@darkphoenix As an aside, whilst going through the train possibilities, manually, on bahn.expert, we discovered that there was a BR407 that went from München to Dortmund, and that made for an interesting variant of this general idea. It turned out to be […]

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@darkphoenix It definitely was far from ideal, but given the limitations of the ICE 2 services in the north of the country (which are basically limited to the Berlin-Hannover-Köln line) there was little we could do to have an earlier arrival to Duisburg […]

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@darkphoenix And so we got to it, and even managed to find a way of working in the Rhine Valley Line through Koblenz during the daytime, and it looked great. So I left it for the night on a high.

And next morning I finished it off... only to find the […]

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@darkphoenix The complicated trains are the border ones. Specifically the BR407 (ICE 3 Velaro D) that can run in France, and the BR408 (ICE 3neo) that can run in the Netherlands.

The BR408s basically go either through Köln or through Hannover. Which is great, as we want to end this variable bit […]

And at that point, I got quite down. I realised that to do this properly, I'd have to download and parse the GTFS data, and also work out how to link it with the existing database structure I'd create it, and even then, the routing algorithm needed a bunch of exceptions putting into it to make […]

And then I struck gold: It had a bunch of stations I wanted to go to, it crossed the country in interesting ways, it took a roundabout route, and… it relied on a train stop that didn't exist.

I didn't save which itinerary it was that made me find that option, just that it kept appearing again […]

Finally a series 3000, which were built in 1986, and were phased out last year. Mostly because they were old, but also there was a big brou-ha because the white paint was found to have asbestos.

Anyone who’s travelled in Barcelona in the past 40 years will […]

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We move another couple of decades into the future and find ourselves in a much more familiar Series 1100, that was running from 1974 to 2009.

The seating is still plastic, but are much more ergonomic bucket seats. The metro map looks much more modern, too […]

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The FMB Series 400 looks significantly more modern. It ran between 1958 and 1989.

The iconic Green and Yellow livery is iconic, and a shame they changed it. That being said, the plastic red benches are very uncomfortable

https://historia.tmb.cat/100-anys-metro/en/histories/#class-400-4692

The FMB Series 100 is apparently the largest passenger train carriage in history. It’s huge. It started life in the Metro Transversal de Barcelona in 1926, what is now L1, and at the time was powered by a third rail.

It was known as the rolling living room. […]

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