Train travel from the UK to European destinations has been made much easier by the introduction of a new pan-European booking service.
For the first time, travellers can book tickets from Britain to Europe in a single transaction. Some Europe-to-Europe destinations can also be found.
Loco2.com says its mission is to make booking a train as simple as booking a flight. Previously, rail users had to use a host of different web sites.
The name stands for low CO2, reflecting its thrust of promoting train travel as a green alternative as trains generate lower carbon emissions than planes.
The best results from Loco2.com are from the UK to France and Germany while there is a less complete ticketing service so far for destinations in Portugal, Spain, Italy and a number of other countries.
The co-founders experienced much bureaucracy and technical obstacles in trying to access the booking and timetabling systems of a number of national rail services.
"Largely speaking, European rail operators have been reluctant to see change in the market and they were fairly happy with the status quo, even though customers were incredibly frustrated," says Jamie Andrews, co-founder and managing director of Loco2.
"It has taken efforts by the European Commission to begin regulating to open up the market to give companies like us the opportunity to push things forward."
There have also been technical difficulties to overcome in hooking up the computer systems of the different national networks.
