Railway News from all Over the World

Modern Plastic Art, on…Freight Trains
The artists of our days do longer know to manifest their creative spirit! Moreover, they succeed to find "sponsors" even among the railway men.
Recently, the Hungarian Authority of the Railways has announced that that there will be made available to the "drawer" artists sprays, as well as approximately 100…freight wagons in order to manifest their talent. Sick and tired to clean up the graffiti painted on the trains, the Hungarian company managers have concluded an agreement with the amateur artists: they will allow them to "decorate" them as they wish, under the condition that the passengers trains remain untouched.
The initiative of the Hungarian railway men had a great success: at the headquarters of MAV from Budapest an agreement between 30 and 40 artists, the majority wearing sky masks on their faces, in order to avoid discovering their identity has been presented in order to be signed.

The Adaptation of "Marco Polo", on its Final Stage
On July 30, the current year, the European Parliament has accepted without amendments the position of the European Council with respect to the adaptation of "Marco Polo" Program, for the protection of the environment through the sustainable extension of the freight railway transport system. This program has been created specially for the enhancement of the goods transfer from the quite polluting transport modes to the one that have proved to be more friendly towards the environment.
The members of the European Parliament have positively received this program and they agree with the fact that for the citizens of Europe the movement of the freight traffic from the road to the railways will be advantageous.

A Unique Invitation to Travel to Austria
Austrian Railways (OBB) have recently announced the launching of a new section on its site, named The Members Area. Here you can find information about the new clients and new products from the railway field and, by all means, interesting images and even games. The desire of those who have built this site was to create an area easy to access, offering to all those interested the possibility to exchange information from the railway field. For this, through a simple recording - supposing the introduction of certain personal information for the creation of a profile -, to those willing to access it there are presented two options: they can tell about their own trips and their favorite railway routes or they can search for data from where and how they can travel, finding out details about the experience of others. There can be formed groups of persons with the same travelling preferences, who could become holiday partners.
This way of contacting the clients is part of the marketing policy promoted by OBB which motto is "Time to live". For all those interested to travel or at least to find out information about how you can travel to Austria, here you have the respective address, which will prove to be useful for sure: www.Oebb.at/membersarea.

Less Smokers in Spanish Trains
The main passengers railway transport operators from Spain, DSB, took measures against smoking in the trains. During the next period, the seats meant for persons that are smoking will be reduced to almost a half. This decision is motivated by the fact that the number of passengers has been increased and, quite significantly, the ones that are smoking have to travel on smokers' seats.
For example, an ICE trains of 144 seats will be modified so that the number of seats for smokers will be decreased from 37 seats to 16. Once with these modifications, there will be also changed the ventilation system of the trains. There has been also announced that this is still a decision that it will take a while until their enforcement.

Silvia Mirea