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Welcome to European Traction, a website dedicated to informing you about the locomotives and railways of continental Europe and Ireland, encouraging you to travel to experience them, and giving you some tips and information on how to go about it.

It is not intended to compete with the numerous news-based railway magazines and websites, and certainly not online “gen groups”.  Rather, it will try to help you get more out of your hobby, by focusing on how and where to find loco haulage, as well as featuring some general interest and historical articles pertaining to European locomotives.

In particular, in an era when “traditional” loco haulage on service trains is slowly fading away across the continent, I hope to cultivate good relationships between British enthusiasts and continental railtour and heritage train operators.  I frequently find photographs of specials that I would have travelled on, if only the details of the booked traction and/or route had been advertised, and I know I am not alone in this!  One of my ambitions with European Traction is to demonstrate to charter operators that they have a sizeable untapped market in British enthusiasts, and also give them a channel with which to reach it.  A key feature of the site is the haulage calendar which aims to list opportunities for interesting diesel and electric loco haulage across the continent, and this will be continuously updated.

I also will be organising occasional haulage opportunities myself in various countries across Europe – to date, there have been four: three in Belgium and one in France.  I have a number of irons in the fire for 2020 too…

Whether you are a novice or a seasoned foreign traveller, I hope you find it an informative and entertaining read.  I would be keen to hear your feedback, as well as suggestions for future content.