Every Country's Intercity Rail, Explained
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- Intercity rail. Trains that go between cities. Which countries have it and where does it go? Watch and learn.
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0:00 - Intercity Rail
1:33 - North America
3:39 - South America
5:03 - Europe
17:48 - Africa
24:16 - Asia
34:17 - Oceania
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Classy Whale - at-least-weekly misadventures with trains and transit!
Running list of corrections:
- Indian railways are mostly electrified now, and it's uncommon to see roof riders (per the picture I used) compared to 10-20 years ago. However, crowding remains a major issue.
- Amtrak's longest /service/ is their through cars between the Texas Eagle and the Sunset Limited, linking Chicago to Los Angeles via San Antonio
- Spain's Trenhotel services are no longer operational
- I erroneously included a picture of a Czech train under Algeria, as well as using the wrong flag for Madagascar
- China no longer has slow trains between Hong Kong and the mainland
- Indonesia recently opened a regional intercity line on the island of Sulawesi
- Israel is in the process of rapidly electrifying much of their railway
- Malaysia has a small intercity line on Borneo called the North Borneo Railway, and the east/central line operates a few times a day, not once a day
- I got some details of Armenia, Denmark, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Russia, and Serbia's services wrong, or missed key parts (see comments for specifics)
Also, technically AutoTrain goes to Sanford, though it is like 20 miles north of Orlando
You should probably pin this
Thank you for your video! Please keep in mind that, in Italy, Italo private service is not better than Trenitalia Frecciarossa by any mean. Is simply a competitor. :)
Hello :) when you mentioned Spain's Iberian gauge trains you used a photo of the Tarraco Talgo touristic train. Just a small thing. Good video 👍
Little addition in denmark the highspeedline runs up to topspeed of 200km/h so 125 mph. The same is in finland.
Something to note for the DPRK is that the go-to mode of transport for my family are trains! We have our own high-security private trains for domestic and international travel, whether it's to visit factories within the country or for international summits like in Hanoi or Vladivostok. My palace has its own dedicated station! Kim Il-sung's longest train journey took place in 1984 when he visited almost every socialist country in Eastern Europe. The train ride went via China, through the Soviet Union, with stops in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania. The rest of the trip went through the Soviet Union, again. My father died in his train from a heart attack in 2011.
Limited to 60 km/h or 37 mph) due to the heavy weight, the private trains travel in groups of three: The first running ahead to check the safety of railway lines. The middle one typically carries the leader, with a time delay of between 20 minutes and an hour after the first. A third train carries additional security staff, followers and communications equipment. The electricity is turned off at stations so that other trains cannot run.
do you defacate? I heard that you do not
Of course not. He's too busy driving the train, doing the catering, and building the track all, at the same time! @@marsillinkow
Buddy we know that North Korea is not as bad as media says
This is your magnum opus! Nobody can say you didn't do your research after this! One typically doesn't think of the Caribbean when it comes to trains, but Cuba has quite the network! In fact, Cuba was actually the VERY first country in the Spanish-speaking world to get trains! Yes, even before Spain itself! Cuba's railway history began in October 1834 during the colonial period, when the Queen Regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies approved the building of the first line. This would be built by the Compañía de Caminos de Hierro de la Habana between Havana and Bejucal at 27.5 km or 17.1 miles in November 1837. Spain on the other hand wouldn't get trains until 1848 when the first line was between Barcelona and Mataró.
And Cuba has such an array of rolling stock, like EMD G8s from the US, DR-Baureihe VT 2.09 railbuses from East Germany/DDR, DVM-9s from Hungary, TE114Ks from the Soviet Union, Wagon Pars coaches from Iran, and DF7G-Cs from China!
I see you everywhere.
I feel like every argument to this video will have a lot of controversy, because no argument is completely right and no argument is completely wrong
Except for the boring tunnel, that one’s just plain wrong
This has got to be the most informational train video ever, so much packed into 35 min but still very clear. I can’t wait for your british isles journey and other videos to come.
26:50 they did kinda opened up a brand new "intercity" railway in Sulawesi earlier this year so that makes 3 islands as a whole. It's singular standard gauge line operated by a DMU, fun fact the state railway cant find anything from Europe and Japan to run on it that they commanded INKA to make a DMU in a span of 6 months that led to queationable design choices
Questionable design choice lmao, one DMU is extremely ugly looking while other is literally Jakarta's LRT train
A bigger correction for Poland: The intercity services are operated by the state-owned company PKP Intercity (which is a subsidiary of the PKP group - Polish State Railways). It is divided into multiple classes - Express Intercity Premium (that's the high-speed Pendolino, It runs not only between Warsaw and Cracow but also from Warsaw to Gdansk, Wroclaw and Katowice), Express Intercity (a train with higher levels of comfort than a regular Intercity, It's hauled by a locomotive that can go above 160km/h), Intercity (your standard intercity train, it is either a high-quality loco-hauled train or an EMU, It rides at speeds around 160km/h and has new or modernised coaches) and TLK (which literally stands for "cheap railways", it usually runs outside of the mainlines and uses legacy coaches, it rarely has AC and usually provides intercity services on unelectrified lines)
The regional services in Poland are... complicated to say the least. There is the POLREGIO which used to be owned by the PKP group, however now It's collectively controlled by the local governments in which they ride. It's not that great because unlike the PKP Intercity, it doesn't get as much money, thus the train sets are usually outdated 1970s EN57 EMUs. That's mainly why some local governments, like the Mazovian and Silesian, decided to create their own regional train companies. These are called respectively Koleje Mazowieckie and Koleje Śląskie (of course there are more of them!!) and feature new and modernised trains like the Stadler FLIRT, Newag Impuls and PESA Elf EMUs with comfortable interiors and better service overall
Yeah Singapore doesn't have intercity rail services, but they used to! There used to be six times daily intercity services between Tanjong Pagar and Kuala Lumpur, with Bukit Timah station as an additional Singapore station, but service was truncated to Woodlands Checkpoint. Why did this happen? Well, it's complicated. Under the Railway Act 1918, the land that made up the railway was given to the Federated Malay States government from the Straits Settlements for a period of 999 years. So basically, even after Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia in 1965, this land would still be owned by the Malaysian government. Singapore wanted the land returned to them.
Singapore moved their immigration/customs from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands in 1998, but Malaysia insisted on keeping theirs at Tanjong Pagar. Malaysia and Singapore finally agreed to scrap the Railway Act at a leaders' retreat in 2010 (they first did so in 1990, but there was a deadlock), where Malaysia was allowed to remain at Woodlands Train Checkpoint while the rest of the line would be truncated and become a rail trail (called the Rail Corridor). Bukit Timah station remains conserved, while Tanjong Pagar station is preserved.
I hope singapore and malaysia reconnected with railway service
Maybe hugh speed train from singapore-kuala lumpur and beyond?( Bangkok,ho chi min,jakarta)
They tried to reach an agreement regarding HSR starting form Jurong, Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. But this plan was discarded in 2018 following MY general election. MY government paid millions in SGD to SG for the unilateral termination of agreement. With RTS finishing in 2025, HSR plans seems dim to me.@@afl6786
Singapore and Malaysia still technically have an intercity/international train, the shuttle across the causeway between Johor Bahru city and Woodlands
Some minor corrections:
1. the conventional service between Hong Kong and mainland China is cancelled after high speed rail station in Hong Kong is opened.
2. Malaysia also has intercity railway service in its Eastern part: Sabah state railway operates service between Kota Kinabalu and Tenom
Man, this is something I've wanted to see in some fasion for a while. It's interesting how many parallels one can draw from other nation's rail networks. Thanks for all the research and work you must've put into this video!
Small correction on Algeria: main corridors actually run more modern, faster diesel trains which run twice a day (if I remember correctly). Those that you showed are mostly sleeper trains nowadays. Great video though, I imagine this took an enormous amount of effort ^^
I think that the most important thing that this video highlights is that Railways are present in almost every country in the World and thus people are (theoretically) able to travel anywhere by train.
As a New Zealander, I appreciated that you started and ended the video with us. The Capital Connection (the Regional train vs Intercity image) at 0:47 is my local service
Many thanks for the video
27:06 the whoosh 😭
In Australia three lines that are considered suburban but actually operate along intercity routes one of which even uses dedicated intercity rollingstock,
These are
-The Mandurah line in WA which travels the 72km journey using Transperth B sets, from the largest city in WA (Perth) to its second largest (Mandurah)
-The Gold Coast line in QLD which travels the 80km+ journey using Queensland Rail NGRS, from the largest city in QLD (Brisbane) to its the second largest (Gold Coast), services on this line additionally continue to the airport after going through the city
-The Sunshine Coast line also in QLD which travels the 180km, usually 105km journey using Queensland Rail NGRS, SMU 260s and IMUs, from the largest city in QLD (Brisbane) to the Sunshine Coast Hinterland with services running to both Nambour and sometimes Gympie North
These sound like the Montauk Branch here in the eastern US - video coming next week on that!
Nice! 🙂
For Austria you picked two fictional / hardly operational trains ;-)
5:57 this is some concept art of... something
6:06 this is a Bombardier Talent 3 which was returned to the manufacturer after a short period of grave delays and problems. Now, new trainsets all are Siemens Desiro Mainline EMUs.
6:44 Čapljina = "Tchahplyeenah". Now, there are at least international seasonal Talgos to the sea in Croatia - to Ploče - again.
The trains which were sent back to germany were the newly develope Talent 3 sets not Talent 2
@@sebastianhofmann17 Thanks for the correction
The TH-cam algorithm is working magic keep it up!
Some additions to Hungary:
There are MÁV operated sleeper trains running every single night from Budapest to: Stuttgart (via Vienna, Salzburg, Munich), Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Kiev (might be suspended due to the war), Bucharest and during the Summer season there are also 3 sleeper lines running to the Croatian Coast.
There is a Private Rail Operator called GySEV-Raaberbahn, of which 40% is co-owned by the Hungarian and Austrian Government, it mainly provides regional services in the Austro-Hungarian border region and provides one of the best border crossing rail connections in Europe.
Italy has actually invested a lot of money to renew its rolling stock for regional trains! We’ve got tons of new models! (Pop, Rock, Jazz, Blues, TAF, Minuetto…)
Though the regionale you showed truly was an evergreen (pun intended) classic, and somebody might even say it was irreplaceable.
But thank God they’ve been replaced!
Edit: Also, some regions, such as Lombardy for example, have their own train operator (Trenord in this case) which has nothing to do with Trenitalia.
A lovely encyclopaedia of intercity rail in video form! Great job !
Caleb had a field day pronouncing the town names
I love how the the train photos start out good then deteriorate
I know you had to put in a TON of countries so I forgive some minor mistakes. But still heres some quick supplementary info and corrections on Denmark, my home country. While electric trains mainly run from Helsingør and Copenhagen to Padborg, the country is electrifying much of its network, including reaching Esbjerg in the west in 2015. Most intercity operations are dieselpowered though with a max speed of 180km/h or 112mph.
Intercity rail in Denmark mainly consists of 2 service types. Intercity, and Lyntog. Intercity provides slower services stopping in many regional centres and some smaller towns, while Lyntog (or Lightning trains if translated) run with much fewer stops and faster journey times. Both service types run very often with once per hour departures on most routes but neither feature any substantial catering, so dont expect a cafe car onboard.
Additionally there are secondary routes, mainly in Jutland, the western part of the country run by Arriva and in Northern Jutland/Vendsyssel operated by Nordjyske Jernbaner. Both of these have more characteristics of regional rail but serve long trips around 2 hours in length each like Aalborg to Skagen, Aarhus to Skjern via Herning, Aarhus to Struer via Viborg and Vejle to Struer via Herning.
The most popular route in Denmark is Copenhagen to Aalborg via Odense and Aarhus, linking Denmarks 4 largest cities on a single rail line. The busiest part is Copenhagen to Aarhus. Most of the network is also being upgraded to electric operation and speeds of 125mph with brand new trains from Alstom.
Fun video, a bit too much focus on the boomer express's in Australia by Journey Beyond, which are just expensive tourist trains for retired people. More focus on the real intercity services would have been nice, as the network especially in Victoria, NSW and Brisbane is very extensive.
How the Indian Railways was shown was shown in the photo of Bangladesh. There was a blue colored train on which there were many people, it was very crowded but it was from Bangladesh.
and for Algeria, the trainset with a CD logo on it (which is a logo of Czech Railways) does not seem to confuse anyone
Great job!! Thanks for doing this!
This is really great work that took a lot of effort, good job
Caleb, great video giving an overview of intercity rail around the world! It must have taken a ton of research in order to put this video together.
A video that i never expected 😄
I appreciate your time for putting all this information in a video.
Small correction Serbia has one “high speed” train called Sokol between Novi Sad abd Belgrade
YESSSSS! GO AUSTRALIA!!! As an australian living in New South Wales (a state in Australia), I'm often disappointed when Australia is forgotten and left out of videos similar to this one, and I'm very happy that this video has not forgotten us in the land down under, hehe
Thank you for making this
Awesome video, the research must have been hell for this! Now I want to go to Etria and ride that whacky sometimes-steam-train line. I also have a reason to go to Bolivia now, those railbuses definitely sound intriguing
Bolivia also has a cool train cemetery by their famous Uyuni salt flat
That was a fantastic video!
This is just the kind of video I’ve been wanting.
Great video, very comprehensive :D
Thank you for planning my trips for the next decade
Great video! Very interesting and informative! It must have taken a lot of time to make. A minor correction in the introduction in 1:27, the image beside the Singapore map is actually Taipei Metro, Taiwan. The photo is likely shot from Beitou station, Red Line.
Wow very detail, respect
Hi. I warched ur videos when you went to Morocco as a reference for my then future travel to Morocco back in August. You look like my Hong Kong railfan friend as well haha… And btw I took the photo of the Indonesian train which has a watermark in it. I uploaded on Wikipedia back in 2020. The train is called Sri Tanjung, a subsidised Economy Class train running from Jogja to Banyuwangi which is just across Bali hauled by a CC 201 (GE U18C) in long hood forward between Surabaya Gubeng Station and Banyuwangi Ketapang Station
Thanks for the info, great pic!
Thx for the hard work
Small corrections about Ireland:
You are showing the entire train network of the country. Dublin and Cork actually have diesel ‘commuter’ trains. These are not to be confused with the DART which is electric urban rail in Dublin.
Also you didn’t mention the operator -it’s Iarnród Éireann or Irish Rail.
Would like to mention, Singapore USED to have a railway line from Woodlands Checkpoint in the north to the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station in the south, however it closed around 2011 as KTM (the company running the railway line) ceased operations.
Serbia has a high speed rail from Belgrade to Novi Sad and in the next year to Subotica and Budapest in Hungary
Dude, this was an impressive video, congrats! A little correction for Hungary: MÁV runs most of the trains in the country, but in the west GYSEV (joint Hungarian-Austrian company) operates most of the lines
Hi mate, nicely done on the video, it's really interesting.
For your information, Hong Kong's intercity rail service KTT (by MTR) has been suspended since the pandemic, and I don't think it will resume again as the tracks in the Terminal on the Hong Kong side has been removed since 2022. But still, MTR also has a MTR Vibrant Express High Speed Rail Service from the city's High Speed Terminal in Kowloon to Mainland China, built, run and managed by PRC's China Railway Highspeed (CRH).
Once again, well done.
26:41 there's another island that having an railway network, Sulawesi, havin an train that connect Makasar to pare-pare with lenght 145 Km, and the and the rail gauge is diffrent from rail in java and sumatra, sulawesi is having 1.435mm, java and sumatra is 1.067mm. (Cmiiw/Correct me if i wrong)
Most of the Israel railway network is electrified. The line to Jerusalem was the first one but since them most of the network was electrified and in a few months last section to Haifa in the North and one of the two lines connecting to Be'er Sheva in the south will be fully electrified. Electrification will be finished in 2025 with the exception of 3 single track branches, 2 of them are about will be electrified in an upcoming upgrade.
As for Spain, It has the second largest high speed rail network in the world and the largest per capita with more than 4000km in operation and many more under construction (on the 30th of this month the high speed connection to Asturias will open).
As someone mentioned there is no Trenhotel service, renfe stopped this service due to the pandemic but this only served as an excuse to shut it down as it was loosing money. Lately, with the new rise of night trains in Europe they are thinking of maybe bringing it back.
This brings us to the second thing, there is no real direct connection between Spain and Portugal.
The last direct train between Madrid and Portugal was the Trenhotel and now the only direct connection is from portugal to Vigo, near the border. The plan was to have a high speed connection but while the Spanish side is under construction the Portuguese did nothing and now they plan to build one with Iberian gauge and not to the connecting point that was agreed on in the past. We;ll see what happens ith that.
13:37 the train pictured does not operate the Interregional services, that rolling stock only operates the suburban services in Porto and the surrounding regions. Interregional and Regional services' rolling stock is very diverse partly because some lines are not electrified and have very low demand.
Edit: I also noticed that in the Intercidades map the line doesn't go up to Valença but there is 1 Intercidades per day that serves that line.
Nice vid bro
This video hasn't even been published yet, but I'm already here to nitpick that you either didn't mention my country or got some tiny detail wrong.
(This was joke, don't yell at me)
I looked up how to pronounce Lahti if that helps
hi the caleb britton of the youtube channel @@ClassyWhale
In addition to Westbahn already being mentioned for Austria, a significant portion of the trains along the namesake western line for both Westbahn and Railjet connect onwards to Munich, with a good number of Railjets terminating in Budapest. I'd guess like half of them + ICEs that extend from lines terminating in Munich
1:33 - North America
3:39 - South America
5:03 - Europe
17:48 - Africa
24:16 - Asia
34:17 - Oceania
35:44 - Antarctica
some notes:
eurostar and eurocity aren't related. their simply a category of service like ic, re, it etc. their not necessarily high speed, just intercity trains going on long routes between two or more countries. its pretty complicated though
the bar - belgrade route is really beautiful. for now the train doors don't close, allowing you to stick your head out and get awesome videos. hopefully they don't fix this soon!
three other significant operators here in switzerland are BLS, SOB, and RhB. The first two are owned jointly by the government and cantons, providing regional services, and the last runs the glacier express and bernina express
You’re right about Norway. the reason our trains sometimes are slow is due to terrain and where the tracks are located. We are slowly creating faster tracks but we also need to preserve our nature.
Great video!
Some corrections
Armenia: Yerevan-Tbilisi sleeper train rides to Batumi during summer season
Azerbaijan: most intercity trains are suspended during Covid Pandemy except Baku-Ganja-Agstafa service
Belarus: since 2021 there are also 2 daily international trains from Minsk to Moscow (Lastochka)
Czech Republic: trains Prague-Brno/Ostrava ride through Pardubice, no through the Vysočina region
Kyrgyzstan: Tashkent Issyk-Kul train is suspended during Covid Pandemy, all trains from Central Asia to Moscow are suspended until 2024 (all international trains ends near the Volga River).
Tajikistan: there are no passenger trains to Amudarya river. Domestic services: Dushanbe-Kulob (once a week) and Dushanbe-Khujand through Uzbekistan (in the spring and autumn).
Uzbekistan: high speed trains ride from Tashkent to Samarkand, Bukhara and Karshi, no to the south part of the country. Domestic sleeper trains ride from Tashkent and Andizhan to other cities and international trains to RU, KZ and TJ. There are also a few local trains, but their timetables aren´t on internet.
holy shit, that must've taken forever to research and produce.
great work mate, loved to see India and our VB Express :)
Thank you so much for this masterpiece !! How long did the research take you ?
2.5 months!
A recent corridor also opened between Agartala in India and Akhaura in Bangladesh
1:26 the image is Taipei Metro's c381 train, i think you want to put SBS's c651
Being from Asturias, Spain. (North) The narrow gauge it's called FEVE, it has some regional trains, going to; Ferrol-Oviedo, Oviedo-Santander, Santander-Bilbao y Santander-Leon. Usually 2 services a day per way. Also has commuter services, but mostly its one rail only. So it makes that most of commuter trains can be between an hour of wait if you lost your train.
A filler on Bulgaria, since i know its hard to find info about it and i felt it was a bit short, recently private operators have been allowed passenger service on the railways tracks, the country used to have direct trains (stopping only in the big cities), but those were phased out, an HSR-ish route is constructed between the capital and its second and fourth biggest cities, as well as the turkish border. Speeds are slow, rolling stock is old german or soviet, but recently seeing improvements, trains are local and there are 8 main lines with a lot of branches/subservices.
Thank you for the video, amazing to have this information all in one place! Cheers
8:23 If SNCF is state owned, actually, it is split into a lot of franchises, and regarding passenger trains, competition is building up.
For the high speed trains, you have the private Inoui franchise (which is owned by SNCF) that runs most of the TGV services in France, Ouigo high-speed franchise, also owned by SNCF, as mentioned in the video. For now, competition is mainly building up on the Paris - Lyon route by the Trenitalia high speed franchise "Frecciarossa" and Renfe more recently, which also brought back the services between Barcelona and Marseille after the venture between SNCF and Renfe was discontinued earlier this year. Renfe uses AVE S-100, derived from the TGV Atlantique, before the Talgo Avril enters service in 2024, while Trenitalia uses the ETR 1000 "Zefiro" units. For next TGV model that is currently in testing progress, the TGV M (derived from the Avelia Liberty units due to replace the Acela express currently in use units), it is due to enter service on the LGV Sud Méditerranée, between Marseille and Montpellier in 2024, before being extended to all of France.
For Intercity trains, it isn't under competition yet, it is a state public service. There are not so many routes left because they are doubled by the TGV or regional trains. Also, loco hauled trains on the Paris - Austerlitz to Toulouse via Limoges, will soon be withdrawn from service as the new CAF Oxygene trains will enter service in late 2024 or 2025.
There's the Ouigo classique franchise as well that is worth to mention. It basically doubles the TGV routes of Paris - Gare de Lyon to Lyon and Paris - Austerlitz to Nantes via Orléans and Tours, it actually belongs to Oslo, a venture created by SNCF, and they put old BB22200s electric bicurrent locomotives with old Corail refurbished carriages. Although it doesn't compete with the SNCF Intercités franchise.
Then for regional services, it is in the process of being under competition, with the South east region Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur having another operator of the regional network, Transdev. But it is mainly done by SNCF under regions supervision.
Also not to mention 2 special services : the TER 200 between Strasbourg and Basel (Swiss), AKA the only TER that goes 200 km/h (or 125 mph) on all the journey, and a cross region service, the Interloire between Le Croisic and Orléans via Nantes, Angers and Tours, which are run under Pays de La Loire and Centre Val de Loire supervision, being mostly at 200 km/h (125 mph), except on the Angers to Tours via Saumur Rive Gauche section due to presence of level crossings that limits to 160 km/h (100 mph)
I hope this explains a bit more how the French network works, and the actors on them because it is currently moving a lot.
This is another brilliant video however you mentioned the Australian city “Adelaide” which doesn’t actually exist as it is just a lie created by the government
what
Ah like Wyoming or Bielefeld DE
@@ClassyWhale That's a joke. But it is the only city with diesel suburban (commuter) rail lines, while all other suburban rail systems in Australian capitals are electrified.
@@jacktattersall9457 Two of the V/Line services also serve suburban Melbourne stations and the Stony Point line is also unelectrified.
@@deanstyles2567 I'm excluding V/Line as they are suburban lines that don't serve the inner metropolitan area. Adelaide has all but one of its lines entirely unelectrified.
Caleb DID do his research
31:20 Intercity Train eXpress-Saemaul/ITX-새마을(formerly Saemaul-Ho) also, Saemaul-Ho with Diesel locomotive now runs ONLY at Janghang line.
31:24 Nuriro-Ho and Mugunghwa-Ho is Same(yes they share the same fare).
also, there are ITX-Maum/ITX-마음(for replacing Mugunghwa-Ho for a price of Saemaul) and ITX-청춘 for Yongsan - Chuncheon.
As an Antwerp to Brussels commuter, I'll tell you that route is extremely popular. Too popular. I think in fact Gent and Leuven IC trains are even more popular.
You can't call that an intercity, right ?! Does Belgium really have 'intercity' at all ? on a 45km long track they stop at about every station between the Ant-Bru cities (and takes 40-55 minutes !). That is more like a regional commute train, on probably the most important rail line in Belgium...
The same with Antwerp to Gent. 60km, 4-5-6 stops and takes a whopping 1 hr !
that should easily be doable in 35 minutes.
imo opinion they should do direct or 1 stop intercities and alternate with commute trains stopping at all the in between stations .
@@lws7394 Well, the Belgian population is also pretty spread out, so what we might consider cities are smaller and closer together than in many other countries. Lokeren and Sint-Niklaas are just considered cities. Still I would argue that Belgium definitely does have Intercity rail. On what I think is the most important railway line of the country (Oostende-Liège) trains only stop in provincial capitals and run at pretty high speed, and those are definitely no regional services. Don't get me wrong, there absolutely is room for improvement in terms of train scheduling in this country, intercity trains round where I live are even worse for stopping than between Gent and Antwerpen, but it's not like our trains are never useful over longer distances, even today.
@@lws7394 You are incorrect. The IC trains only stop in major cities. Lokeren, Mechelen, Sint-Niklaas are large population hubs in their own right, and reducing service there to save 10-15 minutes between the real A tier cities would be a huge down grade. In general frequency over speed is better for everyone when you consider only waiting 15-20 minutes on these trunk lines instead of waiting for a hypothetical hourly regional express. You have to consider the actual human geography of Belgium and not simply the main population nodes. Of course I would be happier if my commute was 10 minutes faster because the train didnt stop in mechelen, but when you actually see the ridership Mechelen causes you understand that would be a profound downgrade to the service system wide. And that is not to mention the benefits of the smaller stations for transfers and branch lines, you in fact often save time with these intermediate stops which effectively diffuse demand for transfers allowing you to transfer away from the big city to access tertiary destinations.
Incredibly well put together video! I've always been interested in the various rail networks outside of the U.S., and started a bit of research about these systems a few years ago, but I wasn't able to obtain too much info off hand. Thank you so much for summarizing these diverse railway networks!
Fyi, indonesia is newly open new train route in sulawesi island, actually already open for a year,maybe yout source not updated yet?
16:48 You showed it a little wrongly, in the first photo there is an ordinary local train that makes all or most of the stops, in the second one on the left there is a locomotive used for sleeper trains, on the right is an intercity one. (The map you showed is not exactly an intercity map, but it shows the main connections.) But still, you said the main information correctly. Therefore, difficulty of making such a video, some mistakes can be ignored.. Good video by the way, you did a good job
Besides ÖBB, Austria has Westbahn as a privately run intercity line and RegioJet for trains to the Czech republic. A number of private operators are rather commuter/rural and not intercity.
GySEV/Raaberbahn operates in both Austria and Hungary and has some intercity trains between Sopron and Budapest in Hungary (now equipped with secondhand UIC-Z cars ex ÖBB).
Uh I think there are several mistakes about Malaysia. The Eastern DMU+Intercity services have about 7 trains per direction daily (though about 2.5 complete trip lengths per day), plus 1-2 night trains per day. Also Sabah in East Malaysia has a railway, though whether you would consider it intercity is open to interpretation.
Thanks for the input, I think my source was outdated!
You forgot birdlandia (Rep. of Birdlandia) which has Great Larkmanshire Coast, Birdlandian, Juhongese (Juhong is the capital) Waterlink (connecting Liskampton and other places around it) Wellyn Bay transport (it’s in the name) and ChannelStar (connecting Birdlandia with Britain and France!)
What are you talking about?
I’m from Australia and I didn’t know any of these except Indian Pacific and V Line (because I’m from Melbourne)!
14:04 - it is not an express train, it is a commuter train or S-Bahn (depends on region) aka "elektrichka". Russia indeed has intercity expresses, wich are primely served by Siemens Desiro ("Lastochka") trains in Moscow, S-Petersburg and South Russia regions. May be somewhere else, idk. But most intrcities are sleepers, as we have a realy large gaps between major cities. Thanks for vid
Thanks for the details! Admittedly Russia was not the easiest country to figure out so that helps a lot :-)
@@ClassyWhale yep, its a bit complicated and not, lets say, rational. For example we have very few IC trains with loco and sitting coaches like in Europe (I know only Moscow-Tula-Kursk-Belgorod and Moscow-Ryazan'-Voronezh routes in Central Russia), but guess, there are some local trains in deep country. Most of them are EMUs or sleepers. Rapid trains also used to work on two lines: Moscow-Kazan (Siemens trains - "Sapsans") and Moscow-Nizhiy Novgorod (both Sapsan lines and Spanish Talgo Intercity, wich called "Strizh" here). Also we had "Alegro" rapid train form S-Petersburg to Helsinki, but it was withdrown dew to border closure. The fan fact of Russian train services is that trains are named after birds here. "Sapsan" is peregrine falcon, "Strizh" is swift, "Lastochka" is swallow, "Ivolga" (Moscow S-Bahn trains) is oriole and "Orlan" (RA-3 DMUs) is white tailed eagle (dunno why, actually) 🙂
@@ClassyWhale but you are quite correct about Armenia exept one thing: about a month ago they estabilished a commuter route between Gyumri and Vanadzor (2 trips a day). Also there are two types of trains to Gyumri from the capital: regular "elektrichka" type all stops train and express with no stops. Tomorrow I will ride the slow one to Gyumri and will ride express to Yerevan on Sunday. also hope to use night train to Tbilisi this winter 😀
@@ivanorlanthe Vanadzor-Gyumri toute was just a test one apparently. It was stopped as far as I know. I btw travelled two times between Yerevan and Gyumri by train, one time on the Soviet ER2 (not good) and another time on the new EP2D ones (much better, but very small)
@@o_s-24oh, i see. Didnt new it was a test 😢. As for old trains I guess they serve on "slow" oll-stops trips and expresses are new EPs. Well I rode Sevan-Yerevan on ancient "round head" ER2 train this summer, it was ok, but wooden benches could hurt your back thats a fact
17:32 Just like to point out a mistake Enterprise services are never delayed because of security alerts anymore, not since the 1990s. The main reason these services are delayed is due to the aging rolling stock comprised of a 201 locomotive, built in the early 1990s, a MK3 generator van and 7 DD Stock carriages with a DVT. Iarnrod Eireann and Northern Ireland Railways recently released a tender for a manufacturer to supply new bi-modal high speed trains for the route.
Correction for Poland: The Central Rail Line (Centralna Magistrala Kolejowa, CMK) actually connects the capital with the Katowice metropolitan region (not Kraków), and is supposed to have the speed limit increased to 250 km/h by 2025. Trains to Kraków travel on the Central Rail Line as far as Włoszczowa, and then over two slower lines to reach Kraków.
26:38 I lived there
My favorite country with intercity rail outside of the US are: UK, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Peru and Japan!
Good video , im a Trainspotter from italy
Noo, this us going to be released after I sleep
so for slovenia, you nailed the ICS, but "passenger trains" that you are referring to are actually called local passenger trains. These are the slowest ones on main lines and branches, then we have Regional trains that serve local branchlines but make less stops, inter citys are also faster but contrary to regional, they serve mainlines. then we also have eurocity, euronight and international that are faster and go to other countries.
also i just wanted to say that sometimes the line between a regional and intercity is not clear, some RG also operate on mainlines, but ICs never on branches
Latvia's train to the west coast city of Liepāja actually very recently started running the entire week instead of just twice a week! One train going each way every day, two trains each way on Sundays. Unfortunately, that is an achievement in this country...
5:35
If you're in a high-speed train, the gauge change dosen't matter in Spain. The entire AVE network is built with standard gauge and allows full-speed crossings into France.
15:17 The Spanish Trenhotel nigth trains don't operate anymore since 2020, and the picture used at 15:15 belongs to a very old type of train (Talgo III) that was discontinued in 2014. Please update your information.
Also it would have been nice if you at least mentioned that there are wildly different types of conventional train services, plus the unique Alvia and Euromed which are a mix of conventional and high speed, changing between both networks and gauges on long distance trips.
15:25 Oh and the networks operated by regions are _not_ intercity trains at all, more like extended commuter lines around the main cities.
PS I understand that it takes a ton of work to put together such a vast amount of information, so I hope you can make an improved version later on with all the feedback provided by the comments
Small correction on vandebharat (india)
Vande Bharat trains have a top speed of 200km/hr but are operated at maximum 140km/hr because of safety and track reasons
Greetings from Canada !
VIA's 𝐶𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑛 transcontinental train indeeds runs from Toronto to Vancouver, but your map implies it starts in Montreal.
Ontario Northland Railway's northern terminus in James Bay, Moosonee, is pronounced "Moose-ah-NEE" 🫎 .
California Zephyr is Not the longest Amtrak service this goes to Texas Eagle, specifically the ones that continue to LA.
Those are through cars, not a whole train!
@@ClassyWhale but they still form a single service. I mean looking closer to home this is how most of the Central European night trains operate. A train leaving Warsaw is made in eqal part of cars headed to Vienna(soon Munich), Prague and Budapest. By the time you reach Vienna, the Peague and Budapest cars are gon, but in their place youll find ones coming from Berlin.
Corrections about North Macedonia:
We do not have good ridership due to the tracks being very old and we have a small fleet of trains. There are mainly modern cheap Chinese trains or old Yugoslav trains, Macedonian rail is horribly managed and not even the most important line(Skopje-Bitola) can be managed sometimes. All trains have to stop at all stations, even if it's to nowhere and trains that are east of the A1/Vardar river and west of Skopje are almost non-existent.
7:54 Estonia does have electric trains too
Fun fact about the uks train system it has a lot of seperate companies but wales trains are ran by transport for wales and scotland trains are ran by scot rail which are both goverment owned entities. The uk rail network gets more complicated e.g in liverpool there is a local oparator called Merserail which oparates a simmiar around the city and goes to a few olaces near the city like chester. Merseyrail is owned by Nederlandse Spoorwegen. A lot of train oparators have to also run local services e.g south eastern which runs london to dover high speed service also runs local services. The uks best intercity train is the pendilino 390
Also the Great Southern train doesn't go into Melbourne, it goes to Adelaide from Brisbane
The through-car on the Texas Eagle from Chicago to LA via San Antonio is a much longer trip than the California Zephyr.
Yes, but it's not the longest entire train
something to note with chile, there are a LOT, But A LOT, of abandoned tracks/not very used intercity trains, like Ferrocaril del norte Arica, or a more used Alameda-Nos, that is actually a intercity train, cause of "Comunas", are like Queens, or Manhattan in NYC or some of london, and its a separated city under Region Metropolitana De Santiago, is the capital city, like CABA, but BA, is a bigbigbig city, with more than 100km wide, but, there are partidos, the same that in chile, separated cities, but united under BA, And in chile the same, different cities, united under santiago.
I've been there, and the Alameda Nos train (which I rode in its entirity) is absolutely not Intercity.
Indonesia has trains on 3 islands... Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and next year will also be built on the island of Bali
Just wanted to say that the Regional-Express in Germany had nothing to do with the İntercity or for what did you include it?Even though Flixtrain is like an İntercity train it is not listed at one.
Intercity in concept, not brand
Also, Spain suspended pretty much all of its Trenhotel trains since 2020.
Hey , im from spain and the trenhotel branch is dead. there is no night trains in spain, cheers
Philippines no trains 😭😭😭
About North Macedonia: The fast train Thessaloniki - Belgrade is not in service at all since 2019. And the green map you have found is completely wrong (i just wish we had that abundant network😅). And also you have included a photo of Kosovan Nohab diesel loco among all the Macedonian ones.
26:53 Argo Bromo Anggrek's travel time is 6 hours, not 9 hours
Not according to Wikipedia
@@ClassyWhale well actually its 8 hours the last i checked and also according to indonesian wikipedia (the english one is not really reliable)