As you might have gathered, we've been a bit exasperated by the difficulty of independent travel in Corsica for people without a car. Given the number of people moving about, hiking and so on, it's very hard work.
It has been made much worse by the partial closure of the railway system. This futuristic machine, lolling in a siding in Ajaccio, is the reason. According to our chatty informant, in the queue for this morning's ride, the Chemin de Fer de Corse (CFC) bought this machine last year. It doesn't really fit the rails. Worse still, in using it they seriously damaged the track. We didn't really get how, but it seemed to have to do with the clearance of the carriage underneath.
So they are doing all this work on the track, with the consequent service upheavals, in order to make it possible to run the old rolling stock. The new one apparently will require two years work, and cost a mint, so nobody knows if it will happen!
The interim timetable expires next week, on 3 July, but we haven't seen the new one. Here's hoping it's a significant improvement on the current arrangements. Then the transport planners of Corsica could focus on integrating buses and trains and providing information (any info would be an improvement) on the bus network around the island!
In the meantime, the services are patchy and complicated, and correspondingly underused. And this lovely train sits there. We're slightly surprised that the relevant officials' heads aren't spiked on the front as trophies for the travelling public to admire.