THAT'S AVELIA, NOT ACELA.

It's a new Pendolino train, soon to go into service Frankfurt - Basel - Milan.

The Avelia Pendolino for SBB is a seven-car train that can transport up to 420 passengers at a maximum operating speed of 250km/h. The train offers its passengers easy access and high comfort due to wide gangways and corridors, adjustable seats, individual reading lamps and sockets as well as large panoramic windows. The train is equipped with the latest generation of flexible bogies reducing track and wheel wear. It also benefits from Alstom’s unique tilting technology, which allows trains to run 35 per cent faster and more safely through curves on conventional lines.

The Pendolino’s environmentally-friendly design is recyclable up to 95 per cent, and is equipped with an electric brake system allowing reducing energy consumption by almost 10 per cent.

Regenerative braking is not a new thing on electrically operated railroads, although providing the circuitry to rectify and invert and chop and then unchop and convert back to the catenary power and frequency is.

I note that these trains have adjustable seats, which is an advance over Britain's Virgin Pendolino sets.

Is it too much to ask for a spiffed-up version to run Paris to Venice via the Simplon as a latter-day Venice Simplon-Orient Express?