Here’s a round-up of news from Trainlandia mostly schlepped from the Man in Seat 61’s twitter feed:

People are switching to the train for London-Glasgow trips:

“The proportion of people travelling between London and Glasgow by rail rather than air has reached a record level, according to Virgin Trains.

“In the 12 months to July 2019, 29% of passengers chose to travel with the train company rather than fly”.

Rail passengers rose by 57,000 and air passengers declined by 81,000 on this route. The flight time is about 1 hr 15 mins + airport shenanigans, while the train takes around 4 hr 30 mins.

European train operators are having to increase capacity:

“The Swiss Federal Railways, along with Deutsche Bahn (DB), the French state railways SNCF and the Italian counterpart Trenitalia are offering additional international rail services to meet increased demand. Also, the Swiss and Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) plan to further develop night train services between Switzerland and Austria”.

For the French:

“Also starting next month, the French TGV Lyria will operate 15 double-decker trains on the routes from Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva to Paris – replacing the current single-decker trains. The timetable will also be expanded. These moves will increase the daily capacity from 4,500 to 18,000 seats. All passengers will get free WLAN, and those in “first-class business” will receive hot meals at their seats”.

From 4,500 to 18,000 seat capacity, that’s no statistical blip!

Slightly older news I missed: very cool “staycation” advertising campaign by Deutsche Bahn. They used machine learning to match famous foreign landmarks with the closest-looking place in Germany:

“German Rail, with Ogilvy Germany and Getty Images, used a lookalike algorithm to identify German locations that resembled iconic international landmarks.

“Then using Facebook data, German Rail targeted travel enthusiasts interested in specific destinations on Instagram and Facebook. Finally, through geo-tagging technology and Google Search, the audience was served video ads updated with real-time prices, comparing two gorgeous locations (one in Germany and one aboard), detailing the cost of travel from their closest airport to the foreign country. The campaign video juxtaposed the thousands of euros it cost to travel to destinations such as Venice, Vancouver, or Tokyo with the €19 ($21) train journey to visit the next best thing, a German lookalike location. During the first 13 days of the campaign 750 unique ads were created”.

Here’s one example:

That’s some clever shit.

And last but not least, here’s a website that helps you find a cocktail bar before boarding your European night train.

Unsurprisingly, it’s called “Night trains and bars”.

It comes with a European night train map and these trains’ timetables.

So now all that’s left to do is go forth and train.

Bon voyage :)

[Photo credit: Derek Story/Unsplash]