In 2017, the “commuter train of the future” boasted an onboard gym, games consoles, swivelling armchairs and private pods for making calls or using laptops. It was, according to the Sun, “so awesome it could actually make you want to go to work”.
Unfortunately it did not quite exist: the Deutsche Bahn design team’s concept train, the Ideenzug (Ideas Train), unveiled six years ago, was trying to counter what was then perceived as the biggest threat to their market: self-driving cars, whose users, they said, would soon be able to relax on the way to work.
