A Seminal book on Dr Beeching and his aftermath Fully rewritten and updated to include details of the latest rail re-openings Clear lessons from the success of reinvigorated and reopened branch lines Top 30 Potential Rail Reopenings identified, listed and analysed Central message – Britain’s railways are thriving as never before, despite 50 years of [...]
This page lists UK bike restrictions on rail and preserved rail. Folding bikes travel free and without restriction on all train services unless stated. See Bike/Rail Travel Guide. If you have any official or unofficial information on cycle carriage, please share it with us by e-mail. Bikes can once again be booked on line, visit East [...]
This page covers UK bike restrictions on trains, preserved rail, rail-link ferries & buses. Can you insist on travelling with your bike on the train? No. Bicycles are banned on some specific services, but according to the ‘National Conditions of Carriage’ by which all train operating companies are bound, the operator can also refuse an item [...]
Judith and Neil Forsyth are Britons, retired and living in the Rhine Valley. They are keen cyclists and write cycling guides under the Bergstrasse Bike Books and Guide Gecko imprint. They have also written one guide for Cicerone on cycling in Switzerland. Introduction Although many of us have a dream of cycle touring where we [...]
You have a choice of going under or over the Channel or across the North Sea Under – Eurostar RailEurope Booking Form How do I book a bicycle space? – Bicycle spaces need to be booked at the same time as you book your seat. To make your booking, phone the Rail Europe call centre [...]
The railways in Sweden have a network of 13,000 km of track. The major operator is the state-owned SJ, but there are other operators such as Veolia, Tågkompaniet, Norrtåg and Inlandsbanan. Left to itself, the major Swedish rail operator SJ is not very cyclist friendly, although matters have improved greatly recently. The SJ will run [...]
Spain has an excellent high speed train network which does not officially take bicycles. However bicycles may be transported on local and regional trains and long distance buses. The general opinion on English language cyclists’ forums is that accompanied bike transport on Spanish trains is very difficult, if not impossible. This is an opinion which [...]
The railways in Portugal offer frequent regular links between the major cities. Portugese Railways (CP) operates 2603 km of broad gauge services and appear to be more cyclist-friendly than Spanish Railways. Most trains take bicycles including the high speed trains, although in the latter case the bikes need to be bagged. There is an excellent [...]
There is good spread of railways in the Netherlands with frequent regular links between the major cities. Outside of the rush hours all domestic trains take bicycles. The structure of railway operation in the Netherlands is very similar to that in Germany. There is a major train operator: Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) with a number of [...]
Norway is a sparsely populated, long, thin country. There are excellent rail connections between the capital Oslo and the major cities in the country and in the neighbouring country (Sweden): Kristiansands, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, Bodö, Stockholm (S) and Göteborg (S). Narvik in the north is on a railway line, but the only way to travel [...]
Well guarded bike rack in Luxembourg The Luxembourg rail system (Chemin de Fer Luxembourgeois – CFL) has 275 kilometres of track, of which 140 km is double track and 135 km single track. The railway network links into Belgium, France and Germany. Some of the cross-border services are run by CFL, others by SNCF, NMBS/SNCB [...]
Italy has 24,179 kilometres (15,024 miles) of track. Services are operated by Trenitalia, a state owned company. There are few private railways. The country has good high speed train services, but only for those unencumbered by naked bicycles: cyclists can only use local, regional and a few international services. Bikes are only allowed on some [...]
The basic message is that long distance travel with a bicycle by train in Germany is possible, but choice is limited and you need to book early to travel in summer. On the other hand, regional services up to about 125 miles with accompanied bicycles are superb. The German Railways website is www.bahn.co.uk. Currently the [...]
The basic message is that long distance travel with a bicycle by train in France is possible, despite what you might have heard about high speed trains like the TGV, but choice is limited and you need to book early, especially in summer. Regional services that can take accompanied bicycles are sparse but good. The [...]
We will not write much about Finnish railways, although the organisation is very cyclist-friendly. Finland lies well to the north and east in Europe. It is at least a three day journey from Britain by train and ship to get there, so travelling to the country on the ground is only of interest to the [...]
Two-thousand six-hundred kilometres of railways link the major towns and cities in Denmark. The major operator is De Danske Statsbaner (DSB) and there are a number of smaller private operators of which the biggest is Arriva. Danish railways are cyclist-friendly, with special spaces for bicycles on trains. Denmark is up there with the Netherlands when [...]
Belgian Railways offers the full range of trains from high speed international trains to slow moving local trains. Prices are low. The company is very cyclist friendly, even tandem friendly and the majority of trains take bicycles. Belgian Railways Website . Belgian Railways are known as NCMBS (Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen) in Flemish or [...]
The Austrian standard gauge network is about 5700 km in length. Map The OeBB – Österreichische Bundesbahn, Austrian Federal Railways, runs some 255 mainline passenger trains and goodness knows how many regional trains daily. It is bicyclist-friendly, and should soon be more so in the case of the ‘railjet’ high speed trains too (see below). [...]
Latest Offers For online ticket purchases, we recommend East Coast. East Coast has one of the better online ticket sales points, with clear information, the option to book a bicycle space, and no booking fees. The company (state owned by the way) has now added a loyalty scheme, giving you points that can be redeemed against [...]
Reliable information on Japanese transport is hard to come by, which makes Dr Christopher Hood’s book on the country’s high speed rail network particularly welcome. This is more a sociological study than a book for transport enthusiasts, but the subject is so fascinating and the wealth of detail so gripping that Shinkansen should appeal to [...]
Swiss public transport is the best in the world. It starts with travel information. There is only one website offering travel information for any means of surface transport: www.sbb.ch/en/index.htm. The keyword is integration. The system delivers public transport, but the individual components can be bus, railway, and ship and state, privately or regionally owned. It [...]
Cyclists with busy schedules and a folding bike can get from Leeds to most parts of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, as there is a weekly bus service as far as Hawes in Wensleydale.The 804 departs from Leeds Bus Station at 9.40 on a Sunday morning.The fare is £3.60 single, but a ‘Day Rover’ return [...]
Very often Anarchist’s Corner tells a tragic and unresolved tale, but these examples are rather different.They’re two of the most important transport good causes around, and you really can do something to help. Even if you never travel by train, and don’t live in these areas, don’t forget that they are net generators of road [...]
‘Green Tourism’ is a rather hackneyed phrase these days, but the bottom line is that large number of tourists almost always end up destroying the things they’ve come to gawp at. Fortunately, there are a few enjoyable, relaxing holidays that won’t perforate the ozone layer (or your wallet), and we think this is a superb [...]
So what? According to the Government, the Royal Mail’s choice of transport mode is a purely commercial decision, and moving from rail to road will save tens of millions of pounds a year.We think this is nonsense for a number of reasons: 1) The Royal Mail is not a private company, but a government-owned plc. [...]
Luggage space causes a lot of grumbles. Once there were guards vans, but this all came to an end in the 1980s, when the oily Cecil Parkinson – then transport supremo – made it clear that the vans would not replaced because railways were as good as dead. The railways desperately needed new trains to [...]
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