Trains

Nestled in Snowdonia National Park in Wales, Coed y Bleiddiau, a UK Landmark Trust cabin, is available to rent. Built in 1868 for a railway superintendent, the cabin has its own train platform on the Ffestiniog Railway (Harbour Station, Porthmadog, Gwynedd, Wales, LL49 9NF, U.K.; phone +44 1766 516024, www.festrail.co.uk).

The narrow-gauge Ffestiniog Railway is served by a restored steam train that travels between the towns of Porthmadog and Blaenau Ffestiniog multiple times each day, from the end of March to the beginning of November.

On Aug. 1 in Peru, locals protesting tourism forced a tourist train to stop on its way from Cuzco to Machu Picchu, causing a subsequent train arriving at the scene more than an hour later, operated by a different company, to rear-end the first train, injuring 15 people. The train companies provided transportation away from the scene for passengers.

11-day, 10-night train ride on Golden Eagle Danube Express, May 8-18, 2019. Highlights: In Budapest, HUNGARY, Matthias Church/train to Vienna, AUSTRIA, for Schönbrunn Palace, private concert/in Zürich, SWITZERLAND, Altstadt/in ITALY, Lake Como, Milan, Venice/in SLOVENIA, Julian Alps, Ljubljana. $9,195, $14,695 or $17,595 ppdo or $13,695, $24,695 or $29,595 single.

The feature article “Crossing Russia in Luxury on the Trans-Siberian Railway” (May ’18, pg. 40) surely had readers dreaming about such a great trip. However, the tour’s price tag — $20,595 per person (not including air) — must have discouraged many.

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Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 509th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine.

French train workers began striking against labor reforms on April 2, with strikes scheduled to occur two days out of every five for three months. It was expected that only trains operating between stations in France would have service interrupted, with international train service being mostly unaffected.

The strikes were announced after France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, proposed to sign new hires in many public sectors to different contracts with fewer benefits. Many other unions, including the waste-management and energy trades, were also striking.

Two passenger trains collided in Niklasdorf, central Austria, on Feb. 12, killing one person and injuring more than 20 others. One train derailed.

One train was an intercity train traveling from Graz, Austria, to Saarbrücken, Germany, while the other was a local commuter train. The cause of the accident, in which the side of at least one train car was sheared off by the other, was still being investigated at press time.