The European Federation of Museum and Tourist Railways (FEDECRAIL) and the World Association of Tourist Trams and Trains (Wattrain) represented by their President, Mr David Morgan, and UIC, represented by its Director General, Mr Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 27 April 2017 in Paris in the framework of the TopRail (Tourism Opportunities for Railways) activity.

On 19 February Mr David Morgan, President of Wattrain, Mr John Fuller, representative of Fedecrail to the TopRail group and Peter Lewis, Wattrain webmaster met Mr Marc Guigon, Director of the UIC Passenger Department and Mrs Vanessa Perez, Product Manager of TopRail and Mr Aymeric Boniou, UIC webmaster to follow up the MoU signed in 2017.

Almost one year after the signature of the MoU, representatives from the three institutions renewed the agreed to cooperate with each other through undertaking active collaboration in the pursuit of two main common objectives: to enhance the visibility and acknowledge tourism opportunities by rail and to increase rail’s share of the tourist market.

Focus was placed on collaboration in four concrete areas:

Website and social network
The three organisations are convinced of the importance of developing their websites and looking for synergies between them to foster tourism in the railways.

Studies
As part of the development of the MOU, the three associations will plan to collaborate (alone or with institutions or universities) in the creation of reports with figures to reinforce the idea of the importance of the Tourism on Rails around the world.

“Around the World in 80 trains” book
Wattrain and Fedecrail will collaborate on the identification of iconic trains around the world to be referenced in this UIC project to be developed within this year.

TopRail Forum
Wattrain and Fedecrail will send representatives to the first TopRail Forum to be held in Barcelona 20 and 21 April 2018.