Motorail

A Motorail train or accompanied car train (ACT) is a passenger train on which passengers can take their car or automobile along with them on their journey. Passengers are carried in normal passenger carriages or in sleeping carriages on longer journeys, while the cars are loaded into autoracks, car-carriers, or flatcars that normally form part of the same train.

Motorail services are not the same as car shuttle trains or car-carrying train services. The latter usually operate over relatively short distances, on lines passing through a rail tunnel and connecting two places not easily accessible to each other by road. On car shuttle train services, unlike on motorail services, the occupants of the road vehicles being carried on the train usually stay with their vehicle throughout the rail journey.

In Europe, many motorail connections are running cross-border between different European countries. To be mentioned are trains between Austria—Germany, Austria—Italy, Germany—Italy, Czech Republic—Slovakia and Serbia—Montenegro. Some domestic services exist as well. Domestic motorail trains are running within Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Finland and France.

Almost all motorail services are offered in connection with overnight trains with sleeping cars.

In Austria, roughly half of the night trains of the Österreichische Bundesbahnen (ÖBB) (called ÖBB nightjet) include car-carrier wagons. Most of the car-carrier wagons are running on a daily basis all-year-round to car terminals located in Austria (Vienna, Graz, Villach, Feldkirch, Innsbruck) and Germany (Hamburg, Düsseldorf). In addition, ÖBB nightjets are serving two car terminals in Italy (Verona, Livorno) during three seasons (spring, summer, autumn). For the motorail services from Austria to Germany, ÖBB took over operations from DB AutoZug, a German motorail company which ceased operations.

Also seasonal is the Optima Express, a three-season service (spring, summer, autumn) between Villach in Austria and Edirne in Turkey with up to four trains each week in summer.

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Wikipedia