Vatican City! 🇻🇦 A visit to my 38th new country and the smallest country in the world!

Tried out two high speed Italian trains between Roma Termini and Napoli Centrale! Trenitalia’s flagship “Frecciarossa 1000” and an ETR 675 “EVO” operated by private operator “Italo” both very comfortable even if Italo was 87m late due to a line issue!

Rome! The historic Italian capital had many things to see including the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps and Colosseum! 🇮🇹

But wait! The journey isn’t over yet! Time for a second consecutive sleeper train! This time Trenitalia’s service from Torino to Salerno, which I’ll be taking as far as Napoli Centrale! 🇮🇹

Torino! A brief walk around the pleasant Italian city! 🇮🇹

After a ScotRail HST, sleeper train and very tight connection into Eurostar plus a long TGV ride, I’ve made it to Torino! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇫🇷🇮🇹 As the EDB portion was 60m late, it made a tight connection extremely tight, but I thankfully made my Eurostar! 🚆

Thurso! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The furthest north town on mainland Great Britain! I’ve been here a number of times before and really like the town! But now it’s time to head south!

Time for a trip to Scotland and I am going north by slightly different means this time! Ember coach at 1am from Glasgow, got me to Inverness at 0500! Time to wait for the new Greggs to open before jumping on the 0700 to Thurso!

Heading East on a route I’ve down a few times I decided to mix it up and tick off some of the smaller stations between Disentis and Andermatt! 🇨🇭

Down to Graübunden for another ride on Rhätische Bahn, one of my favourite operators! This time I travelled to Preda with the intention of walking to Bergün, the next stop down. As the paths were extremely snow covered, this became a road walk, but didn’t ruin the views!🇨🇭

Crossing over the border to Switzerland to visit a place that’s been on my list for a while now! Rheinfall on the edge of Neuhausen in northern Switzerland! Amazing place with 2 railway stations and plenty of viewpoints for the waterfalls! 🚆🇨🇭

It’s time I escape the UK again! This time starting with Colmar, a lovely town in the Grand-Est region of France 🇫🇷

It seems some new stations have opened! Including Bedlington which opened this morning, I paid a visit for the first train! Bedlington ✅ Willenhall ✅ Darlaston ✅

Lake Bled 🇸🇮😍

Tornio Itäinen ✅ And time for a sleeper train I’ve wanted to try out for a while now, the Finnish Railways sleeper down to Helsinki! En-suite room tonight for £58 (50% off with interrail pass)

Time for a walk from Haparanda to Tornio. Tervetuloa Suomeen! 🇫🇮 Finland is a new country for me, number 37! Amazing display of Aurora Borealis to welcome us!

A pleasant but cold (-17°C!) few hours exploring Luleå! Including a very confusing shopping centre and an icy path / ice skating motorway over the frozen river inlet with tractors and dog walkers. Did I mention it was cold?

Boden! A lovely little town to have an explore of!

Stepped back a train at Kiruna, 2 hours to kill in -17°c so went to find chips!

Amazing to see the stunning Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) late last night during a walk around the edges of Narvik! 🇳🇴 Magical to see it with your own eyes rather than through a camera!

Time for a very very long distance train from Stockholm up through Sweden and into Narvik, in Norway 🇳🇴 Absolutely stunning scenery, especially once over the border in Norway

Bumped into these guys on the sleeper train to Narvik! 🇸🇪 🇳🇴

A delayed journey to Stockholm today with a broken freight train resulting in a reverse back to Kil for a chaotic replacement bus to Karlstad. Arrived into the amazing city of Stockholm 198m late Staff from both SJ and Värmlandstrafik very helpful!

Time for some more station ticking along a pretty rural line! 🇸🇪

Sunne, the roughly halfway point of this line and one of the more built up areas. Lovely town and church as well as Kolsnäs station to the south which serves an amusement park (probably more of a summer thing) 🇸🇪

A Norwegian Stadler train continues my journey north and made time for awander around the nice town of Trollhättan. Featuring a very icy river! 🇸🇪

Boats, trams, parks and pretty buildings in Gothenburg! 🇸🇪

Whilst heading North from Malmö to Göteborg, station ticking is bound to end up happening!

Wait! You lot are all here in Denmark too???? What are the chances!

Oh hello København! Long but successful journey from the morning arrival at Hoek van Holland! 🇳🇱 🇩🇪 🇩🇰

Mallaig ✅ West Highland Line ✅ ScotRail ✅ Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿✅ 2589/2589 stations in Great Britain 🇬🇧✅ Well I’ve finally done it after just over 3.5 years of station ticking, and a lovely one to finish off with too 😍

It’s France time again! An excellent country I’ll never stop coming back to. This time a ride on the new Paris “C1” Cable Car which runs from Créteil to Villa Nova was in order!

I visited a total of 17 countries in 2025 10 of which I have visited before; 🇫🇷 🇨🇭 🇦🇹 🇩🇪 🇧🇪 🇸🇮 🇭🇷 🇧🇬 🇷🇴 🇭🇺 Whilst the remaining 7 were new countries for me! 🇧🇦 🇲🇪 🇷🇸 🇽🇰 🇲🇰 🇰🇿 🇺🇿

It appears to be a new year! 🎆 Many adventures took place over the course of 2025! Here are some stats! Visited 167 new stations in the UK plus 53 in other countries! I also finished visiting every station in Great Britain! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Back in Cymru for some required stations! Rhoose Cardiff International Airport ✅ Llantwit Major ✅ Transport for Wales ✅ Vale of Glamorgan ✅ All stations in Cymru visited 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿✅ All stations in Great Britain visited 🇬🇧✅

A weekend trip to Scotland results in visiting both Insch and Huntly Insch ✅ Aberdeen to Inverness ✅ ScotRail managed stations ✅ Visited every station in Scotland ✅ 2587/2589

Ah I’ve discovered what all the fuss is about! A new station has opened in Essex! Welcome station 2589! 🚉 Beaulieu Park ✅ Every station in England (again) ✅

After some very random trips around the country, Market Rasen is a large landmark! Market Rasen ✅ Lincolnshire ✅ Every station in England ✅ This just leaves Scotland and Wales left to complete! Hang on what’s going on in Essex this morning???

Sadly the time comes to return home, flying back to London with Uzbekistan Airways, arriving around 50m late 🇺🇿 🇬🇧

More of Tashkent! 🇺🇿

Tashkent Metro! 🚇 One of the prettiest metros in the world with each station having a unique design. Fully contactless travel just tap and go, each tap is a single journey and costs £0.10

Back in Tashkent, have some photos from Tashkent’s grand station building and the nearby Railwau Museum! 🇺🇿 🚆

Samarkand also has 2 tram lines, sadly the one which would’ve been useful to me was not operating due to roadwork, so I wasn’t able to try them out. Luckily the bus network is frequent and relatively simple to work out! 🇺🇿 🚊 🚌

Samarkand! Really cool historic centre here, a key location on the Silk Road! 🇺🇿

Leaving Tashkent for now, I continue south on Uzbek Railways, using their premium high speed “Afrosiyob” service, I paid around £23 for the around 2.5 hour journey in Business Class

Leaving a rainy Almaty for another long distance sleeper train with the same Talgo rolling stock, this time an international service across the border to Tashkent, Uzbekistan! 🇰🇿 ➡️ 🚆 ➡️ 🇺🇿

Almaty Family Park, and nearby Sairan reservoir 🇰🇿 Large park which has had old Soviet statues and military equipment moved to as a sort of bare bones open air museum!

Almaty Metro! A ticket system not really seen in Europe, you pay to receive a plastic token which is valid for a single journey. Each token costs 120 Kazakh Tenge (£0.17 / €0.19) 🇰🇿 🚇

A wander around Almaty! 🇰🇿

A couple of nights in Almaty now, and I cannot resist a cable car! Kok Tobe is an entertainment area up a hill to the east of Almaty city. 🇰🇿