WHEN the Berlin Wall fell, Europe began repairing its sundered east-west transport networks. A revived Paris-Moscow train heralded the new era. Berlin’s cathedral-like main station, opened in 2006, became the continent’s new hub. But old north-south bottlenecks are back in the spotlight. Of the nine “Core Network Corridors” currently earmarked for EU investment, six are more vertical than horizontal. The centrepiece of this strategy is the “Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor” from Sweden and Finland, through Denmark, Germany, Austria and Italy to Malta in the south. This programme—jointly funded by the EU and member states—includes railway electrification, port modernisation and the two largest engineering projects on the continent.