Welcome to the Octavius Express my new, weekly round up of rail news and views. Every week I’ll aim to share the best train stuff I find, via the all-consuming time vortex that is the ‘social web’, choosing one as my Rail Good Find, in other words my Pick of the Week.

Seeing as this is my maiden voyage, I’m going to take a minor liberty and backtrack for a few weeks’ worth of news. Future round ups are likely to be shorter, depending on just how much railly interesting stuff we find along the way.

Rail Good Find!

My debut pick of the week goes to American journalist and blogger Greg Gross of the excellent I’m Black and I Travel blog. His post on the many benefits of establishing a High Speed Rail network in West Africa was really imaginative and thought provoking.

Greg argues that HS Rail would not only boost infrastructure and the economy of these developing countries, but would also bring health and aid benefits. It may sound like a tall order, but see what you think of his ideas and be sure to follow the series of posts on the theme. As Greg himself says, ‘Small dreams are a waste of sleep!’

Train of Thought Film

This beautifully animated short film, Train of Thought, by Bournemouth Arts Institute graduates Leo Bridle and Ben Thomas, came a very close second. It captures the old fashioned romance of rail travel marvelously. This great find came via Sophie Collard and her spanking new blog for Quno, the new global rail ticketing brand which has recently gone live. Enjoy:

Scotsman’s Train v Plane Challenge

Great initiative here from one of my regular paymasters, the Scotsman newspaper. They’re challenging two of their journalists to race each other from the centre of Edinburgh to London, one by plane the other by train. Their progress will be tracked with blog posts written as they travel, and their exploits will be assessed not on time alone but comfort, food and productivity. I’m looking forward to following their journey and naturally I’ll be rooting for the trains!

Plane v Train ad

On a similar theme, I was really quite taken with this superb ad by Better Transport to encourage people to lobby the UK government to support funding for business rail travel in favour of air travel. Very engaging and refreshingly non-preachy.

New Eurostar Trains

It’s been a great few weeks for High Speed rail in general, as Eurostar unveiled its impressive new trains which are set to run at 200mph further cutting the journey time from London to Paris to a mere 2 hours. The new super-sleek looking Seimens 320 will accommodate an extra 150 passengers with free wifi, music and multimedia services available on-demand in 2011. See it in action here..

Climate Change: Food for Thought?A very interesting find from Ed Gillespie’s Low Carbon Travel blog here. An ‘infographic’ from www.fly.co.uk of all people, giving some surprising stats on carbon emissions. It compares the carbon cost of flying with various airlines to the global consumption of burgers and milk, among other things. I’m not entirely sure what message they’re aiming for here, but it’s certainly a subtle and clever way of deflecting climate blame away from the airlines.

Ed is Co-Founder of Futrerra Communications, a specialist sustainability marketing agency in London, and is fond of debunking transparent ‘green washing’ of many big corporates. He’s an entertaining public speaker too. Catch him at if you can at the Wilderness Forest Dinner event in East Sussex on Bonfire Night, November 5, where he’ll be talking about his flight-free round the world trip.

Look out for Train Diva

It’s not often a find another blog about train travel. Of course the big train companies have theirs and the personal travelogues of inter railers and train travellers come and go, but recently I got word of a new rail blog along similar lines to my own. I was excited to hear from Donnae Bell of Train Diva. Her early posts so far cover journeys like South Africa’s ultra-luxe Rovos Rail and similarly exotic journeys through Morocco and Egypt. One to watch.

High numbers and High Speed for Amtrak

America is not known for its rail transport success stories these days, so it was rather heartening to hear a bit of positive news from national operator Amtrak. Last week they reported setting a new annual rider record close to 29 million with ticket takings also at a record breaking $1.74 Billion. Customer numbers have climbed by 37% in the past decade, so who says that American rail is dead?

In the same week President Barack Obama announced plans for the much needed High Speed Rail network, following up on his previous pledge to support transport infrastructure across the board. Let’s hope the trend continues and these commitments are seen through so that our rail riders across the Atlantic get the service they clearly value.

Russian rail tourism on track

That other super power from the Cold War days of old seem to be powering on too. Just a few weeks ago an awe-inspiring new service from Moscow to Nice was launched. The 50 hour journey offers three deluxe carriages, six first class and one second. Prices for this amazing journey start at 300 Euros per person going up to 1200 for the deluxe berth.

Hot on the heels of that news came the announcement that St Petersburg is to get a souped up high speed service connecting it with Helsinki and the rest of Scandinavia. From 12 December the journey will take just 3 and a half hours, while improved ticketing arrangements between Russia and Western European countries is also on the way, making it easier to go west by rail or vice versa.

The Great Indian Railway Challenge is readying itself for final boarding soon. Any latecomers keen to jump aboard should log on to the trip page on Globetrooper now to get up to speed with the logistics and bagsy a space. And if you need some inspiration to do so, how does this amazing picture of the Amaravathi Express plunging through Braganza Ghats in Southern India grab you?

That just about wraps things up for this week, but please do drop me a comment or send me a tweet if you spy anything to include in the next voyage of the Octavius Express. Special thanks to Corinne of the Gourmantic food and travel blog for the name inspiration and thanks to all of you who also made suggestions!