As families across China honour their ancestors over Tomb Sweeping Festival, the spring travel season has also kicked off — and Chinese railways are carrying more people than ever, with a new one-day record set in early April 2024. The railways are getting busy, once again.

Zürich Airport always seems to have this, that, and the other part renovated, expanded, or renewed. Everything from the toilet flush buttons to the immigration desks have been refreshed. The only thing missing: an expansion to its railway station. In this day and age where flight shaming very much remains a thing, perhaps the airport can share its bit of short-haul international flights with the trains — slash the number of planes from Zürich and Munich, Germany, and add more trains! Allow more intercontinental flights to use the airport — if you have to fly, at least make it more ecologically sound!

With expats returning and first-time foreigners inbound, it's no longer just OK for the Chinese railways to have partially bilingual signage. The world's largest HSR network needs a better English-language service — at info desks, online, everywhere. China has reopened. It's time to get China's Rail English improved, once again!

28 March 2024 (Impromptu Announcement 2): Classic Rail in China, For Cheap? For Good, Too!
Get mileage for just the equivalent of 10p — as low as it can go on a Permit to Travel in the UK, but in China, it's a short-haul full-fare ticket on a classic Green Train on Classic Rail!
The Green Trains are still here in China — and they're here for good. For cheap, of course, but also, for good...

Announcing a refresh! After "simulcasting" this, if you like, with Twitter Audio, this show is going solo — and full-length (up to about 5 minutes!). This is also being renamed as the David Feng Trainscast...
27 March 2024 (Impromptu Announcement 1): The Obsesion to Detail When Travelling...
In a recent journey to Tianjin, David Feng remarks the lack of any focus on detail — in a part of the station with very bright natural lighting — rendering a set of escalators/stairs nearly invisible for those not watching. The lack of any warning signs is in particular very worrying...

The Modern Railways Expo 2023 just wrapped up in Beijing — David Feng himself did his usual "microphone foam cover smooching" (ie: railway talk) about the China-Laos Railway, but much more importantly, stumbled across a model of... a 350 km/h cargo train in the making. It's not on the rails yet... and it's got him thinking... about maybe yet another rail transport revolution to happen...

China's national railways claims to have recorded over 830 million departures (in essence journeys) during the 62-day period from 01 July 2023 through to and including 31 August 2023. This would make it the very best summer peak travel season ever, certainly by passenger numbers. There is no surprise here; pretty much all Covid rules have died, and the anal swab of infamy absolutely is no more!

David has just returned from Hangzhou in eastern China, where he also filmed at Hangzhou West station, and taught crew Rail English for the upcoming Asian Games. He continues by spilling the beans on the new airport intercity railway connecting Tianjin into Beijing Daxing International Airport, opening later this year. Finally, he revelas that Hangzhou may well have a completely new rail hub just east of the Qiantang River in the works...

The new July 2023 timetable means that China railways can run more trains to longer destinations faster. So we decided to take a look at how the new timetables, featuring new and faster HSR trains, could be put to the acid test… an extreme timetable acid test. Could you do Beijing-Ürumqi in Xinjiang, Beijing-Lhasa in Tibet, or even across the border from Beijing to Vientiane in Laos in one day — or maximum two?...

From 15 June 2023, new timetables apply for the Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway in Northern China. 16-car trains return, and over the weekend, timetables change every day! The challenges of running China's first 350 km/h intercity high speed railway...