A February trip to Berlin: to systematically document my #CrossBorderRail work

It’s probably the aspect of a project everyone dislikes the most: documenting it all once the research phase is done.

And with my #CrossBorderRail project there has been a lot of research – major tours to visit international railway lines in every corner of Europe every summer 2022-2025.

I have done my best to document my work as I have been going along, not least on the project website, but also in various maps on umap, on Flickr. But there are also slew of spreadsheets and thousands of unpublished photographs sat on my computer, and loads of ideas and background that is only in my head.

This week in Berlin I am going to start to sort out all of that.

At the time of writing I don’t know quite how it is all going to work, but I am teaming up with Europäische Akademie Berlin to make a systematic and searchable database of all cross border rail lines in Europe, based on what I have found in my research.

The starting point is going to be my All The Borders map that I have already reworked, and now shows 501 cross border lines (lines that cross a border more than once are counted just once).

Due to some of the re-categorisation and re-design work there are 395 border crossings I have been to (black pins), and 106 I am still missing (mostly dismantled lines – there are only 5 active standard gauge lines I am missing – light grey pins). And the icons show what is there – a train, person and track indicates passenger trains run, a track indicates there is an operable track (but no passenger trains), and a track with a cross indicates a line has been dismantled. A crossed arrow shows multiple crossings of the same border by one line. And everything has been redesigned with an improved palette for accessibility.

The idea is that in the future this map will provide the centre piece of the #CrossBorderRail website – click on a pin and you will be able to find what is there, what trains (if any) run, when a line was closed (if it is no longer open), and links to photographs I have taken at that place.

Individual #CrossBorderRail tours have their own maps (2022, 2023 Germany, 2024 South East Europe, 2025 Finale, #CrossChannelRail) and – perhaps rather hopelessly! – I am trying to map every railway line I have ever taken. And there is a guide here how I make these maps, and accurately plot train routes.

It might not be as fun as taking the train to some forgotten border line, but this map and the associated data ought to have uses well beyond my own project.