Welcome to today's thread - #CrossBorderRail 2026 Tour Day 03 - 18 Feb - Ravières - Dijon - Culmont Chalindrey - Paris – Genève

[jon@gruene.social]

@hopla

[jon@gruene.social]

@meganL I don’t even know if I had the right reservations today or not. If even I don’t know the railway has a serious problem.

[meganl@mas.to]

@jon Now that I read back in the thread, I can see how that would be.

At least the multilingualism must help...

Fingers crossed for you. Thanks for illuminating for folks how cross-border rail is working in practice...

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@stefanlindbohm @jon My internship back in uni was at Hacon to build a Japanese version of their Windows app. The code (obviously) assumed single byte character sets and did some formatting on it, so I built a string translation layer. That was quite fun!

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@jon Voiture 6 is unreserved for non-Paris travellers?

[timwardcam@c.im]

@jon A couple of years after the wall came down we toured round Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary by train, as that was the preferred mode of transport for all the eastern bloc spy movies.

[jon@gruene.social]

#CrossBorderRail 2026 Spring Tour Train 7 of 80
TER 39552
09:26 Culmont Chalindrey - Paris Est 12:16
SNCF for TER Fluo Grand Est

Train type: Alstom Coradia Bi-mode MU, 6 short carriages
️, ️ (25kV ac)
:
🦽: (step free if station allows)
🛜: ️
️: ️
🧳:
🧽:
Interrail: (needs compulsory reservation, costs €1,70)

[q@glauca.space]

@jon another fine installment in the chronicles of the Société nationale des chemins de Fuck You

[_hemmschuh@zug.network]

@jon
But if you are abonné than it's not compulsory reservation, we love french ticketing.
@12train

[jon@gruene.social]

@TimWardCam you should have bough a Trabi. Obviously!

[jon@gruene.social]

TER 39552
09:26 Culmont Chalindrey - Paris Est 12:16

Distance: 307.1km
Average speed: 108km/h

8 stops:
Langres
Chaumont
Bar-sur-Aube
Vendeuvre
Troyes
Romilly-sur-Seine
Nogent-sur-Seine
Paris Est

This train, mapped: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-2026-spring-tour_1361108#9/48.361724/3.900146

#CrossBorderRail

[jon@gruene.social]

@_Hemmschuh fuck off SNCF really. Let’s make it extra hard for irregular travellers, just the ones we need to entice to take the train!

[timwardcam@c.im]

@jon We saw plenty - they were still around.

[jon@gruene.social]

I’m too German. I can’t tolerate this sort of bullshit

[jon@gruene.social]

@drnoble I know @technicalotter knows a lot about railways. I think they’re confused why a regional train needs this!

[technicalotter@glammr.us]

@jon @drnoble

Yep. I am unfortunatly burdened with too much knowledge of the railways (occupational hazard of the PhD project/neurospicy).

I'm amazed that you not only have to have seat reso's on a regional, but that one has to PAY! I already paid for the damn ticket!

I criticise the British ticketing a lot, but at least our reservations are free and (mostly) work!

[wnd@fosstodon.org]

@jon I don't understand why anyone puts up with this bollocks

[rafa_font@mastodon.online]

@jon Looking forward for a potential future holidays of yours in Trenitalia

[h0m54r@mastodon.social]

@jon you’ve probably heard a million similar stories, but I was an a TGV International and a Swiss Interrail user was there with no reservation. There was this long back and forth of
“But the Interrail is a valid ticket? On every train I’ve taken before I can just get on and ride, I don’t care about reserving a seat, just being on the train”
“The contract says a reservation is required! Didn’t you read the contract!? You’re lucky I’m not throwing you off!”

Went on for 5–10 minutes

[jon@gruene.social]

@wnd because everyone drives instead?