CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@stux I'm glad I'm thereby officially not gen Z.

@ubahnverleih Der einzige Preis fürs Deutschlandticket ist 0 EUR. Basta.

Edit : Corrected price of Leo Express order, thanks to @bovine3dom bringing this up.

@jon Yes, I agree. But I as a private individual grassroot railway activist have some more flexibility in what I say - and at least I quite know about what I say when talking about Asian railways. So maybe my talk might be interesting for you as well ?

(Don't get me wrong, I just think as a public figure you must act much more accountably than me.)

I can't believe how Europe, Australia and pretty much everywhere else people believe the propaganda about China's supposedly amazing railway network and rolling stock industry, shared all over the place by the dictatorship's business initiatives.

It hurts my soul to defend Alstom, Siemens or Stadler but if you every looked closer to a CRRC train, you will soon understand how European rolling stock is decades ahead of what China builds.

Let me explain and start with the economics.

- Westbahn ordered 15 Stadler KISS trains for 300 mio EUR (20 mio per trainset)
- Westbahn leased four CRRC DDMU02 trains for 70 mio EUR for a period of 10 years including maintenance (18 mio EUR per trainset)

- Leo Express ordered five Stadler FLIRT trains for 60 mio EUR (12 mio per trainset)
- Leo Express ordered 30 CRRC Sirius trains for 200 mio EUR (7 mio per trainset)

We keep hearing how European manufacturers cannot compete with Chinese prices. Yes, the trains are cheap and the overall offers good - but there is definitely no unreasonable price gap. And all that despite CRRC as a state-owned enterprise profiting from any kind of financial and political support, humans rights violating exploitation in the employees and large scale forced labor in the supply chain.

But if we compare the prices, it's not such a huge difference. The key factor is rather the delivery time : As a Chinese state company, the priority is always supplying foreign offers first in hope to permanently establish a supply chain. Therefore, CRRC can immediately start building newly ordered trains - a lure offer to establish China on international markets.

So far the business side.

Let's talk about the rolling stock itself.

As a brief history, CRRC was established from the so-called "Harmony" (Hexie) initiative of China's dictatorship regime. Hexie refers to the first generation of Chinese high-speed trains built by European and Japanese companies locally in China using technology-transfer. This way, CRRC got all the knowledge from Alstom, Bombardier, Kawasaki and Siemens to develop their own future trains.

Chinese trains are incredibly fast and amazing press pictures, mock-ups and even prototypes carrying the narrative of comfortable, modern and affordable trains dominate the western view on Chinese railways. These narratives are repeated, prayed over and over with no evidence.

Yes, trains are fast. That's it. CRRC has combined and improved the foreign technology to operate at higher speeds of 350 - 400 kph. The rest of it is propaganda. The trains technology is not advanced. The trains are bumpy, unoptimized and shaky - even on the most modern tracks at medium speed. The hardware is unreliable, everything is optimized on low cost, neither on safety nor on quality and sustainability.

Despite that, railways are incredibly expensive in China. They are configured in budget airline style with the cheapest interior possible in 1st and 2nd class. The exception is the business class (surprise : That's what the propaganda machine feeds to the international news). While we believe the song of affordable railways accessible to everyone, tickets here are at the same price and often more expensive than on the flagship high-speed networks in Europe - absolutely unaffordable for the average Chinese citizen who's not living a privileged higher class life.

I don't know why we all believe this, but seeing western companies falling into the trap of CRRC's lure offers for cheap trains is entirely incomprehensive to me. Chinese rolling stock is not the long awaited new wind for modern and affordable railways but a pitfall into the scrapyard of deprecated, crappy and unthoughtfully built rolling stock covered by a beautiful mask and pipe dreams.

Crappy trains sold at over expensive prices despite the dictatorship's government subsidies, cruel exploitation of the workers and forced labor in the supply chains.

China is not just a business partner with another culture. It's a cruel dictatorship putting all effort in propaganda, business and dependency of the western world.

If we're serious about railways, about liberty and human rights, we buy rolling stock in democratic countries with worker's rights, independent human rights organizations and real innovation in building trains.

China is not an alternative source of rolling stock but a cruel dictatorship eliminating its own population in concentration camps and supporting slavery through forced labor to reach its economic power.

All information in this post was researched at best effort. I'm not a train manufacturer not an economist or human-rights expert. I'm just an individual concerned about what's happening. Especially the human-rights situation in China is hard to proof due to the absolute surveillance and repression against anyone speaking up.

Cynically, I wrote this post while traveling aboard of a CR400AF-Z train in China.

#China #CRRC #Railways #Souvereignity #HumanRights

I wrote the following post a couple of days ago while I was crossing China by train.

I did not dare to send it while staying in China considering the oppressive surveillance dictatorship there.

Now that I left China a couple of days ago, I can finally share my anger about our perception of Chinese railways - and I'm happy to announce a talk on the topic of human rights violation in railway industries and how we're all fooled by Chinese propaganda about their trains and railways on the next opportunity on a Chaos event.

@zugreiseblog_eu Germany is the UIC standard language for international tickets. Any UIC member issues classic booklet tickets in German. Another interesting remark : Where every you are in the world, if the railway still issues classic ticket booklets, the agents *will* understand the German terms "Buchfahrkarte", "Streckenfahrschein" and "Bettkarte". This already avoided lots of trouble on my travels in countries where we didn't find a common language.

Goodbye China, hello Russia !

The Bank of China told me it'd take two more hours to exchange currency so I had to leave without. Idk, I always thought currency conversation was strictly regulated in Europe but in China this seems to be an even more restricted business.

I arrived at the station 25 minutes before the departure of my 353Ь train hopefully bringing me to Irkutsk.

I say "hopefully" because I don't have a ticket. My cross-border ticket is literally just for the 25 minutes ride between Manzhouli and Zabaikalsk whereas there hopefully is an electronic reservation for the rest of the journey stored with my passport number. Fingers crossed .

In any case, it stays interesting - may the journey behind the enemy's line go safe .

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail #TeamNightTrain

While travel agencies are *really* a thing here, currency exchange seems to be strange here.

Finding a travel agency who could issue me a cross-border ticket to Russia took me less than 10 minutes, I was searching for a currency exchange for over two hours - unsuccessfully. Even the banks were astonished when I asked them whether I could exchange money.

After three hours, I was finally told that the regional headquarter of the Bank of China does currency exchange and this is where I'm waiting now. It btw. took almost 10 minutes until I could clarify that I don't understand Russian.

I'm slightly nervous because my train is leaving in less than an hour and I know how picky Chinese railway workers are when it comes to international trains. I will time-gap waiting here to 15 more minutes and otherwise cross the border with just my 20.000 spare Ruble hoping for an exchange opportunity in Russia even though the rates will be much worse there.

While I expected a boring printout of an online ticket, I was handed a wonderful classic ticket booklet consisting of the cover booklet ticket, distance fare, sleeper ticket and transport remarks - all written in Chinese, Russian and - of course - German.

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail

After 10 hours, I reached my final destination for day 5 of my journey : Manzhouli. I quickly figured out how saying "I speak English" in *Russian* is the most important conversational skill to survive here as a foreigner. Fair, the city is populated by more Russian-speaking than Chinese- and Mongolian-speaking residents together and neighbors to Zabaykalsk in Russia.

The experience at the railway station was peak CR service : Three employees at the ticket office, in the middle of the night with no more train today. Of course, they could *not* sell me a ticket to Irkutsk and explained me I'd need to buy this in Beijing. Only bad, that in Beijing Zhao at the international ticket office, they explained me there are no trains to Russia.

At least we all agreed there in fact is a train leaving to Irkutsk tomorrow at 2 p.m. and they suggested that one of the many Russian travel agencies will likely be able to issue me a ticket.

My hotel was also highly confused how I don't speak Russian, also cannot fill a form entirely in Russian, didn't want to pay in Russian Rubel and showed them a foreign passport that was neither Russian nor had it a Chinese visa.

At least the receptionist told me there's a Russian travel agency right next to the hotel and she was convinced they could sell me tickets.

After all, this will be my quest for tomorrow.

Good night Fedi !

#FOSSRail

Definitely not on my bucket list for today : I won an overnight stay in Boten, the special economic zone right at the border to China.

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail

Today, my railway journey from Bangkok back to Alsace finally begins.

Marking the start of my trip, I visited the Hua Lamphong railway station. The beautiful building with a huge departure hall, flowers and fountains is sadly only served by commuter trains and the subway in present times since the mainline operations were completely moved to the new Krung Thep Aphiwat Central Terminal in 2016.

Nevertheless, the railway station nowadays hosting a museum with beautiful old Thai trains serves as an excellent location to start my trip : I will spend the next two weeks all on trains : Sleeper trains, high-speed trains and adorable regional trains will hopefully safely guide me for 17.000 km on rails spanning from Thailand via China, Siberia and the Ural to Europe.

Follow #FOSSRail or this account to travel along with me in this thread !

#CrossBorderRail #TeamNightTrain