Friends of the Rail Forum

Rail enthusiasts believe it is the longest continuous rail journey on earth... You can now travel from Lagos in Portugal all the way to Singapore, say rail experts - with a few stops along the way. Analysis by rail blogger Mark Smith, aka The Man in Seat 61, and Reddit users calculated that the 11,654-mile journey could be done in 21 days...

This tweet has been doing the rounds, claiming to map the longest train journey in the world: The problem is… it’s not right.

At the time of writing this route is impossible – as the maker of the map himself readily admits in an excellent post on Reddit here. But that has not stopped The Independent, Daily Mail, Euronews and The Times writing inaccurate pieces about the map. Anyway I am going to have a go at setting this straight. It’s going to take a whole blog post to unpack this. But it’s a lot of fun, so come along for the ride!...