Christmas greetings from Cambridge! 🎅

Festive knitted post-box topper in Newton, Cambridgeshire. #cycling #EastAnglia

Dusk on the shortest day in the northern hemisphere. A walk at the RSPB nature reserve in Fowlmere (Cambridgeshire). #WinterSolstice

That hit the spot! First pint of my Christmas holidays in my favourite Cambridge backstreet pub.

This is the only one of our trains I'll see today as it's a rules refresher day. Last shift of 2025. ☺️

Very disappointing. Leeds is the largest city in western Europe without a mass transit system. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This year's estimated total distance from all of my shifts between the UK and mainland Europe is 60,525.54 kilometres. I didn't include standby shifts where I got sent on a train as those weren't easily to hand. 🇬🇧🚄🇪🇺

Last train of the year. Although not the last shift, that's a rules training day on Saturday. #TrainLife

EXCL: An agreement to rejoin Erasmus – the EU’s student exchange programme – set to be announced on Wednesday as part of UK government’s drive towards closer relations with Brussels. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Last trip to the mainland of 2025.

Passing trains: This morning's bike ride before work featured a wait at a level crossing. #TrainGeek

Back on the iron road, well standby actually, and we've got a new rulebook. It's now a combined one for Channel (blue trains) and Continental (red ones). There are a few rules updates too. In Belgium, for emergency messages, it's now "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!"

The penultimate night train from Vienna to Paris. Such a shame this service is finishing at the timetable change. A backward step.

❌️🛩 ✅️🚄

Paris in the run-up to Christmas is a rather lovely place.

Hmmm, London-Milan by eurostar to Brussels and then European Sleeper from June next year. ⬇️ #TrainsNotPlanes

On this day in 2005, the last Routemaster buses in normal service ran on route 159. I went out with my camera to record the event. #London

Post-Christmas shopping porter at the Pint Shop in Cambridge. 🎄🍺

A la prochaine Paris: View from the rear of the 19:58 to London.

Late shifts on winter Sundays always feel longer with the lack of daylight. A visit to Bouillon Chartier near Gare de l'Est gave the driver and me a lift before our trip back to London. #Paris

Landmark British photographer Martin Parr dies aged 73

A Sunday morning stroll from Stoke Newington to St Pancras for a late shift. Nice to revisit some old haunts from the time when we lived in this part of London.

It felt like the right time to get my baubles out... 🎄🚄

Bonjour tout le monde!

Trains are still disrupted by an earlier incident.

It's beginning to look a lot like Pubmas. The Queen's Head near King's Cross really comes into it's own in December.

What an amazing display of friendship between the UK and Germany. ☺️

To mark 35 years since the Channel Tunnel breakthrough, here's a timelapse taken from the back cab of a eurostar train. 50 kilometres in about 50 seconds.

Ah, memories of this day in 1990. I watched the Channel Tunnel breakthrough in the TV lounge of my university accommodation in Edinburgh. Little did I know then how big a part the tunnel would play in my life. This post written and sent from e* 9167. We've just entered the tunnel in Calais.

Amid all the hoohah around the cancelled/reinstated fast 7am Manchester to London train, it's worth remembering that the journey time with HS2 built in full was projected as 67 minutes...

Grey and dreary on both sides of the Channel this afternoon. #TrainLife

In Praise of the Beer Town — in my occasional blog for the folks at @geterbrewed.bsky.social I’ve written about what makes a great town beer scene, and for the haters I’ve included my own personal top 10. www.geterbrewed.com/blog/2025/11...

Grüße aus Tottenham Hale, Hauptstadt der DDR.

The last train has left for the mainland. #blackandwhite

Looking north: The "country" end of platforms 5/6 at St Pancras this afternoon. On platform 6, the 15:04 to Rotterdam is being loaded. It's not going to Amsterdam due to engineering works in the Netherlands today. #TrainLife

A stunning last day of November here in Cambridge. Time to head in for a Sunday standby shift.

Maybe we should build HS2 in full and increase capacity on the network. It was never just about speed.

Bonsoir TGV! Last night we arrived on platform 11 at Paris Nord which is not part of the cross-Channel ones. Our e320 was being used straight away for a service to Brussels.

Like the previous years, the Christmas tree for the European parliament arrived by NightJet in Brussels today

Friday morning in Great Shelford, a village just south of Cambridge. A thatcher at work on the roof of a house. #EastAnglia

Looking south: Winchester Station on a glorious autumn day. #blackandwhite #Railway200

‘No topic is too difficult’: children’s series on life in communist East Germany wins an Emmy

Deansgate, Manchester, 2021, painting by Cathy Read. #WomensArt #NorthernArt

A Wallonian Winter Wonderland: The view from this morning's 08:40 from Amsterdam to London. #highspeedrail

Some days at work are just special. I was honoured to work with one of my best friends on his last day at Eurostar today, we gave him a traditional welcome into St Pancras on his last train. Thank you to all the passengers of train 9031 today who took the time to wish him well, he was touched!

A wet and miserable Saturday evening in London: Time for the last train to Brussels. Very different weather in Belgium, we've got a 160 kmh speed restriction due to snow between Lille and Brussels.

Britain has set a new wind generation record. "At 7:30pm on 11 November wind turbines...provided enough clean electricity to power more than 22 million homes" "Wind was delivering 43.6% of all power on the system which means three quarters of Britain’s homes were effectively running on wind alone"

This is what 300 kmh on an icy evening looks like. Lots of arcing from the pantograph (current collector) as it picks up 25,000 volts to power the train.

Sunset view from the rear of the 15:31 to Paris. 31 is the magic number today as that's how many years I've now done on the railway. #TrainLife