is there somewhere I can read about it?
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But the crux is this: the Court of Auditors does not mess around. When they check things, they check. They dig. They work. Their report on high speed rail infra a few years ago was excellent.
So hopefully something solid on rail services, cross border, will emerge from this.
That was a horrid wet cycle ride. I’ve done only half, the rest will be a bus!
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That was a horrid wet cycle ride. I’ve done only half, the rest will be a bus!
@jon welcome to Belgium! We've even got a weather warning for the amount of rain these days
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@jon welcome to Belgium! We've even got a weather warning for the amount of rain these days
@berend the rivers around Bastogne were flowing fast I can confirm!
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@berend the rivers around Bastogne were flowing fast I can confirm!
@jon you should've brought a kayak!
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That was a horrid wet cycle ride. I’ve done only half, the rest will be a bus!
So two more borders checked
Rumelange
- Ottange 
Benonchamps
- Schimpach-Wampach Both dismantled lines, both not coming back
The latter one is between Wiltz
and Bastogne and there’s an excellent cycle path the whole way, Inc through tunnels. It was just very wet today! -
So two more borders checked
Rumelange
- Ottange
Benonchamps - Schimpach-Wampach Both dismantled lines, both not coming back
The latter one is between Wiltz
and Bastogne and there’s an excellent cycle path the whole way, Inc through tunnels. It was just very wet today!I got a bus from a wet Bastogne. That passed a lot of wet cows. And now I‘ve got a train to Bruxelles Schuman
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@tobiaswatzl.bsky.social this was the only thing I passed. But it was pouring rain, I didn’t hang around!
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I got a bus from a wet Bastogne. That passed a lot of wet cows. And now I‘ve got a train to Bruxelles Schuman
@jon
Hey you're basically doing all three EU capitals in one day. Is that some special in-game achievement?
