Stefan Lindbohm

Founder of Railfinder – https://www.railfinder.eu [@railfinder.eu](https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/railfinder.eu )

I post mainly about what we do at Railfinder, train ticketing and trains in general. Sometimes about software.

Public Key

npub1mg3qyyw98l72a937vn8jh6wcusr4k2w4jnqezc4kvuex4hzsy7kshxrvf4

NIP-05 Address

stefanlindbohm_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqsd5gszz8znll9wjclxfneta8vwgp6m982efsv3v2mxwvn2m3gz0tgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsfylnv7

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npub1mg3qyyw98l72a937vn8jh6wcusr4k2w4jnqezc4kvuex4hzsy7kshxrvf4

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Last Notes

2026-06-08 16:03:31 UTC

Interrail reservations are now LIVE on Railfinder!
Our number one question since the start, and now we can finally say: YES, you can use Railfinder when you’re traveling with Interrail.
It’s the same search that finds good routes for any long trip across Europe, and when booking with Interrail we now automatically combine all the reservations needed for your trip, whether they are normal seat only, a supplement/pass fare, or if the train has open seating.
FINALLY might be in order :)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/715/330/407/770/089/original/1d1eccce4202a38a.png

2026-05-29 15:52:31 UTC

What if Interrail reservations were available in a single booking even when travelling across operators and with both regular reservations and Interrail supplements - that would be pretty neat, right?
This is exactly what we have cooking in the Railfinder lab right now ⤵️
Let me know if you’re travelling by Interrail soon and want to test early!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/658/664/081/962/211/original/38466f1c21990422.png

2026-05-13 12:27:29 UTC

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Right. And there are legitimate reasons that explain operators doing things differently, too. It is very different to run a single pair per day that reaches 50k people than running trains every 10 min where 500k people live at every station of the route etc. (Not saying ALL differences are reasonable.)
Opening up the ability to combine journeys different ways allows different platforms to take approaches to help navigate the complexity. Because it will not go away.
[@cycling_on_rails](https://mastodon.social/@cycling_on_rails )

2026-05-13 12:12:26 UTC

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Just to add my 2 cents to this: I believe it would be much more workable to mandate operators to publish the _timetables_ (so it’s possible to plan). I just have a hard time seeing how booking horizons is something that can be unified for ALL rail operators in practice, even though I of course very much want them to be as much as possible.
Then to fix the passenger rights the obvious solution is to not require a single transaction.
[@cycling_on_rails](https://mastodon.social/@cycling_on_rails )

2026-05-13 11:58:06 UTC

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This wouldn’t be practical. The legislation refers to the working timetable, and if an operator removes a train from the working timetable, they lose the path and thus the ability to run that train if they later wanted to.
[@cycling_on_rails](https://mastodon.social/@cycling_on_rails )

2026-04-27 13:52:26 UTC

It’s silently a big day for Railfinder today – after 9 months of living with a performance issue in an external system that we’re dependent on for ticketing, it. is. finally. fixed!!
If you’ve tested Railfinder in the past and found prices to load too slowly, now is the time to try again.
Big, big relief for us, and this allows us to finally start making steps to actually grow what we do and increase our user base. We have been cooking so stay tuned!

2026-04-23 08:25:10 UTC

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It’s still about half the number of accommodations per meter of train, comparing only the night coaches.
Seat coaches are probably fine, although I think it sounds very wrong to have to bring a full set of 7 coaches through the night just to have that option for the few who want the lowest price possible.
I’m admittedly not at all an expert of train operations, but this whole thing just sounds totally counter to all discussions I’ve heard of actual issues with our current night trains.

2026-04-23 06:57:20 UTC

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Another way to compare is that TWO current couchette cars have more night accommodation capacity than the entire set of 9 night coaches 🤷🏻‍♂️

2026-04-23 06:52:08 UTC

More details on the new order of Swedish night train rolling stock: the order is for 11 sets of 9 night coaches and 9 sets of 7 day coaches.
Meaning Trafikverket will own coaches with a total of 1122 sleeper accommodations, compared to 1970 accommodations today. 1452 seats, compared to 1434 today.
So more than 800 beds fewer, but slightly more seats.
(Check my math.)
https://jarnvagar.nu/trafikverket-glomde-71-vagnar/

2026-04-20 13:33:59 UTC

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Ja det är nog rimliga poänger. Jag tänker mest att det generellt är ekonomi som operatörerna hänvisar till som den begränsande faktorn med nattåg och då måste låg platstäthet vara ett rätt hårt slag. Plattformslängder och underhållskostnad per vagn måste ju bli en starkt begränsande faktor rent ekonomiskt?
@npub1gke…z4fg

2026-04-20 12:19:00 UTC

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Såååå 40% lägre platstäthet jämfört med Nightjet 2.0 som brukar anses som en lösning med få platser per vagn..?
Fick det till 0,78 platser per meter i sovvagnssättet (1,3 för familjevagnarna, 0,6-0,75 för sovvagnarna). Jämfört med 2 platser per meter i BC2, 1,2 i WL1 och 0,8 i WL4.
Dvs typ halva platstätheten mot idag på ett tåg som redan är svårt att få någon operatör att vilja köra. Jaa du.

2026-04-16 19:39:42 UTC

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I generally agree with this on principle.
The difficult part, actually technically, is the pricing. Prices are dynamic for all major operators and are not necessarily set per train but based on the overall connection. Publishing all of these rules for transparency could theoretically work, but it would be masaassive work to make sense of differently structured data as a reseller. Online API’s to query prices at this scale seems unfeasible.
@npub10ra…24jw @npub1cgh…83kf

2026-04-16 16:38:33 UTC

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Huh, did it change recently? I think we got train numbers out of the feeds at data.gouv.fr when we used those feeds in our pilot a couple years back.
@npub173f…ac6t @npub1unf…5fwu

2026-04-16 16:33:17 UTC

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Not that I personally mind an obligation for incumbents to sell everything also, despite it making our offering technically less unique. We’re serving a niche (long-distance cross-border trips) and have no goal to take over the world. There should be space for many of us.

2026-04-16 16:32:19 UTC

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I think it’s fair to say that if there’s logic in competition between operators, then there’s logic in competition between sales channels. Incumbents’ channels will very likely primarily stay nationally focused and not compete with each other, so good enough terms for third-party platforms should be minimum.

2026-04-16 16:14:46 UTC

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This might be something that can be fixed within the @npub1c64…jwxh project? GTFS has lots of fields used for different things in different sources, so it might exist in some other field but need a config update.

2026-04-01 14:48:17 UTC

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All threads in SE railway groups have had the same reaction. It does not seem to be an April fools, sadly.
[@Jonas_Bostrom](https://mastodonsweden.se/@Jonas_Bostrom ) @npub1ugf…2u54

2025-09-03 12:15:43 UTC

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De ska finnas, men tyvärr än så länge enbart sittplats och enskild plats i liggvagn. Dessutom upptäckte jag att de system vi ansluter till för att få biljetterna verkar ha något strul med en del avgångar nu senare i september. Bevakar och ser vad vi kan göra tillsammans med vår partner för att lösa det!

2025-09-03 06:26:05 UTC

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Some extra details for the bahn bubble crowd on here.
We have some limitations due to the migrations going on in Swedish distribution systems, which means:
- We’re more often than we’d like failing to match a trip with tickets in distribution systems, explaining most of ”Technical issue” tickets you might see.
- We don’t have timetables for VR Snabbtåg yet.
We’re doing all in our power to fix these limitations as soon as possible, and hope they won’t be too distracting in the meantime.

2025-09-03 06:20:43 UTC

Today we’re launching tickets for Sweden on Railfinder! And we now also speak Swedish on https://www.railfinder.se 🇸🇪
This is added seamlessly and can be purchased in one single search & booking including all other tickets we offer. Like for example our most popular search: Stockholm - Paris (screenshot below)
We offer all operators that participate in the Swedish ticketing system, including to/from Oslo and Trondheim in Norway. (Limits see thread.)
As always, feedback is much appreciated!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/138/916/472/559/791/original/a0571d6a495576bc.jpeg

2025-08-05 16:31:22 UTC

Making progress on our integration of Swedish tickets today. Pretty cool to see all parts of our system working together: 1) knowing to split tickets for transfers longer than the allowed on a single ticket (4 hours in SE), 2) combining tickets from multiple issuers in different systems, and 3) converting currencies to allow selling in one transaction. Any one of these would stop many other booking sites.
Can’t wait to get to enable this soon!
(Prices not 100% correct yet due to VAT rules etc)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/977/110/665/632/712/original/75dcbcccf8b5e910.png

2025-06-23 15:58:38 UTC

Today we’re quietly (and finally!) opening up Railfinder to the public! This is our beta version and - hopefully - the first step towards that one booking site for trains across Europe that we all dream of.
Lots of work has gone into this and equally lots still to do before reach that vision, but if you’d like to try what we’be built you can now just go to https://www.railfinder.eu and have a go!
Any and all feedback more than welcome 🙏
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/733/502/597/258/351/original/adc5fc5e60dca59d.png