We’re a little late,* but we’re already Toruń.**

* We got stuck on the previous stop of Solec Kujawski for fifteen minutes or so.
** I’m sorry.

Toruń is as far as I will go today. The main station is on the wrong side of the river, though, so would involve a twenty minute walk. Or, if you are lazy and/or booked yourself a room right behind Toruń Miasto station, you could take this suspiciously familiar looking thing for two minutes.

Toruń strikes me as worth spending a bit more time at then arriving after night fall and leaving after breakfast. Very pretty old town with lots and lots of churches.

It is also the birthplace of one Nicolaus Copernicus, inventor of the quantity theory of money (and maybe some other things).

Good morning! Before we continue our journey east, here’s the crossing of the river Wisła which was hidden in the dark last night.

One thing that is cool about eastern Europe is that everyone used the same basic signalling system. So I can tell you that we will be leaving with 40 then line speed without knowing Polish rules.

@partim In the background, an underpass that *used to be* double-track, but there was no room to maintain that with electrification, so now it's a tiny single track section on an otherwise doubled line

@HaTetsu Ah, I was wondering. Makes sense.

@HaTetsu Although, looking aerial imagery, it seems they could have just cut it open and put a bridge for the street up top. Or were there buildings there previously?

@partim They could have, but in the mad rush to electrify as much of Poland's network as possible after the 70s oil crisis, such works were judged too slow and expensive

@HaTetsu Sounds familiar, except East Germany was ten years later.

@partim And, well, they only got around to this one in the late 80s, so probably couldn't really afford it by the time they realized

@HaTetsu From what I’ve seen in my very limited time there, it shouldn’t be a problem traffic wise.

Quick transfer in Olsztyn where they have a shiny new (if a bit sterile) station building.

The aforementioned Copernicus worked as an administrator here, so they named the new station for him.

My impression of PKP Intercity is that either everything is fine or a complete disaster with little in between.

@partim To complete the tour, you'd need to visit Frombork, but that hasn't been served by rail in a while, sadly

@HaTetsu Also, apparently Bologna, which must have been quite the trip back then.

Kilometre 353 on line 353.

Korsze. It’s a mere twenty kilometres up line 353 to the Russian border and onwards to Chernyakhovsk, which should be called Wystruć or Įsrutis, from where, in a better world I could continue to Klaipėda. Instead we turn southeast towards Ełk and Białystok along a newly renovated line that The Map still shows as not having passenger service. Some corrections are, apparently, required.

@partim
Looks a little bit like the main station in Rotterdam 😍

@ifrauding I thought so, too!

@partim I did @ you on: https://mastodon.com.pl/@HaTetsu/115994932764087168

@HaTetsu I remember and thought I had processed those already. I think the plan was after finishing Denmark but that keeps dragging, so I will reconsider.

That was a fun journey. Until about Ełk the landscape is unexpectedly varied – very hilly with forests and many little and one big lake and things. After that it calms down substantially and becomes more flat and open.

I definitely can recommend going to Białystok this way.

I believe the centre of Białystok is fifteen minutes that way, but the map is inconclusive whether there really is one.

Let’s try something else instead. There is a local service heading northeast departing pretty much right now.

This train has Wifi but no suspension.

Sokółka. The train continues to Kuźnica Białostocka right by the Belorussian border. I would have time to go there and come back for my actual train, but I am not sure how relaxed Polish officials are these days. Better to spend an hour here.

@partim *Sokółka

@HaTetsu Drat. I knew I should copy-paste all the names.

The line continues straight to Vilnius as part of the old Petersburg Warsaw Railway, but as it has to cut through a corner of Belarus to achieve this, we have to do a detour to what is known as the Suwałki Gap, a 65 km stretch of border between Poland and Lithuania a bit to the west, named after the town of Suwałki where incidentally my next train ought to run to.

Definitely east now.

Is this a broad gauge track? This should be a broad gauge track. Does someone have a tape measure?

(There is a broad gauge line parallel to the standard gauge line to about 25 kilometres from the border with various transshipment facilities along the way. Revitalised in 2014, is there even any traffic now?)

I think the Polregio guard just now claimed that Interrail is only valid on the Intercity but then let me stay without further discussion because language barrier.

Although after ninety minutes on this thing I might wish to have waited for the Intercity.

@partim I love the semaphore signals in the background, and the old concrete posts for the overhead wires. This is Sokółka station, right? The broad gauge track looks well used, doesn’t it?

@swoonie It does look used, indeed. Interesting.

#залізно_веземо

Suwałki, end of the line. For today, anyway.

@partim As a translation, DeepL suggests “we carry iron” but also “we’re definitely bringing” or indeed “we’re on a roll”.

Must be a nifty word play in Ukrainian 🇺🇦

@swoonie That’s what I was assuming. And that it is probably safe to copy if they print it in a wagon ;)

@partim It's quite ironic how important it is these days, considering it was originally built as a kind of half-circle connecting the towns of Suwalszczyzna/Suvalkija to the Warsaw-Petersburg railway. It ran Grodno/Hrodna-Augustów-Suwałki-Šeštokai-Alytus-Varėna (the present-day Sokółka-Dąbrowa Białostocka section was added after the area was divided by a border, unsurprisingly)

@HaTetsu The borders in this area are really not railway friendly. In Lithuania, Kazlų Rūda – Šeštokai had to be built after 1918 as well.

@HaTetsu @partim
Big lightbulb moment for me. *That’s* why Alytus has this weird westward railway connection, instead of heading straight north to Kaunas!

Love the upper left corner where we can just about see Eydtkuhnen and Wirballen, the gauge-change transfer points for passengers travelling from Berlin and Königsberg to Wilna and St. Petersburg.

In the thirties my grandad was a customs officer at Eydtkuhnen. I remember him telling stories about his work there. An era so long gone.

@swoonie @HaTetsu The station disappeared after the war because there was no need for a border station within the Soviet Union. But they rebuilt it after the fall of the Union since Nesterov (the former Stallupönen) was too small to handle all the border formalities.

Is this the stuff? It was the only bottle I could find in the somewhat disappointing (and certainly missplaced) Carrefour.

(Edit to add: If so, I get the hype.)

@partim
No "sto gram" for you tonight?

@swoonie I may also have bought a bottle of beer for a nightcap … (The beer selection in Poland is insane!)

@partim Looks good. Never had this one. Carrefour PL you said? 👀

@wrzlbrnft Jupp. Turns out it is from Latvia, though.

Start of the line on a new day.

You know you are way east in a time zone when the sun is well up already at half six.

The morning train to Mockava, just past the border about a half hour away. It starts here in Suwałki at 07:00 and subsequently has barely more passengers than staff. My assumption is that it only exists so train and crew don’t have to overnight in Lithuania. Kudos to PKP Intercity for not running it empty.

Mockava station. It clearly was never built as a border station and the village of Mockava is five kilometres away. But this is how far south the broad gauge network reaches, so we – all three of us – have to change.

In theory, standard gauge continues all the way to Kaunas but the Polish trains aren’t certified and I think signalling is missing or something.

Passenger service between Suwałki and Mockava and onward to Vilnius and Warsaw – Krakow was only re-established in December 2022. It proved successful beyond expectations, so since last December there are now three daily connections.

Reportedly, the trains can indeed get quite busy, so I figured taking the morning connection that requires an overnight stay in Suwałki would be the calmer option. And indeed, so far the train is neatly quiet. Let’s see whether that changes in Kaunas.

@partim Sestokai is the proper border station. And it’s nicer than Mockava. But it’d mean the Polish train having to go further into Lithuania. And it’s more congested with freight.

@jon This morning northbound service doesn’t even stop there …

Having found out that if you run trains people actually will use them, Lithuanian Railways started a Vilnius to Riga service in December 2023 – there previously had been a gap at the Lithuania/Latvia border.

That service became very popular, too, so last year they extended the service to the Estonian border and coordinated an onwards connection with the Estonians.

And, lo and behold, early this year they had to add another through service between Riga and Tallinn plus one more transfer connection Fridays to Sundays to cope with demand.

@partim Hmmmm, for me the later connections were all fairly relaxed too. A hand full of passengers.

@lewd Maybe depends on the season. The videos I saw all had rather busy trains at least for the Lithuanian portion.

@partim Polish DMUs used to run to Kaunas until December 2022 (see also https://troet.cafe/@wrzlbrnft/115153343560635434 ). Don't know if they'd be still allowed to run there.

@wrzlbrnft Probably for the better. Those Polish DMUs are … not great.

@partim Polish DMUs ran through to Kaunas in 2022 on the standard gauge. I caught the 0910 departure from Kaunas to Bialystok. It was very full. I think the problem now is that there are no standard gauge locomotives passed for passenger trains in Lithuania.

@railtraveller42 Was that established for when Kaunas was European capital of culture?

Vilnius. The railway has kindly thrown in access to the lounge, but I only have half an hour and that’s not enough time to see even this modest station.

I didn’t quite pay attention when booking, so I was to take this knackered old elephant from Vilnius to Kaišiadorys where I am now to wait for the train from …Vilnius. I think they sold this to me because first class was already sold out on that second train. Also, we passed through here on the way up already but didn’t stop.

Anyway, I didn’t do this on purpose. Honest.

I have fifty minutes and could have walked into town – they have a pretty church, apparently – but I had a hunch I might see this: train 080Ч, Kaliningrad – St. Petersburg on its transit through Lithuania.

Sadly the sun is all wrong and there are noise barriers on the other side of the tracks, so these shady snapshots will have to do.

Oh good: The four hour trip to Klaipėda isn’t on a Pesa regional train set.

They weren’t joking when they claimed it was sold out, though. Pretty much every seat is taken. For me they only had a backwards facing aisle seat left. Ah well. At least they replaced the Soviet seats with something quite comfy here in second class. (There also is third.)

@partim Uuuugh, the dictator-in-a-bottle-ship train 😵‍💫 !

@lewd I wish I had used it when that was still a thing.

@partim I took a direct train from Kaunas to Bialystok im July 2022. It only run on weekends, it was one of the first trains when I took it. I made a picture of the timetable at the station back then. I think with the timetable change in December it became a daily train, with the change in Mockava

@zugreiseblog_eu I think that was a hasty scramble after realising that railway connections to the European capital of culture that year were a bit embarrassing.

But I guess it worked well enough for it to become permanent.

My window seat neighbour left after three hours. Let’s hope nobody new shows up for the last hour.

The ride quality is quite good, given the all steel bogies, particularly compared to the Polish carriages. I think these are Görlitz VI bogies? So are these Ammendorf carriages, then?

Klaipėda, where the weather is definitely more late winter.

Now I have to just ge… hang on.

“Due to late arrival, your ferry departs on 16/03 at 03:00hrs.”

That was supposed to be midnight. This is going to be a long evening.

Pub?

This neatly solves the question of how far I can safely make it tomorrow. Arrival is now expected 5½ hours late at half past six. So, Karlshamn is the answer and a bonus sea day it is.

@partim Enjoy the trip! I think the loco hauled trains to Klaipeda soon will be history.

@Jonas_Bostrom I believe as soon as electrification is finished, they are finished, too.

@partim Seeing your departure now at 4.55 means a hard night - but then sleeping at sea should compensate for that. Safe travels!

@patrick Crap. Where are you seeing this? It dropped of TT’s timetable page for me.

@partim still not enough, though. We need a PKP IC running Warszawa - Kaunas, using 1435mm gauge track Mockava - Kaunas, twice a day, plus a EN service Berlin - Kaunas at least twice a week.

@recumbenttravel I’m not sure you can run that sort of thing reliably with the current infrastructure. If only Rail Baltica wasn’t such a shambles.

Last status of the ship on Marine Traffic is from two hours ago. Should I be worried?

@partim @patrick https://www.ttline.com/en/

checked at 18:40 CET

@interrailinfosvenska @patrick Thanks. I was looking on the timetables which has details for other routes.

Fun fact: from six hours arrival delay I get half my money back, although they can play the weather
card. Currently we are still at a quarter.

Alright, the port is ninety minutes down that way. Let’s find out if walking there is a good idea.

Here we are. The man at check-in thinks we might be boarding around 1:30. I think this is way too optimistic and recon more like 2:30 if things go smoothly. We’ll see.

@partim Where are you sailing from/to?

@timrichards Klaipėda to Karlshamm. There was a second ferry leaving at 17:30 but I couldn’t make that.

How about that: The shuttle bus is departing at 2:30 exactly.

@partim Alcoholic beverage made from stale bread? I tried making it once. That worked. But drinking it? No way.

@bnordbo Hehe. Worth trying if you happen to be in eastern Europe. It is quite refreshing.

Sea days are great.

Slept until breakfast, which started at ten due to the late departure (I think we left 5:30). Then slept some more. At two I thought I should probably get up and walk around a bit. Decided against it and slept until half past three. Now some coffee. Probably will have a nap after.

This ship, M/V Nils Dacke (the third ship of this name), definitely isn’t a fancy cruise ferry. The communal area is very small. Buffet restaurant and tiny duty free shop are grouped around the reception desk with a bunch of seats around. That’s it. Cabins are quite spacious, though. Thirty years old and you can see it.

An honest work horse. Love it.

Progress: I think this is Utklippan lighthouse about ten miles off the Swedish coast near Karlskrona.

@partim Arrival estimate now up to 50% refund.

@patrick It is going to be close and might depend on the formal definition of arrival.

TT-Line is doing things right: Foot passengers are first off the boat.

@partim And then it’s only going to be ticket price without surcharges, fees or cabin options and such.

@patrick I’m not sure. The regulation says the compensation has to based on what the passenger actually paid.

Passage itself was 15 euros, so not worth bothering.

Hej Sverige! Now for a half hour walk into town. Which is handy after all the day sleeping.

Despite the delay, this was a really nice voyage. Je ne regrette rien !

@partim *Finnlines manically laughing*

@nordkommission I was just told Finnlines does foot passengers first, too?

@partim Not true for Malmö - Travemünde: no passenger bridge, thus bus transfer and at least in Malmö that usually means +30 after arrival because it has to come from outside, meaning every other vehicle has to leave first.

@nordkommission That certainly seems to be the normal procedure for bridgeless ferry ports. At least in Klaipėda
and Karlshamn, TT-Line parks the bus in front of the boat and lets passengers walk into the ship.

Good morning! Definitely Scandinavia.

My original idea was to loop through Sweden for a day but I will aim for Denmark in a more or less straight line instead. It won’t be the normal route, though, because of course not.

Every language has at least one sound that you cannot make correctly unless you are a native speaker. For Swedish, this seems to be the k.

As soon as I post this, we stop in Kvidinge, where the k seems to be just a regular k.

@partim The K is soft (voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative, ɕ) before the soft vowels E, I, Y, Ä, Ö. Before the hard vowels A, O, U, Å the K is hard (a regular K) unless it is followed by a J. There are a few loanwords where a hard K is followed by a soft vowel which is an ortographic anomaly. The classic example is the word kex (from English "cakes") which often, but not always, is pronounced with a hard K.

K followed by consonant (other than J) is always hard.

@violanders What made me make this statement is how the announcement machine pronounced Kristianstad. That definitely wasn’t a hard k but more like a variant on a hard ch.

Ramlösa is not just bubbly water but also a huge marshalling yard.

There might be a bridge now, but the boats are still here. This ferry between Helsingborg and Helsingør is the shortest crossing between Sweden and Denmark and once was the main route between the two countries. It still operates very frequently – every twenty minutes during the day –, but doesn’t carry trains any more.

This ship is Aurora AF.

Didn’t pick the best day for this
crossing. In this picture, there is another ship. So no seeing Hamlet’s Castle today …

The ship has a full sit down restaurant but the crossing time is just twenty minutes. I assume you keep going back and forth until you finish your meal?

@partim Let me guess, from Helsingør you continue to Gilleje, Hillerød, and then the S-tog to København?

@tml Ha! Nope. I have an even more silly plan.

@partim Yes, it's not uncommon for people to do that. There is even a local word for it, "tura".

From Helsingør, you can go on a journey along the north coast of Sjælland, but it kind of takes forever. Instead, let’s pretend to head west and go directly to Hillerød.

@partim had you taken the train to Gilleleje you would have enjoyed a bit of running on very tram-like track.

@tml I’ll definitely do this one day, including going to Tisvildeleje. But it seems to be taking pretty much all day, so another time.

@partim I think they offer a "there and back" type thing, without getting off, so maybe for that?

@samcage Appears so, yes.

In Hundested, which may or may not translate as Dogtown, you cannot go further west as the Isefjord is in the way. Luckily there is a boat.

Proper ship, with an IMO number and everything!

@partim Not to be confused with with Ísafjörður, as in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildur_(novel_series) books.

@tml “[T]he pair must battle their demons while solving murders.” Tell me it is a Nordic novel without telling me it is a Nordic novel. #PåskePåHytta

There isn’t a train on the other side, but there is a bus. It goes once an hour. That is apparently all you need to know if you can’t afford or operate a smart phone.

In Holbæk I am questioning my progress as I am changing onto the train to Helsingør.

You can also take a train west to Kalundborg from here where you can get a ferry to the island of Samsø where you can get a ferry to Aarhus.

Unfortunately, the ferries go from different sides of the island and there is no bus in winter. Which would be fine – it is a walk of a mere two hours – but it is getting too late for more shenanigans.

@partim Sounds like a summer plan to me.

@patrick I think it would have been a fine walk today. Certainly fewer people.

Okay, one more shenanigan: the branch line from Tølløse to Slagelse. And I didn’t even know they were running these private railway rubber noses here. But all the better!

Turns out I was just lucky. The train in the other direction is a Lint.

In Slagelse, there is a train to Odense at 17:17 (expected 17:22) and another one 17:24. They both consist of four car units but with different arrangements of bicycle and quiet areas. So one should be the dreadful Ansaldo Breda IC4 and one an electric rubber nose IR4. Luckily, both reach the Lyntog (or lightning train) to Fredericia (which doesn’t stop in Slagelse) and I can choose.

Right. So not the first one.

@partim Are you sure about that? In standard Swedish the K is usually not what non-native speakers struggle with. But there is a lot of dialectal variation, and the Blekinge dialects can be a bit special.

@Jonas_Bostrom The pronunciation of Kristianstad inspired the post. We’ve cleared things up in a short conversation with @violanders starting here: https://mastodon.nu/@violanders/116243789928383269

Of course, if you have a first class ticket, what you really want is the diesel rubber nose, the IC3, because it features the rolling living room. These have three carriages (hence the name), but because they only have two doors, they are shown as having two carriages.

I am not aware of anywhere that shows you the formation of Danish trains in advance, but the station boards on https://mittog.dk do (if you click on a train), so you can at least have an educated guess when planning.

(This is also really useful to see what they came up with for the Copenhagen – Hamburg ECs today which are a real mess right now.)

Hang on! We didn’t stop while driving into the platform and I don’t think they backed half the train up after stopping. Are they splitting the train while still moving?

@partim So if it shows 2 carriages like here that’s a rubber nose?

@patrick Yes, that’s the IC3. I think the IR4 is the one with two separate bicycle carriages but I am not so sure any more.

@partim Possible with preparation if it goes real slow. But mostly it's a really fast process so maybe you did miss it ;-)

@Pepijn Twice we definitely didn’t stop.

@partim only until they finally build the tunnel ^^

@julian_b Is this like the Sicilian bridge?

This was the second driver seeing me in a protected crossing and just keeping on driving forcing me to stop – one at a zebra crossing and one turning left at a light.

I don’t remember Denmark being like that. Be careful in Fredericia, people!

@partim i the one up there is more realistic

@julian_b Easy ;)

That said, here we are. Have a good night, everyone!

One final “Go’ morn”!

My hotel here in Fredericia was right around the corner from the railway station. Except when they opened the bridge across Lillebælt in 1935, they moved the station out of town so they don’t have turn around trains heading further north. The old station building is still here in all its red brick glory, even it seems to be unused right now.

The new station, still red brick but decidedly 1935 looking, is twenty minutes away. I really have to get the 08:30 to Flensburg in Germany. The next one is cancelled and bustituted for the cross border section since DSB needs the units allowed into Germany for the Hamburg Eurocity while the Talgos suffer through their teething issues.

@partim I have stayed at the Postgaarden, too, but did not realise the railway aspect there. I only remember the moudly bathroom but that's probably just Denmark being Denmark with its maritime climate?

@sampe I stayed a bit further down the road at the Gammel Havn which was a delight!

@partim
Germans were always better at this. Don't think it's that new.

@notsoloud My experience in the Nordics is that drivers stop if they see you within a hundred metres of a
zebra crossing. Hence my surprise. Wouldn’t count on anyone even so much as taking their foot off the accelerator in Germany.

This certainly is the better choice than the Eurocity. I have the rolling living room all to myself.

(The assessment might change in Flensburg where I will have to change to a German regional express.)

@partim
Could be Jutland is worse

@notsoloud Or just bad luck. The sample size was very small.

Flensburg station. About ten officers of the state police doing “spot checks,” an official from the city’s office of public order (dunno what they need them for), and one federal police officer standing idly by. #Schengen2026.

@partim Did they find any spotty person?

@tml They certainly seemed to have thought so.

One final extravaganza: Let’s take one of these new Stadler battery electric trains over to Husum.

(Pictured the train in the other direction to Kiel.)

Even though it is 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, there are people standing. I think they should of bought a bigger train.

Bit anticlimactic: it’s just another electric Flirt doing its thing.

Right, so now I would ideally have nothing to post about any more for the rest of the day …

@partim If I recall correctly it is supposed to have been converted to (very expensive) apartments a few years ago.

@taf They might just finished the work. It looked newly renovated but still empty.

I missed the Intercity from Westerland to Köln in Husum by half an hour. But because of engineering works, it has to go around Hamburg on the goods avoiding line and its timetable is so terrible that while I am already in the S-Bahn under the centre, it is still in Eidelstedt at the beginning of the avoiding line and I should be able to catch it by taking this S-Bahn all the way to Harburg.

One stop after Central Station I realised I could have made the 13:45 ICE to Osnabrück. Ah well. It is running as a short seven carriage ICE 4, so not taking it is probably for the better.

@partim So you're not taking in the trip on the goods avoiding line, as a rare opportunity?

@swoonie I’ve done it before with the Copenhagen Eurocity. It is painfully slow!

Thank you to the signallers for moving the train to a different platform thirty seconds before its arrival while I was three hundred meters from the nearest passage.

The train manager – there was a crew change at Harburg – just apologised for the track change and said that it looked like most passengers made it to the train before them. Which explains our four minute departure delay.

Overheard the guard calling the police in Bad Bentheim. There goes my connection in Hengelo.

The Amsterdam ICE that should be forty-five minutes behind us is apparently twenty minutes late after a bonus police stop in Stendal. I guess it is that kind of day.

Departure half an hour late. NS would have turned the train here so the return run is on time. Yay Eurobahn, I guess.

Hey Keolis, will you please
stop sticking crap on the windows?!

@partim
That trick only works if you run a regular schedule, which Germany doesn't..

@j2 But also, this might be one of the reasons why it doesn’t.

The last light of the sun disappearing over Koploper chairs rings in the final leg of this journey. What a joyous privilege to be allowed to just go and see the world. Thanks for letting me share it with you! I’m sure there will be another mad adventure soon.