The rail connection to Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport opened today - and it looks good, with a choice of an Airport Express or a commuter train as well as in-town check-in facilities at the Airport Express's downtown terminal.

I had a look at the airport's web-site to see how well the link was publicised - after all, it could bring both business and prestige to the airport.

I went to www.bangkokairportonline.com then clicked on Transportation then on Airport Express - and got details of the express bus service into the city!

You have to click on Rail Link to get any information about the railway - and that is badly out of date. Full service is expected in early 2010! There are no links to the airport railway (note to searchers - it's on www.bangkokairporttrain.com).

Sad - and a waste of a valuable resource for the airport.

There are debates about what an Airport Express really is - express laundry? express coffee?

In Bangkok, it's the four bus routes who got in first with the brand name. In Chicago, it's the minibus (or shared-ride van) service.

It's a pity - from the customer information point of view - that we can't standardise on this!

Probably the best name is the one in (Wien) Vienna. The stunning airport express there is called the City Airport Train - what could be clearer than that?

As the new class 377 trains have been introduced onto the Thameslink route (connecting Luton and Gatwick Airports to London) I've been hearing but not really noticing the announcements on platforms as they approach.

One thing I did notice last night - and started to think about - is an element of laziness.

The 4-car units have a first class section at each end.

But regardless of whether the train has one or two 4 car units, the announcement is always to the effect that 'First class accommodation is at the front and rear of the train'.

So it is, of course, but if it's an 8-car train it's also in the middle! And there are plenty of stations where you might wish to alight and you might wish to be in the middle of the train rather than at the front or rear for speed of egress. Especially with ticket barriers making it more of a scrum to leave the station!

Is this someone taking the easy way out and ignoring the passengers? Especially the premium passengers?

The current management seem to have cracked this counting business: if a 4-car train is announced, it's likely to have four coaches. With the previous guys, you knew that there were two kinds of 4-car train - those which actually had four coaches and those which had 8. There were also two kinds of 8-car train, which was sometimes distressing because it necessitated a sprint!

Now that counting has been cracked - or so it seems - it ought to be possible to have separate announcements for 4 and 8 car trains. The next Great Leap Forward!

My recent visit to Belgium (see earlier blog post) led me to reflect on languages.

If you are a train operator in, for example, the Netherlands, Flanders or Norway where the local language is known by a relatively small population (4m - 8m) and by very few others, what do you do when communicating with passengers?

How much do you translate into, say, English?

This is even more complex in Flanders (where you could also use French or German) and Catalonia (where you could also use Spanish).

Pictograms are valuable, although you can't use them for everything.

Putting everything in the local language and another - English, for example - risks devaluing the local language. And the local language is of course fundamental to the culture of the country. Indeed, in some places it is actually a political statement.

The aviation industry uses local language plus English, although its presence in a country is obviously much less pervasive than the railway industry.

The alternative - of using the local language for virtually everything - is an easy option, but many visitors can be put off. Learning another language for a 2-week visit is one thing: doing so for a 2-night business trip is something else!

And I leave you with the thought of a friend in London Underground on a trip to Germany, when his knowledge of German was fairly basic. He knew that Ausgang meant exit - but what about Notausgang? It actually means Emergency Exit, but it carries entirely the wrong message to people like himself!

Each year, I get invited to speak at the European Training Centre for Railways (ETCR) in the College of Europe in Brugge (Bruges). My remit is to talk to European railway middle managers (who are there on a 2-week course) about the aviation industry and air-rail intermodality. It's always a pleasure to meet these young and enthusiastic people.

It means I get to ride on the train between Brussels and Brugge. There is a half-hourly service, usually calling at Gand (Ghent) only. Sometimes - as on my outward journey - these are double-deck units: coming back, it was a single-deck train. Trains are up to 10 vehicles long - comfortable, spacious and reasonably quiet (although I have found, coming from Brussels on a sunny day, that they can be full of people off to the seaside!). They are usually push-pull units, and sometimes divide at Brugge. Sometimes the loco is in the centre of the train - something I've seen no-where else!

You can catch these trains at three stations in Brussels. This time, I used Central - the terminus of the bus from my hotel. It's a horrible place to wait - it's a busy 6-platform underground main-line station: particularly in the peak, there are lots of trains there. Most stop in Central but a few intercity ones do not. Many of the trains are going just one or two stops - to Midi in the south or Schaarbeek in the north. On the day I travelled this year, many were up to 10 minutes late.

The big departure indicator at central concourse level is good, but at platform level the most visible indicators only showed the next train from that platform - so if platforms were changed (because trains were running late!) it would be difficult to know! Yes, there are announcements - but not very audible because of the background noise and the low roof. And if you could hear them, could you understand them? They are in anything up to four languages, since Belgium is legally tri-lingual and English is also used when announcing long-distance trains.

Brussels Nord and Midi are both big stations, elevated above ground level, with a number of subways under all of the tracks. This can be confusing, especially at Midi where the main subway houses facilities like the Eurostar check-in and the main ticket office while others are really only for changing platfoms or leaving the station (although the Air France check-in is in the south subway).

Midi has clearly benefitted from the major investment occasioned by the arrival of Eurostar and the decision to make it the main international station. Nord, by comparison, can appear the poor relation: investment is coming to the area but fairly slowly, so it is still in a relatively scruffy part of the city.

The route to Brugge has been upgraded over recent years, with new canal bridges and new grade-separated junctions.

More noticeable, though, has been the upgrade of Brugge station. At platform level, there is much marble and glass: it looks good, but there are insufficient seats and it would be an unpleasant place to wait in wet windy weather. At subway level - ground level, because the tracks are elevated - there are some shops and tourist information kiosks. Just outside is a small supermarket, a large bus station and an enormous bike park.

Announcements at Brugge station are only in Flemish.

The station has 10 platforms and lots of trains of all sizes - including freight and direct trains to places like Lille.

The trains and infrastructure were in good condition. It is especially good that, if you buy a Eurostar ticket to Brussels, it takes you to any Belgian station.

One downside of my travel experience was my attempt - ultimately successful - to change my reservation to an earlier Eurostar.

Having found the right place, I was prompted by a screen for my preferred language and destination country and then given a numbered ticket for the queueing system.

The ticket number indicated my place in the queue - normally a good thing because you can wait somewhere comfortable until your number is called, rather than waiting in a snaking line of people! However, the number I'd got bore no relation to any sequence on any screen I could see. After a bit, the screens changed and my number came up - so I went and stood behind someone trying to get to Germany, in a place where I could see a number of desks staffed but where the occupants were doing nothing except studiously ignore anyone who came to them.

Eventually, the person at the position next to the one I'd been called to attended to me.

This was unimpressive. While it was probably necessitated by the number of train companies using it, it didn't seem very efficient.

So it seemed that, as so often, information and other soft issues - the difficult bits - could be improved.

Sunday train travel in Great Britain is known to be hazardous because of the significant amount of engineering work which routinely disrupts services. So when I needed to go from St. Albans, 33 km north of London, to Rotherhithe, in London's Docklands, one Sunday, I checked my options very carefully.

A major problem was the London Underground - the Hammersmith & City, Jubilee, and relevant parts of the Circle and London Overground (former North London Line) were all shut. Thameslink was, as usual, not crossing London: trains from the north terminated at St. Pancras.

According to the National Rail web-site, the journey wasn't possible. I was given the last connection on Saturday night and the first on Monday morning: Sunday was a non-day!

Both the Transport Direct and the Transport for London (TfL) web-sites recommended changing at St. Pancras to the Northern Line, and changing to a C10 bus at Borough.

A useful option on Transport Direct's web-site is the choice of mode - you can tick or untick modes you do or don't want to use. So I unticked bus, assuming that I'd be given the option of changing at London Bridge and again at New Cross.

But no - I was offered the Jubilee Line rail replacement bus service from London Bridge!

Now come on, guys, if I don't want to travel by bus, I don't even want to travel by one which happens to be replacing a rail service!

As it happened, the journey went quite smoothly - using the recommended route through Borough.