Once in a while you stumble across a website that is simply useful. No fluff, no platform logic, no engagement traps, just carefully structured information that helps when you actually need it. For train travel in Belgium, this is one of those rare finds.
A Genuinely Useful Website for Train Travel in Belgium
Once in a while you stumble across a website that is simply useful. Not “content driven,” not optimized for engagement, not trying to sell you anything. Just a page that was clearly built by someone who knows the subject and decided to put that knowledge online in a form that actually helps other people. As someone who travels a lot by train in Belgium, I do not stumble across many pages like that anymore.
Most information about rail travel today lives inside apps, fragmented across FAQs, help pages, popups, and customer support flows that only reveal the answer after you have already made a mistake. What is missing is a clear overview. Something you can read once, understand, and then rely on when things get messy, which they inevitably do when you travel.
That is why the Benelux by train site https://hilario.bambooradical.com/benelux/ immediately stood out.
This is not a flashy site. It does not try to impress you. It does something far more valuable, it explains how train travel in Belgium actually works.
Tickets, validation, first and second class, QR codes, contactless cards, supplements, cross border oddities, platform sections, coupled trains that split, domestic versus international rules. All the things that matter in practice, and that are usually scattered across ten different official pages, are brought together in one place.
What makes it especially strong is the tone. It does not assume ignorance, but it also does not assume insider knowledge. It explains without condescension. It flags common mistakes before you make them. It tells you what to watch out for, not in theory, but in the situations where people actually get confused, fined, or stuck.
And then there are the diagrams
The schematic maps of the Belgian and Benelux train networks are genuinely useful. They are not decorative. They help you understand how services relate to each other, what runs daily, what is supplementary, what changes on weekends. They give you a mental map that no journey planner app will ever provide.
This is information you want before you travel, not while you are already running for a connection.
What I appreciate most is that the site feels accountable. The author clearly cares about accuracy, notes limitations, flags changes, and treats the material as something that deserves maintenance. In an age where most information feels disposable, that alone is refreshing.
We often hear that the web is dead. Pages like this are a good reminder that it is not. They are just harder to find, buried under platforms that prefer to keep knowledge locked inside interfaces.
For anyone who travels by train in Belgium, regularly or occasionally, this site is worth bookmarking. It is the kind of resource you did not know you were missing until you find it.
And once you do, you quietly hope more people still build things like this.