In late May 2012 we boarded a Eurostar in London bound for Brussels accompanied by our bikes for a leisurely (?) cycle tour of Flanders - Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges. We did not expect to see much railway "action" but that's not quite how it turned out.

The trip from St. Pancras to Brussels Midi / Bruxelles Zuid takes about two hours. The journey was smooth and despite the very limited view from my seat I could see that the only the very tops of the rails were free of rust as we glided along at 300 kph.

The Eurostar is not the only international visitor to Brussels. We saw many Thalys trains and TGVs. DB ICE services were also advertised but we saw none of those. There were plenty of non high speed international services and a wide variety of train types running local and internal intercity services - some looking rather antique and others shiny and new. One of the drawbacks of travelling by bike is that once you're on the road your camera - well the good one - is packed away and inaccessible for a quick shot.

On our first full day in Antwerp we decided to visit the zoo. The route from our B&B in the Berchem district took us down the eastern side of the railway into Antwerp Central. We were quite unprepared for our first sight of it -



Arriving on the street which ran along side the railway showed that this bridge was not a "one off".











And each arch has a different mosaic as well!





We crossed under the railway and headed west looking for the entrance to the zoo. I was particularly taken by this "rock" building.



Eventually, having walked three sides of a rectangle we were confronted with the main entrance to Antwerp Central Station



The entrance to the zoo is on the left.

As the station and the zoo share a boundary, there are some marvellous views of the station to be had from the zoo gardens.







We didn't venture into the station that day which was a mistake because the good weather didn't last. When we did return a week later to visit the print museum, we arrived by train from Brussels. As it was wet, our good cameras were left in the B&B which meant the task of capturing how the original station had been hollowed out to create a three level station was left to my rather inadequate phone camera - but you should get a flavour of it.

Our through train to Amsterdam arrived on platform 23 - that's 2 for level 2 not the 23rd platform. Note that the train is travelling on the left.



One escalator down - four to go



The view from street level down to platforms 23 and 24



Our return train to Brussels would depart from platform 24. It was composed entirely of OBB and Netherlands Railways carriages with an SNCB loco. I don't know where its ultimate destination was but it was pretty full.

This photo gives an impression of the grandeur of the original building



The port of Antwerp is the second busiest in Europe after Rotterdam and the 14th in the world. The port boasts that every dock has a rail connection which inevitably means that there must be railway crossings such as this twin lifting bridge





This bridge was opened and closed several times during our harbour trip.

The port of Antwerp is continually expanding to maintain its position as one of Europe's leading ports. This allows it to service some of the World's largest container ships such as this one - each of those little bricks is the narrow end of a 40' container.



Ships such as that one will take to the river via a very large lock nearby. Minnows such as this



have to go back to the older, smaller locks and negotiate that railway bridge



although perhaps it's not so small when seen alongside it.

Some containers get transferred to small river going barges such as this one



although the term "small" is relative since each of those containers is a 40 footer.


Our cycle route out of Antwerp took us to edge of the river side docks where we had to wait while a large diesel shunter moved a very long train of transfesa wagons across an ungated crossing to yet another marshalling yard. The trip from Antwerp to Ghent was longer and more arduous than we had expected, so after a pleasant day's sight seeing in Ghent including this tramway double slip...



... we took a train from Ghent to Bruges which became rather "interesting". Ghent station does not have any passenger operated lifts and the trains run above street level. This meant removing the panniers and carrying them up the steps and then negotiating the bicycles up the escalator.

The "fun" didn't stop there. We noticed with a rising level of concern that the inter city services appeared to be comprised of "ordinary" coaching stock with no obvious bicycle provision - a somewhat unexpected state of affairs for a country where every man and his dog appears to own a bike. As it happened, our train to Ghent was composed of double decker stock which was almost worse because of the steps but by collaring the guard we were shown into the single low set door leading to the bicycle / wheelchair space on the lower level of one of the coaches. The drama didn't end there. On arrival at Bruges we discovered that the door had no user operated opening device which meant one of us dashing out onto the platform to attract the guard's attention before we got carried on to Ostend

So travelling by train with bicycles in Belgium is not as easy as you might expect but it's a lot cheaper than train travel in the UK, even if you do have to buy a ticket for the bike.

For our return journey, we got the 10:56 from Brussels, arriving in St. Pancras at 12:00. We cycled to Paddington using the London cycle network which keeps you off the busy routes such as the Marylebone Road. We only had to wait five minutes for our train to leave and were home at 14:15, just four hours 20 minutes after leaving Brussels - beat that with a plane?