Hello Onur have just found your terrific website. I live in Melbourne, love trains and travel to work on electric Metro and then DMU. Like many Australians I have been to Turkey (three times in my case), but have never travelled on Turkish trains – other than from Sirkeci out to the end of the line on the Metro – plus had a look at wonderful, wonderful Haydarpasa station on last visit (2012). Hoping to get back to your beautiful country next year – your information on train travel within Turkey is really excellent. Best wishes.

As is usual in Turkey, everything is arranged to suit the engineers building the project, and no thought whatsoever is given to the effect on the passengers and freight customers. TCDD project planning is a complete shambles. As if destroying the railways into Istanbul for several years is not enough, now they plan to isolate Ankara too.I wonder if Konya to Karaman will reopen before Ankara closes?

Why are there so few passengers on the Sofia/Bucarest-Halkali Istanbul route ? Well, I took the Bucarest Halkali sleeper last month, but only very few people know it exists. The DB or SBB online timetable show all the relations with train changes (3 train changes for the Bucarest Halkali train) but they don’t mention anything about direct carriages (…) – If they would update their website info, or if TCDD would tell them to do, then they would stand a chance to attract more travellers (apart from the rail enthusiasts, the Interrail travellers …)