Now all passenger trains have reached their destination. Check tomorrow for IC50, 51, 56 and 57, click on Εστίαση to focus on the train and then Δρομολόγιο to see its timetable including Planned, Actual times as well as ETA (that’s a first in GR!)
It worked about 20 minutes ago, I think it comes in and out depending on signal strength. You can check the "Train 1" to see the blurred reflection of the front window for now 😅
ETCS L1 (I think FS) will allow for more capacity (ready in the summer hopefully). HEPOS isn’t a rail safety compliant system.
This is exciting, but I remain sceptical of this whole thing, never again used, tested or even thought of in more rail civilised networks. Why would it work here?
It looks like they’re going to open up the data, I’ve already created a quick project website to check it out but can’t publish it as I don’t know if the data feed is open by mistake or not, we’ll see.
Is this going to be a step towards ETCS L3? No idea, but for now I still prefer L2.
en.protothema.gr/2026/02/25/r...
Railway.gov.gr seems to be working, and it’s very interesting. It supports only Athens - Thessaloniki trains for now, the accuracy is actually good enough to check on which track the train is on. There’s also a live feed of the front of the train, that’s crazy! 🤓
Open data seem to catch up to speed (at least a bit) in Greece. You can access Athens Public Transportation Ridership data with an API from data.gov.gr. I will soon make something out of this, let’s see how it works out…
You can also find some other datasets there, like car ridership in Athens.
That is not public info, as expected.
It has always been used as sidings (since the new station), and never was built as a bunker, only used as one. So they’re now *publicly* announcing a war bunker without reasoning as to why that’s useful and removing strategic metro operation elements, spending lots of € and doing nothing useful. 🫠
The most stupidest-est thing to spend money on (and undermine actual useful infrastructure). ATH Urban Transport is rebuilding a WWII bunker under Omonoia Sq., right by the Line 1 station. It’s the old station that is now used as sidings that can help with delays etc.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvZv...
Nothing at all for now.
The Coradias will serve the two main axes Athens - Thessaloniki and Athens - Patras*. You can also visit the microsite HT built for them, it has some interesting info (they will only have vending machines onboard for food/drinks etc.) newrollingstock.hellenictrain.gr/en/
*when, if (hopefully) built
As for GR-built Rotem high speed sets, I haven’t really heard anything yet and I can’t really see it happening soon, but I hope I’m wrong!
120s that are operational are from the second batch (2004-2005) so they’re not too old (albeit being an old implementation of the ES).
220s are mostly older (1st batch 1997-1998 had 26, 2nd batch 2003-2004 had 10) but these won’t be used a lot, as they’re DE and most of the lines are electrified.
520s aren’t being used for IC services since the Adentro accident of 2017 (3 deaths). After Covid they’re very very rarely used when 621 sets aren’t available on the Alexandroupoli - Ormenio line (which is not operational atm due to a flood and the govt literally destroying it to free the water).
Oh, no, this is where I draw my line. My worst travel experience was a flixbus in Italy, I’d prefer walking 😅
They are low in km, they may be old in age but not in use, they can squeeze out 15 more years at least.
I don’t know if we’ll actually build something for GR, as HT has already signed one contract for the Coradias, signing another one for the same-ish purpose won’t be justifiable (and remember, they’re a private for-profit, they heavily rely on national funds, which make them buy new RS).
They’re stored in Piraeus at the old meter gauge depots. They will need repairs but we’re in working condition when stored.
Hellenic Train and OSE will also use the Starlink system for the HEPOS geolocation system (railway.gov.gr soon). 🫠
Coradias will cover most of it. And with ETCS L1, Vmax=160 km/h It may able to reach the 3:50 timestamp, reducing the turnaround time. I do not believe they will run 200 km/h services with 120+wagons, but with rerefurbished ETR 470 sets. So the wagons will not be needed a lot (for IC) in the future.
As a frequent 608 user, it’s almost always full (it’s like a cult in Athens, everyone knows it, there’s even a beer named after it). It’s always an articulated vehicle, lately even with 24h service on Saturday nights. In its central section you may need to wait for a 2nd or 3rd bus to get on.
The Skaramagkas shipyard was building and refurbishing trains such as the Desiro EMUs, ATH Metro Line 1 11th Gen Sets, even some meter gauge (ex German SPAP) passenger wagons (some of them are still there after the closure, waiting to be painted same as the OSE UIC-Z ones). Let’s see how it unfolds.
The Thessaloniki - Strymonas - Promachonas - Kulata line will be electrified and partly realigned to allow for greater speeds. Keep in mind that the max Greek axle load is 20tn/axle on secondary lines so other (e.g. Skoda) locomotives may not be able to run to Thessaloniki. That may be fixed though.
There were many of these (Amz, ADmz, Bmz, Bmpz and WRmz) wagons, but HT is not leasing all of them, but at least enough for 8 IC pairs +some spare. So having enough is not difficult, but it will require some time for repairs.
🥲
🤷🏽
www.maerklin.de/de/produkte/...
I haven’t read the results in some time now so I can’t be 100% sure, but I’d really recommend reading through the deliverables, it was a very interesting project.
When a rail shatters it’s not something you can’t observe. If you have enough data you will start seeing the small changes in time, first just a quick movement, then a bit more and so on, until it breaks. So if you compare the way these movements are changing in time, you can accurately predict it.
The third working group was focused on low cost devices and proved that all trains could carry small Arduino or similar equipment to continuously monitor track condition, on each train pass, collecting very important data for the track crews and then feeding them to a database for tracking.
The UIC Harmotrack Project had really interesting results on this topic. Measurement is something very important that is often left behind. What Harmotrack developed, was a system to estimate when such failures would occur, based on machine learning and many, MANY measurements.
