Thread by @jonworth

A couple of weeks ago I wondered: what happened to Michael Cramer's work on missing railway links in Europe?

I blogged about the meagre progress 👇
jonworth.eu/revisiting-mic…

But what about making my *own* Missing Links project? And better still *visit the borders*?

The fruits of my work are here as a Google Map 👇
google.com/maps/d/viewer?…
Each marker signals a change of train. Each colour indicates a different day. Berlin is start/end.

And the route as a Google Sheet, inc. all 46 border crossings 👇
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

The route comes in at:
115 x 🚅
16562km by 🚅

10 x 🚲
192km by 🚲

2 x 🚌
1 x ⛴
2 x 🚕
156km by motor vehicle

And 30 days trip time!

OK, so what am I doing here?

I have plotted a route that crosses every one of the 32 border pairs between EU countries, and that results in 46 total border crossings

I have not chosen the fastest routes, but have aimed to cross borders that seem to offer a good cross section of the problems of European rail - some places track missing, some places no service, some places good examples to learn from

I have also tried to find rail routes that follow borders, and hence to take branch lines to do so - this leads to some legs having more changes of train that would strictly be necessary

There are of course some limitations - I have NOT covered Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein (EFTA, but not EU), and have NOT included accession countries in the Western Balkans. I have also NOT covered external rail borders of the EU - perhaps adding those would make sense?

Would it make sense to do this trip? And if I were to do it, how could I finance it? Live blogging it and tweeting it as I went along could cover a whole lot of stories I think, and would be a fun and interesting project...

Let me know what you think of the idea! And if I ought to tweak the route!

/ends

Suggestions so far:
- split it into parts (perhaps - or at the very least put rest days into the schedule!)
- a suggestion for a better DK-DE route (will consider!)
- ideas who to pitch this to
- and the need to assess what it'd cost...