Might have to start calling myself an artisanal engineer.

TIL that there is a standard for technical English, originally thought up by the airline industry in order to have rules on how to write documentation for that makes it easier for non-native English speakers to understand. It’s called ASD-STE100, where STE stands for Simplified Technical […]

A mí no me jodáis esto es un logo de una marca blanca de tomate frito

Would I recommend this trip? Absolutely, unreservedly. It’s very very pretty. Just be aware it’s all diesel, and there’s very very little mobile coverage, so come prepared.

And after a few hours of charming now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t alpine views that are interspersed with tunnels on the way, we reached Nice, our final destination for today. More tomorrow, and definitely not this early again, but today, I just need to flop.

La France, je suis dans vous! I’ve crossed my second border of the day, between Limone, Italy and Viévola, France. The tunel du col de Tende is by far the shortest significant tunnel I’ve crossed these past couple of weeks, at 8.1km, but it felt endless this time, as the train speed is […]

Yes, we’re definitely on a trundly train.

Indeed, we have decided to go directly to Cuneo, and start the trundly section of our trip a little early. Gone are the sleek aerodynamic lines and airy interiors of modern trains built for speed and business, and back to an earlier, calmer, more sedate generation of trains that aren't in a […]

And a very short hour of head banging at 300km/h later and we’re at Torino Porta Nuova. I really like this version of the Freccirossa 1000, compared to Iryo’s. It’s a little more busy in layout, yes, but it doesn’t feel unloved, and the service feels like people actually have history doing this […]

An on-time arrival at Milan led to an entirely reasonable walk between platform 8 and platform 6. A quick mental adjustment, and I found where to wait for coach 3 by looking at the screens above the platform, instead of the DACH platform zones system. I'm now sat on our previously booked […]

So it seems that the conductor was being economical with the truth. We could take the EuroCity… as far as Chiasso. Beyond that we did need a reservation. So no AJC for us. We tried about four different sites to try to get a reservation before finally having some success with Happyrail, which […]

[Unprecedented railway timetable gore] Oh, FFS, you’re better than this!

And having just gone through the Gotthard Base Tunnel at full speed, I am rapidly approaching my stop for the night. Today was fun, but long, and we have another long day tomorrow. Early in the morning we’ll be doing this stretch again, this time heading South as far as Milan before heading […]

And we’ve decided to bring our return forward, catching the 14:08 instead of the 16:08. We’re currently sat in an ETR 526, what Italians call a “Jazz”, an other countries call a Coradia. This is a far cry from the comfort of the Rhätischer bahn trains we came down on, this one really was […]