Eurostar has confirmed the launch of a new direct service between London and Antwerp from 14 December, a rare concrete addition to its network at a moment when the cross-Channel operator is bracing for the end of its three-decade monopoly on the tunnel. The service will add the Belgian port city as a stop on the existing London to Amsterdam route, running up to four times a day from St Pancras International. The direct journey will take two hours and 41 minutes, cutting rough

Spain's liberalised high-speed rail market has hit its first serious reversal since the pandemic, with passenger numbers falling sharply in early 2026 and a public row erupting between state operator Renfe and the competition regulator over how the downturn is being presented. Long-distance high-speed services carried 8.05 million passengers between January and March, a 21 per cent drop on the same period a year earlier, according to competition authority CNMC. Seat capacity

Irish Rail has launched a billion-euro programme to expand the country's most congested railway line, in a plan that widens one of Europe's tightest passenger bottlenecks and deepens cross-border integration on the Dublin-Belfast axis. The FourNorth project, announced by Iarnród Éireann on Friday, will add two tracks alongside the existing pair over a 14-kilometre stretch between Dublin Connolly and Malahide. The corridor currently squeezes DART, Northern Commuter, Belfast En

Hungary has unveiled one of the largest railway investment programmes in its history, committing HUF 3,550 billion to modernising the national network by 2035, in a signal that European governments are treating rail infrastructure as strategic capital expenditure rather than discretionary transport spending. Prime Minister Péter Magyar and Transport and Investment Minister Dávid Vitézy presented the Baross Gábor Railway Development Plan at Rákospalota-Újpest station in Budape

The race to break Eurostar's three-decade monopoly through the Channel Tunnel is sharpening into a contest between Europe's state-backed operators and Sir Richard Branson's Virgin, with Italy's Ferrovie dello Stato manoeuvring to reach London first. For more than thirty years, Eurostar, part of France's SNCF Voyageurs, has been the sole passenger operator through the tunnel, commanding roughly four-fifths of the Paris-London market and carrying around 20 million passengers la

DB Cargo has reached a formal agreement with worker representatives to eliminate 6,200 of 14,000 jobs in Germany by 2030, locking in a restructuring programme that Europe's largest rail freight operator hopes will satisfy Brussels and avert a forced break-up. The agreement, confirmed by chief executive Bernhard Osburg in an interview with Reuters, formalises a cost-reduction programme worth around one billion euros. DB Cargo aims to implement most of the reductions without co