Aug 11, 2026, 10:10 AMThis is why Spain and France (and especially the border between them) make me so hopping mad. How you can spend billions and billions on new infra, and STILL not get to your destination when your trip is something a fraction more complex than Sevilla - Barcelona or Lyon - Lille
I can forgive Romania being crap
I cannot forgive France or Spain being crap
Aug 11, 2026, 10:14 AMAAAGGGHHAHHAGAGHAHAGAHHAGHAH
Look how many EFFING BUSES there are between Barcelona and Perpignan
WHERE THERE IS A HIGH SPEED EFFING TRAIN LINE WITH 4 TRAINS A DAY EACH WAY ON THE BORDER SECTION
Aug 11, 2026, 10:18 AMYou can get from Berlin to Helsinki reliably by train and ferry in 2 days and 1 night (Berlin - Warszawa - Vilnius, night there, Vilnius - Tallinn - Helsinki)
But you cannot sensibly get from Lagos to Berlin in the same time, despite, oh, about 2000km of high speed infra to use
You *might* just do it with buses Lagos - Sevilla, and Barcelona - Perpignan, and the rest with trains, and a night in Perpignan
Aug 11, 2026, 10:19 AM(Note all of this not for me, but for someone who might come along to film #LongestTrainEU) #CrossBorderRail
Aug 11, 2026, 10:24 AMWhy is the first Perpignan - Paris of the day at 7am? That's TOO LATE. FFS. Early trains are useful, damn it. #LongestTrainEU #CrossBorderRail
@jon
But that's ideal for the train crew. You can have breakfast before and déjeuner after the train. They will make grève if you change the times of the train 😜
@_Hemmschuh @jon and a 3 day stay until your next shift home
Aug 11, 2026, 12:21 PM@_Hemmschuh Can I persuade you to move to Perpignan?
@jon Abysmal indeed. If your friend is able to catch the night train to Paris, it could be a solution.
Aug 12, 2026, 2:39 PM@stevenclays Ha. You can't get to that in time either! But a nice idea.
@jon A connection that was still possible in 2013, by taking a tgv out of Barcelona around 19h iirc. Maddening!
Aug 11, 2026, 10:19 AM@jon For which if you search now on *reseller-platform past 3 November you get the buses listed only, because the train timetable/tickets aren't released yet.
Sorry: personal bugbear at the moment as I check every day so I can complete the ticket buying for a trip then.
Aug 11, 2026, 10:20 AM@ekes LOL. The EU is gonna solve that! 5 month timetable horizons proposed by the Commission*
* - Renfe and others will of course lobby like hell to get that edited out of the proposal
Aug 11, 2026, 10:26 AM@jon God RENFE announcing 5 months in advance would be amazing; so amazing I don't believe it. And that feels like the smallest of mercies - how can it something so small feels like it would be great.
Aug 11, 2026, 11:10 AM@jon @ekes It would be a miracle to get Renfe to release timetables at all. They only seem to let you do a point to point search, then they tell you it's impossible.
On separate occasions in 1 week I've saved about €200 by running two separate searches to travel on 4 regional trains instead of going into Madrid and back out; and arrived at the station to see a printed timetable showing that if I'd got a lift to the next station there'd have been twice as many trains along the coastal line
@jon It's embarrassing how few trains there are across that border. Is there anything other than stubbornness preventing more trains?
There should be enough demand for at least hourly departures and it's standard gauge all the way to Barcelona Sants.
Aug 11, 2026, 10:32 AM@Jonas_Bostrom SNCF doesn't have enough trains. Renfe has so few trains it uses the France compat ones nationally. No one wants to buy new trains. And the governments don't give a shit.
@jon I see. The traditional "The world ends at the border and we don't care about anything beyond it"-attitude. 😢
Usual Iberian railway insularity...
Aug 11, 2026, 12:44 PM@pglux.bsky.social And usual French insularity too
Renfe is about to place not just 1, but 2 orders for HSTs.
So, perhaps some reasons for rejoicing in the coming years.
And I'm pretty sure that among the 40 TGV-M which SNCF may still order, some will end up in Barcelona Sants.
Aug 11, 2026, 12:39 PM@pglux.bsky.social Or maybe the new high speed fleet from Renfe frees up a few S-100 for France for a few more years.
Is Perpignan - Barcelona TER distance, or is this squarely in the Long Distance High-Speed train service ?
Aug 11, 2026, 10:47 AM@sobex.eurosky.social Both. A regional train cross border would make sense (as you sort of can do, with crap times, via Portbou), and more Paris - BCN long distance with stops only in Perpignan, Figueres and Girona.
@jon ehm. You know that as well as I do, but for the sake of the readers: those four are so poorly spaced, you can count them as 2 or 3.
Aug 11, 2026, 10:56 AM@jon
I share the frustration, sometimes even when the trip is not complex and nowhere near a border.
There are about 28 buses daily from Malaga to Granada.
There are 3 trains. The earliest gets to Granada at 10.43, and the other two get there after 6pm. Part of the line was built recently to carry these trains and has no other purpose.
@jon I get your point and fully agree, but aren't there 5 connections per day? (3 TGV from Paris to Barcelona, 1 AVE from Lyon to Barcelona and 1 AVE from Marseille to Madrid)?
Aug 11, 2026, 12:22 PM@fbausch 3 summer time, Paris-Barcelona. 2 Paris-Barcelona rest of the year.
@jon ah, that explains it. Because nobody needs good connections in winter.
Aug 11, 2026, 12:28 PM@fbausch And 2 of the 3 southbound to BCN in summer depart within an hour of each other, which is not super handy either
Aug 11, 2026, 5:54 PM@HayiWena AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH
@jon How many more stops makes that bus? that's why sometimes a bus is better than a train.
Aug 12, 2026, 2:09 PM@pvdrijst none. Fewer! Oh and it’s a high speed rail line so the train is much faster than a bus.
@jon At least Romania is looking to improve! (See the recent Railway Gazette headline about looking for integrated timetable designers)