#DavidTrainMic: Recent Episodes
David Feng - Trains Plus
David Feng, world train traveller, shares his world of train knowledge and experiences with you. Unscripted, authentic, informative, insightful — David hits 'record' at the microphones and just launches away about All Things Trains! Across Switzerland, China, and around the world.
Overloaded trains remain a problem in South Asia — Bangladesh, in particular, but India is also seeing a lot of riders. In China, this was previously a problem as well — people were even getting onboard via the windows!... Things are, however, quite different these days in the High Speed era...
Want to take a sh*t in China's railway stations? Not so fast. To the uninitiated, half trying to use a squat toilet can well be folks to feel it's s like bloody murder. Yet it didn't have to be... and thankfully, it's no longer really the case. The throne toilet we're used to is making its way back...
What's the "tallest" (as in: station at highest elevation) High Speed railway station in the world? Much as yours truly is a Swiss, it's not in Switzerland — or Europe. Enter Shandan Racecourse/Shandanmachang railway station, which at around 3'600 metres above sea level, is as "up high" as it gets for an HSR station...
Talk about spending time in front of the onboard microphone! Classic Rail services in China are known to have long, varying-in-topics, music-rich, and occasionally news in the onboard announcements. You're told how long your next leg will be, but also how to stay alert and avoid fraudsters on the go. Love it or loath it, it's what makes Chinese Classic Trains — the Green Trains — them, themselves!
Loud/annoying/effective enough door close chimes fast/slow enough to ensure ontime departures? Thick enough rubber strips to prevent the door slamming into your fingers and crushing your bones? As a commuter, specialist, enthusiast, and just everyday-traveller with the railways, I've been on, or seen, some networks where doors are done right — and some that struggle. The last thing we want is for people to be dragged with a door shut — and rider taken hostage!
It's supposed to be a Green way to get around, but pre-2008, the Beijing Subway suffered from a paper-intensive, outdated ticketing system making frequent journeys rather less attractive. These days, though, it's all smartcards and QR codes, making the system smarter — and genuinely Greener...
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...
In Switzerland you're not allowed to do your shopping on Sundays as a general rule – except for at railway stations. And, about 20 years ago, even on board trains as a trial…
Orange trains, amazing interchanges, and the obsession with the "big egg" — suggestively-named stadia, futuristically-designed stations, and a smart ticketing and seat assignment system on Taiwan High Speed Rail. Looking back at my 2010 journey there...
Here's a look at the rest of the Beijing Subway network... those without numbers in their line names. Including trams, maglevs, and airport links!
The Beijing Subway is a genuine Brobdingnagian Monstrosity with close to 30 lines at a mere glance. Today, here's a look at all the lines with NUMERALS in it... because a fair number more have NAMES! (We haven't even done the trams and maglev yet!)
What's not to love about Zürich main station (Zürich Hauptbahnhof)? You can hop on a train across the city, across the country, or across the continent. That, for one, is to be loved. Less loved, though, are the many — at times feeling even helter-skelter — platform areas. David Feng, as a Swiss from Zürich, helps you sort this out!
The plan to give Switzerland's most populous city a metro line failed at the ballot box, yet even before voters sent those plans to that great big train shed in the sky, a few parts of the network was already built — and can be visited today, to see what would have been quite an ambitious network...
The Jubilee, Central, even Waterloo & City lines are often packed with passengers. Ditto for the Northern, Piccadilly, even District lines, and of course, the Bakerloo. Yet the Metropolitan was here first... and is often a bit lost, or more likely, forgotten, in the crowds. But travel on the Met, and you'll experience quite a different London Underground...
Picking the very best seat is now all the rage on trains — get Seat 61! No, Seat 3F! But what about the 6-person compartments... they're there, but not everywhere now. Have the way we're getting around by rail changed as compartments onboard seem to be less frequently seen?
Zürich is known for its rail megahub, but there's also a lake — and alongside it, both local and even international railway routes, as well as tiny stations on the causeway by Rapperswil you might never have heard of!...
Covid and locked borders won't make Portugal-Singapore happen overnight as the longest rail journey which can be travelled on by passengers... so here's one I did before across borders (Beijing-Hong Kong via sleeper and HSR, this was before Covid...)
At close to 800 km today, the Beijing Subway looks to be a very well-connected colossal urban rail network — yet did you know that as early as a few years back, there were lines physically separated from the rest of the network?...
In late 2021, the Swiss railways discontinued the miniature pocket timetables for intercity travel. It's understandable — in this day and age of the smartphone, paper timetables are in less demand — but they also killed a classic of the rails in Switzerland. David Feng goes through one (from 2018) — still a simplistic, informative design classic...
It's the only country/territory I've been to so far where I've done rail mileage without starting a journey from there. It's an independent country which uses Swiss currency and Austrian rail services. And it's often misspelt and misunderstood. Welcome to Liechtenstein — train edition!
The latest trend on railway Twitter seems to be doing maps of all the railway routes you've taken. For someone who's done half a million kilometres across 17 countries and territories, this was the perfect chance to 'show off' all my miles!... including a rather suspicious travel record for Liechtenstein...
For the longest time, Beijing was missing a Subway Line 3. It's finally coming next year (2023); but did you know it had very ambitious plans? Summer Palace... Central Beijing... Workers Stadium for Sanlitun... Wangjing and the airport?... Part of this is still coming; quite a lot of the route, in the meantime, has been replaced by other lines taking (part) of its track...
Train announcement 2 - With queues at Chinese stations sometimes surreally long, expats and visitors used to feel limited — as ticket machines and online ticketing were mostly for locals. Now, no longer, as an English-language, foreigner-friendly ecosystem is increasingly reality for rail travellers in China.
Train announcement 1 - Did you know that there are a number of railway stations on German soil managed by the Swiss, and vice versa? There are two Swiss stations in Germany, and a fair bit more German stations in far northern Switzerland.