77 borders to go, but then what?

I have just been totalling up the statistics from this autumn’s #CrossBorderRail journeys, and the total number of border railway lines I have visited now stands at 449, and there are 77 more to go – this map shows the remaining ones:

As well as the record breaking trip this autumn, I also covered all the lines I was missing Spain – Portugal, Lituania – Latvia, Latvia – Estonia, and Slovakia – Ukraine. The full map of where I have and have not been is here.

Importantly there is just 1 single properly active railway line I am missing – Rybnitsa 🇲🇩 – Klymentove 🇺🇦 in the north of Transnistria, Moldova. Vardište 🇧🇦 – Mokra Gora 🇷🇸 (a 760mm gauge tourist line) and Widnau 🇨🇭 – Wiesenrain 🇦🇹 (750mm Dienstbahn der Internationalen Rheinregulierung) interest me rather less. And beyond that all the other 74 are either dismantled lines, or planned future lines and, in the case of most of the Belgian borders shown, are former vicinal tramways.

Lines I include are everything cross border between every EU country, UK, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Moldova, and all the Balkans, and borders between any of those and Ukraine and Turkey. Or putting it the other way, border lines to Russia (inc. Kaliningrad) and Belarus, and Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are not included.

As well as the 526 lines included as “proper” border lines, there are an additional 87 transit crossings – places where a line crosses a border more than once (these are also mapped, but do not count towards my total).

With three countries – Ireland, Belgium and Serbia – making up the vast majority of the 77, with a few thousand km of cycling in 2027 I should be able to cover most of the remaining lines, and even Transnistria – the safest unsafe place I have ever been – should be doable.

Throughout this winter I aim to complete the basic documentation of all of this work so far – each border line has a fiche on the #CrossBorderRail website, much of the information drawn from the 2018 report by DG Regio of the European Commission. But I have only put photos from about 100 borders onto Flickr (Creative Commons Licensed for anyone to use), and I aim to get that all done, and linked to the fiches for each border.

Once that is done, I need to revisit my Priority Borders list – the border lines that strike me as the places where the most progress can be made the most swiftly and with the least financial outlay.

But then what?

It’d be nice to work more on a few of these cases, help make the change actually happen – so if you are reading this, and work somewhere with someone in a border region, do send them my way. There might be some useful insights I have gathered somewhere that might be useful to someone, somewhere else.

I have hours of video – both from the drone and on the ground – from many of these borders. Might making some videos about the problems and the solutions make sense? And if so, with what sort of focus? Political? Historical? Places it be nice to visit?

Or is 2027 the year when I finally bite the bullet and write a book about some of this? Either a coffee table / photo book with background of the borders, or a political polemic about how to fix Europe’s railways?

Or do I wring a bit more out of the #CrossBorderRail model, perhaps doing a #CrossBorderRail Freight project – trying to go behind the scenes of the rail freight industry? Or expand the geographic scope of my work to the caucasus and north Africa?

Or maybe this is all too serious and I go touring Eiffel Towers instead?

Anyway, I’d welcome your thoughts on what I ought to do from here. I have all winter to think about it. While I am prevaricating not archiving all the border photos!

Source: https://jonworth.eu/77-borders-to-go-but-then-what/