České dráhy

shit...........

Under the acronym ČD hides an entity known as Czech Railways (České Dráhy), though to the suffering souls of Bohemia, Moravistan, and Slizzakia, its true meaning is well understood: "Continue Delaying", "Cursed Disaster", or simply "Chronically Dysfunctional." Czech Railways operates on a quantum level, where schedules are mere suggestions and time itself ceases to exist. This is why all delays are displayed in minutes rather than hours—waiting 360 minutes sounds far more optimistic than admitting to a six-hour standstill. In fact, recent physics research has confirmed that ČD functions as a localized anomaly in spacetime, forcing a revision of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Despite its Kafkaesque nature, the Czech railway network is one of the most intricate and complex in Europe. This means that, paradoxically, ČD remains one of the continent’s finest railway operators—provided you measure success in the number of creative reasons for delays rather than actual on-time arrivals.

History

Average Czechoslovak locomotive in 1930s. Stolen from Hugary, and introduced as ČSD Class 636

1918 - 1938

The origins of what we now call České Dráhy date back to the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918, when Czechs and Slovaks triumphantly declared independence from Austria-Hungary—and immediately began looting like it was a national sport.

Austrians and Hungarians may have lost their empire, but Czechs made sure they lost a significant portion of their rolling stock too. Locomotives, railcars, entire train sets—if it had wheels and moved on rails, it was fair game. And thus, almost overnight, the newborn republic secured a fleet of trains without spending a single koruna. Somewhere in Vienna, an Austrian railway official likely choked on his Schnitzel upon realizing that half of his locomotives were suddenly chugging around Prague. Since Czechs have a time-honored tradition of taking whatever isn’t nailed down (and even if it is, they’ll just bring a crowbar), they didn’t just steal the trains—they stole the railway tracks too. The entire Czech railway network? A slightly rebranded and “patriotically reappropriated” chunk of Austria-Hungary’s infrastructure. The only thing that wasn’t outright stolen were the train stations, and that’s only because they had to be physically built.

And build they did. Czechs love trains so much that locomotive factories sprouted in nearly every major city, mass-producing steam engines, diesel railcars, and even electric locomotives in absurdly excessive numbers. The attitude was simple: “Why have one when you can have five? Why have five when you can have a hundred?” This resulted in train yards packed with locomotives that were sometimes never even used—just in case, because you never know when you might need a backup steam engine in the era of electrification.

By the time Europe realized what had happened, the Czechs had inadvertently become a railway superpower. A tiny country that stole itself into possessing one of the densest railway networks in the world, where the trains may not run on time, but at least they exist—often in unnecessary quantities.

least violent station for BMB

1938 - 1945

When the Munich Agreement carved up Czechoslovakia in 1938, the railway had to pull off the logistical nightmare of moving entire institutions, personnel, and equipment within days. In true military efficiency, sections of tracks were even sabotaged using special devices—because if we can’t have our railway, no one will! Meanwhile, locomotives and carriages were promptly seized and reassigned, serving their new masters under the branding of the Reich Railways. The fun really began when new borders turned domestic routes into international headaches, severing vital connections between Prague, Ostrava, and Bratislava. Express trains from Prague had to stop pathetically in Choceň, as if they had simply run out of motivation. Eventually, a transit arrangement, the so-called peáž, was negotiated—because even dictatorships need to keep the trains running.

March 1939 brought yet another railway breakup: Slovakia split off, forming its own national railway, while Hungary took Carpathian Russia. And in the grand rebranding tradition, the Czechoslovak State Railways were replaced by the Bohemian-Moravian Railways (Böhmisch-Mährische Bahnen) - essentialy the same, but in German-language acronym.

With the outbreak of WWII, the railway quickly adapted to wartime efficiency. Motor trains were grounded due to fuel shortages, and locomotives were slapped with giant white “V” markings for Victoria—because Nazi optimism knew no limits. White-bordered bumpers were also introduced, because of course, even totalitarian regimes cared about nighttime train visibility.

From 1944 onwards, Czech railway tracks became a playground for resistance sabotage. Over 300 attacks disrupted operations, with creative sabotage ranging from blowing up tracks to the more bureaucratic chaos of swapping freight destinations—imagine Wehrmacht supplies turning up at a bakery instead of the front lines. However, the Allies had their own ideas on how to “optimize” the railway: strategic bombing. Pardubice station was obliterated, killing up to 200 people, while major hubs in the Sudetenland, like Cheb and Carlsbad, were wiped off the map entirely. Meanwhile, Allied fighter planes, nicknamed “kettle hunters,” delighted in strafing locomotives in motion—occasionally mistaking passenger trains for troop transports, because Allies were mostly stupid.

Then came the Prague Uprising, and the railway was once again at the center of the action. Stations became battlegrounds, complete with executions, like the massacre at Masaryk Station where dozens were shot against the depot wall. Meanwhile, armored trains—both German and resistance-controlled—roamed the tracks, turning railway battles into something out of a Mad Max fever dream. The grand finale came on May 8, 1945, near Nelahozeves (shithole near Prague), where a resistance train (stolen from the Germans, of course) clashed with a Nazi armored train. With help from ground forces, the resistance managed to wreck part of the enemy train and force the rest to retreat—one of the rare railway fights that didn’t end with everything just getting bombed to hell.

Average train station in 1949

1945 - 1960s

As soon as the last shots of World War II had faded, Czechoslovak railways embarked on an extensive "reconstruction"—the official term for looting German locomotives, repainting them as ČSD 555.3 (originally DRB Class 52), and subsequently delivering victorious speeches about how they were built by the glorious working people themselves.

The damage to infrastructure was catastrophic. Nearly 3,500 kilometers of tracks were unusable, bridges lay in ruins, and the rolling stock had been reduced to a handful of dilapidated steam locomotives. Nevertheless, the state reconstruction plan boldly declared all lines fully operational and proceeded to reorganize the railways in the style of Soviet five-year plans—meaning chaotically, incompetently, and with maximum disregard for basic physics. In 1945, the best engineers and technicians were called upon to draft a grand plan for modernizing the railway network. By 1948, they had prepared proposals for the full electrification of main routes, the introduction of modern diesel locomotives, and even the possibility of a high-speed railway connecting Prague, Brno, and Bratislava. Unfortunately, this plan was incompatible with the country’s new direction, and thus all 217 lead engineers who worked on it found themselves on the gallows between 1949 and 1952—officially for Titoist revisionism and sabotage of the national economy.

A new plan was developed through a "people’s democratic" process, where every worker at the Smíchov Wagon Works contributed their ideas. The result was electrification that used incompatible voltages on different sections, rampant theft of materials, and massive financial waste—for instance, the same set of rails for a single track was purchased three times and yet never arrived at the construction site.

After the war, around 500 German steam locomotives were seized to serve as the foundation for postwar reconstruction. By 1948, however, 400 of them had mysteriously disappeared.

• 150 units ended up in the Soviet Union, traded for twenty wagons of vodka and one portrait of Lenin.
• 90 were scrapped before ever entering service because no replacement parts could be found—although it later turned out that these parts had already been sold on the black market.
• 60 locomotives were dismantled for "spare parts," which were, of course, never seen again.
• The remaining 100 were declared unreliable by the Ministry of the Interior, as they had been built in "reactionary" Germany and could therefore contain sabotage mechanisms (such as a boiler that explodes upon contact with Soviet ideology).

After 1948, the state’s priority was clear—the railway had to be cheap, for the people, and, above all, socialist. Unfortunately, socialism proved to be the enemy of basic construction skills. From the original plan to rebuild 200 destroyed bridges, only 14 were ultimately completed, most of which collapsed within three years. For example, the bridge over the Elbe in Kolín was ceremoniously opened in 1952—only to collapse into the river that very same day. The comrades concluded that capitalist gravity was to blame. With infrastructure continually deteriorating and theft plaguing every aspect of the railway system, daily operations became a literal survival of the fittest. Delays of dozens of hours became the norm, with some passengers claiming that their trains had been delayed so long they crossed into a different political era. In 1958, for instance, the longest recorded delay in history occurred: an express train from Brno to Košice departed Brno in January 1958 but, due to endless breakdowns, locomotive changes, and service interruptions, did not arrive in Košice until May 1961. Upon disembarking, passengers discovered that the Czechoslovakia they had originally boarded in no longer existed.

Under Stalin, criticizing the railway was tantamount to criticizing the socialist economy—an act considered treason. In 1953, for example, a railway dispatcher was arrested and executed for daring to remark that "the train is already 24 hours late." His official charge? Inciting panic and sabotaging the state. Between 1949 and 1960, approximately 380 railway workers were executed for "railway pessimism," while those who avoided the gallows were sent to labor camps, where they could personally contribute to track reconstruction—of course, manually, without tools, and under inhumane conditions.

While the West was launching its first high-speed trains in the 1960s, Czechoslovakia was conducting a grand experiment to determine whether steam locomotives could be converted to diesel power. The result? A locomotive that burst into flames after 800 meters of travel. The electrification plan was "successfully completed" on paper in 1963—meaning that in reality, 90% of tracks were still reliant on coal and steam locomotives, with some regions having not seen a new train since the First Republic.

1960s - 1989

Average Czechoslovak express in mid 70s

After the executions of engineers, saboteurs, and overly honest dispatchers in the 1950s, the regime decided in the 1960s to switch to less bloody methods of managing the railways. Instead of public executions and labor camps, prisons, "accidental disappearances," and the secret police—who regularly took dissatisfied employees on a "short drive to the forest"—became the preferred tools of discipline. And while socialist speeches spoke of "progress," reality on the tracks could be summed up in one word: delays.

The electrification of the railways was supposed to be the greatest technological challenge after 1945—at least in theory. In practice, it was an endless mess of confusion, chaos, and self-sabotage. In 1953, the comrades agreed that the electrical voltage must be unified. The problem? Moravia used 3 kV DC, while Slovakia and the Přerov area were testing 25 kV AC. The result? Total incompatibility, causing locomotives to shut down at the borders between the two systems. Anyone who dared to suggest unification was accused of Western revisionism and immediately transferred to the company railway school in Česká Třebová, where they could demonstrate on a wooden model how capitalism was undermining socialist transport.

The first electric locomotives, the E 499.1 (today's Class 140/141—yes, still in service), appeared in 1953 and were supposed to be the future of rail transport. The problem? They were already obsolete the moment they rolled out of the factory. Nevertheless, they were deployed on main lines, bravely hauling express trains until the 1980s—by which time they were in a condition that would have landed them in museums in the West. And while electrification crawled along at a pace of 50 km per decade, steam locomotives still held their ground—not because they were efficient, but because new locomotives were never delivered in sufficient numbers.

There were two reasons for this:

1. Most of the modernization funds mysteriously disappeared.
2. Manufacturing was so chaotic that some locomotives didn’t even fit Czech-Slovak railways.

Steam locomotives were officially retired in 1983, but in reality, they continued hauling freight in secret for several more years—because what else could the comrades deploy?

In the 1970s and 1980s, Czechoslovakia attempted to integrate into the Eastern Bloc’s InterExpress (IEx) network, which connected major cities across the socialist world. The West had EuroCity (EC)—the same thing as Eurovision and Intervision.

The problem? Czechoslovak railways were absolutely unprepared for it.

• E 499.1 locomotives, sometimes E 499.2, hauled InterExpress trains despite struggling to maintain the required speeds.
• Some tracks were so bad that express trains had to travel slower than buses.
• Maintenance and repairs were scheduled at the worst possible times, usually in the mornings and evenings when the most people traveled.
• In winter, switches froze because no one accounted for the fact that Czechoslovakia had frost.
• In the Ústí (then North Bohemian) region, tracks simply disappeared.

Delays were so frequent that passengers stopped commenting on them—out of fear.

• In 1976, a conductor was arrested for publicly announcing that a train was delayed by over 240 minutes. The official charge? “Undermining socialist optimism.”
• In 1982, a train driver disappeared without a trace after stating on television that his train was three hours late due to poor track maintenance.
• The secret police (StB) had a special unit monitoring railway employees. If someone suggested a better timetable, they could suddenly find themselves under interrogation.
• Even internal ČSD (Czechoslovak State Railways) regulations stated: “Failing to report a delay is not punishable, but criticizing it is.”

By 1980, Czechoslovakia had some of the oldest trains in Europe.

There were plans to purchase modern locomotives. Where did the money go?

• Some funds were redirected to build a railway museum in Moscow.
• Another portion vanished into “improving working conditions” for ČSD management. (Translation: they bought themselves Western cars and cottages in the Beskids.)
• Some funds were allocated to researching “magnetic railways,” which never materialized.
• Eventually, E 499.2 and ES 499.0 locomotives were ordered—but in such small numbers that most passengers never saw them before 1990.

By autumn 1989, the situation was tragic:

• Average express train delay: 80–150 minutes.
• Average train age: 35 years.
• Track conditions: atrocious.
• Modernization plan by 2000? Didn’t exist.

Then came the revolution. And with it, the shock:

• The StB was abolished, meaning people could openly say for the first time that the railways were in a catastrophic state.
• The removal of certain officials revealed massive embezzlement—but most of them disappeared in time, taking the money with them.
• Trains were still running late—except now, no one was punished for saying so.

And so, while the regime changed, the delays remained.

But at least no one was executed for them anymore.

Newest ČD train

1989 - present

The railway system in the Czech Republic is no longer a means of transportation—it’s a lottery. Anyone attempting to travel by train must accept the possibility that they may never reach their destination. The average train delay today is two years, and if the conductor tells you, "We have a slight delay," it means you might take your ride in the next century.

You arrive at the station in 2024 with a valid ticket. Your train is listed on the departure board, but next to it, you see "Delay: 730 days." The conductor apologizes, explaining that the train has not yet departed from its original station—because it's still waiting for permission to leave since 2022.

Some passengers have aged while waiting on platforms. Those who were waiting for an express train to Ostrava in 2021 are now retired. One man even wrote a chronicle of his waiting experience, which is now used as training material for new Czech Railways employees.

In normal countries, trains are delayed due to bad weather or technical failures. In the Czech Republic? The reasons are more creative than Hollywood screenplays:

• 🔴 "Track maintenance" – meaning the railway has been under reconstruction for 15 years, but no work has started yet.
• 🔴 "Waiting for a free track" – because trains from the last decade still haven’t departed.
• 🔴 "Locomotive failure" – yes, that 1971-built machine has broken down again.
• 🔴 "Technical issue on the track" – someone stole the security cables again, so the dispatcher is now using smoke signals to direct trains.
• 🔴 "Collision with a wild boar" – a common issue since the railway can’t afford to repair fences along the tracks.
• 🔴 "Waiting for staff" – because the driver was reassigned to another route, and their replacement just realized they haven't been born yet.

The government claims that the railways are undergoing modernization. The truth? The only thing that has changed is the politicians' promises.

New trains? Yes, but only in advertising brochures.

Modernized stations? Sure, but no trains actually stop there because the tracks have been stolen.

A speed of 160 km/h? Maybe, but only if you're not stuck in the middle of a forest for an hour due to "technical difficulties."

The only real construction projects are noise barriers—to ensure people don’t hear the desperate curses of passengers trapped in train cars for eternity.

After 1989, the government started shutting down "unprofitable" railway lines. The result? Today, some villages can only be reached on horseback. The government promised that buses would replace the trains. In reality, these bus services only existed on paper because no one wanted to pay for drivers.

"Replacement bus service" actually means: "Good luck hitchhiking."

If a bus does show up, it’s usually a wreck from 1990 that will fall apart at the first pothole.

Former railways have now become cycling paths—but even those are falling apart.

The state once had a monopoly on Czech Railways. Today, multiple private companies operate—and with them come more problems:

• 🚂 Every company has different tickets. If you transfer, you need to buy a new ticket at double the price.
• 🚂 Every company has different standards. You might get a comfortable seat, or you might get a wooden bench from the First Republic era.
• 🚂 If something goes wrong, companies argue instead of solving the issue. So the train remains stuck because nobody wants to take responsibility.

You after waiting on train in Czech Republic

How to travel by train in Czech Republic?

✅ Pack supplies for several years. Bring a sleeping bag, non-perishable food, and clothing for all seasons.

✅ Carry a map. The train may be rerouted unexpectedly, forcing you to walk the rest of the way.

✅ Don’t trust the timetable. It’s just a rough guideline.

✅ Be mentally prepared. If your train arrives with only a five-year delay, take it as a win.

Also.....

After 1989, Czech railways were supposed to enter a golden era. Instead, they suffered from looting, decay, and endless delays.

• 🚂 Trains don’t run because there are no tracks.
• 🚂 There are no tracks because someone stole them.
• 🚂 New trains exist only in advertisements.
• 🚂 Delays are measured in years.
• 🚂 And if a train actually arrives on time, passengers refuse to board, suspecting it’s a trap.

Czech Railways keeps insisting: "The situation is improving."

Sure, maybe… in another 50 years. Until then? Good luck.

Train stations system

Czech train stations are not transportation hubs; they are social experiments testing how much human suffering a person can endure before snapping. If Dante were alive today, he'd rewrite the Inferno to include an extra circle just for Czech Railways.

Main Features of Czech Train Stations

Aroma of the Era: A fine blend of piss, cigarettes, overcooked frying oil from the station buffet, and an unidentifiable stench that has existed since the Soviet era.

Condition: Peeling plaster, leaking roofs, broken escalators, and timetable boards displaying phantom trains that haven’t run since the last century.

Shelter: If it hasn't collapsed, it's already been stolen for scrap metal.

Public Services: Toilets close at 5 PM, but by noon, they’ve already become a biohazard.

Atmosphere: A crossover between the ninth circle of hell and the sketchiest gangster movie from the 90s.

Types of train stations

Czech railway stations

Type of station	Description	Reality	Features	Photo
Main city station	A modern transportation hub.	Renovated on the outside, but still a decaying Soviet-era ruin inside.	First-class lounge may exist, but you’ll be stabbed before reaching it.
Regional capital station	A key node for national and international travel.	Feels like an abandoned war zone, with a homeless-to-passenger ratio of 3:1.	The underpass is either flooded, covered in graffiti, or full of junkies.
Small town station	A vital link for local commuters.	Ticket office permanently closed, the only staff member is a drunk man yelling at pigeons.	The station clock stopped working before the Velvet Revolution.
Village station	A peaceful stop for rural travelers.	The only thing left is a rusty signpost and a wild boar that lives nearby.	Locals will warn you that "no train has stopped here since '95."
On-demand stop	A minimalist, modernized concept.	A metal pole with a number, surrounded by weeds and existential dread.	If you’re lucky, a train will stop. If not, enjoy your hike to civilization.

Classes of trains

Most luxurious commuter train

🚃 Commuter Trains (Os) – Osobní vlak

Smell: Unrelenting. Coming from broken toilets, unwashed passengers, and decaying rats under the seats.

Speed: Average speed: 8 km/h, with a tailwind you might hit 12 km/h. A cyclist passing by with a bottle of water will beat you to the destination.

Number of Stops: 14,875, of which 14,000 are on request. Every stop delays you by 30 minutes because the conductor is too busy finishing his cigarette.

Delay: 4 days by default, 3 weeks when there’s track work. (Track work is an everyday occurrence.)

Conditions: Instead of seats, you have splintered wooden benches. Instead of AC, you get windows that won’t shut.

Chance of reaching the destination: 90% if you're not mugged by a gang or suffocated by the summer heat.

Average Fast commuter train

🚆 Fast commuter Trains (Sp) – Spěšný vlak

Difference from Os? 0.4 km/h faster. Otherwise, it’s the same agonizing disaster.

Number of Stops: 8,800, with 8,500 being on request. Pain incarnate.

Train Composition: An old locomotive, three cars from the 60s, with a permanent blackout.

Onboard Conditions: Toilets overflow, heating either doesn’t work or you’re roasted alive.

Delay: 5 days unless you’re unlucky enough to collide with an Os train.

Chance of reaching the destination: 85% if your heart doesn’t stop due to the stench and filth.

Fast train stopped in shithole. Typical.

🚄 Fast Trains (R) – Rychlík

Where does it stop? Everywhere there are more than 5 people, which means around 870 stops.

Train Composition: Decommissioned cars from Slovakia, one dining car (that ran out of water and electricity).

Average Delay: From 3 hours to 6 months. Most trains never make it to the destination.

Onboard Service: The conductor only comes to tell you to buy a new ticket. Otherwise, nothing.

Chance of reaching the destination: 50% if the tracks don’t collapse or the engine doesn’t explode

Hell naah

🚅 InterCity (IC)

Where does it stop? In bigger cities, about 80 stops.

Comparison to a car: You’ll get there 3 times faster by car, but on this train, you’re in a parallel universe.

Train Composition: Some cars are “modernized,” but you’ll lose fingers trying to open the doors.

Wi-Fi? Yes, but it’s only for receiving government propaganda.

Onboard Service: The conductor will only come to wake you up to tell you your luggage is gone.

Chance of reaching the destination: 30% if there’s no detour, no theft, or no bridge collapse.

BSE is waiting

🚄 SuperCity (SC) – Pendolino

Theoretical Speed: 160 km/h (Real speed: 55 km/h, because it has to wait for the local train).

What happens onboard? You’ll catch BSE or some other dreadful disease midway.

Seats: Ergonomic? Sure. Comfortable? Absolutely not.

Dining Car: They have food, but to afford it, you’ll need a second mortgage.

Delay: At least 6 hours, if it ever reaches its destination.

Chance of reaching the destination: 10% if the whole train doesn’t break down due to a software failure.

Sucks

🚆 Railjet (RJ)

Owned by: Austrian Railways (ÖBB). Czech Railways are just for show.

Speed: Up to 230 km/h! (Until it crosses the Czech border, then it slows to 85 km/h.)

Ticket Price: Your soul.

Service: An Austrian steward will tell you you're subhuman and that you should’ve taken a worse train.

Chance of reaching the destination: 99% in Austria, 15% in the Czech Republic.

EuroCity

Train EuroCity 1940 "Lebensraum" at Prague-Smíchov station.

EuroCity (EC) trains are officially advertised as the pinnacle of comfort, speed, and reliability in European railway transport. In reality, they are a tragicomic farce where delays reach geological timescales, carriages predate Brezhnev, and onboard services could make a prisoner-of-war camp seem luxurious. A passenger may think they are purchasing a ticket for a premium train, but in truth, they are securing a place in a survival horror scenario featuring freezing drafts, broken toilets, and a dining car menu resembling wartime rations.

Selected EuroCity Trains

Train	Route	Planned travel time	Actual travel time	Average delay	Train compostion	Number of Stops	Onboard conditions
EC 1933 Hitler	Berlin – Prague – Vienna – Moscow	2 years	Undetermined	∞	Armored train, gas masks required, Führer’s speeches on loop	classified	Passengers must stand, windows permanently shut
EC 1917 Lenin	St. Petersburg – Prague – Budapest – Hanoi	179 hours	42 years	∞	Soviet-era train, Lenin's books replace food, windows covered with propaganda	175	Mandatory Communist indoctrination, loop through Siberia
EC 1940 Lebensraum	Berlin – Dresden – Prague – Auschwitz	undefined	Eternity	∞	WWII-era cattle cars, no ventilation, doors welded shut	14 975	Absolute darkness, screams echo from past and present
EC 1953 Stalin	Moscow – Prague – Bratislava – Gulag	58 years	42 years	∞	Soviet military transport, doors locked from the outside	14 785	Vodka instead of water, no return tickets
EC 2022 Mariupol	Donetsk – Prague – Kyiv – Moscow	8 hours	Obliterated	∞	Carriages bombed mid-route, destination erased from maps	0	No infrastructure, no survivors, no hope
EC 2024 Gaza	Tel Aviv – Prague – Berlin – Beirut	six months	Destroyed en route	∞	Bulletproof carriages, tunnel travel mandatory	?	No ceasefire, no safe zones, no chance
EC 1941 Barbarossa	Berlin – Prague – Minsk – Moscow	one year	Fell apart near Smolensk	∞	German-built train, ran smoothly for 3 hours	870 044	Icy conditions, mechanical failures, fuel shortages
EC 2020 Wuhan Express	Wuhan – Prague – Milan – New York	2 months	Indefinite lockdown	∞	Passengers locked in compartments, food delivery "pending"	????	No windows, no ventilation, no escape
EC 2022 Bucha	Kyiv – Prague – Hostomel – Moscow	1 month	Cut off mid-route	∞	No survivors, burnt-out carriages remain	0	No passengers left, ghost train status confirmed
EC 1939 Molotov	Moscow – Prague – Warsaw – Berlin	16 hours	Classified	∞	Passengers divided into "zones of influence," last seen in 1941	592	Conductors wear NKVD uniforms, passengers disappear
EC 1942 Stalingrad	Berlin – Prague – Minsk – Stalingrad	2 months	Ended in disaster	∞	Carriages caught fire near Volga, passengers froze	17 896	Conductors missing, emergency rations are frozen rats
EC 1793 Robespierre	Paris – Prague – Lyon – Guillotine	six months	Shortened	∞	Seats automatically eject under political conditions	274	Mandatory Revolutionary Tribunal onboard
EC 1963 Dallas	Washington – Prague – Dallas – Memphis	3 years	Abruptly ended	∞	Last car reserved for Presidents, no security onboard	856	Book Depository view seats available
EC 1948 Gottwald	Moscow – Prague – Bratislava – Ostrava	41 years	Forever	∞	Communist Party speeches replace train announcements	297	Passengers required to recite "Všem dělníkům ráj na zemi!"
EC 1968 Dubček	Prague – Bratislava – Moscow	1 day	Erased from history	∞	Train hijacked mid-route by Soviet tanks	???	No survivors, no records, no way back
EC 1938 Mnichov	Prague – Munich – Berlin – Moscow	4 months	Disappeared mid-route	∞	Train crew speaks only German, no Czech allowed	???	Passengers must "cooperate" or be sent elsewhere
EC 1956 Imre Nagy	Moscow – Prague – Budapest	5 hours	Destroyed	∞	Soviet tanks replace train cars, military checkpoints	???	Conductors in Red Army uniforms, onboard interrogations
EC 1914 Kaiser Ferdinand	Vienna – Prague – Sarajevo – Moscow	1 year	Delayed forever	∞	Conductors have suspicious mustaches, Archdukes board at own risk	???	Any shot fired on board results in global war