Train of thought

France, the country which invented the philosophy café, has just had another smart idea: "The Train of thought". From this week, passengers who book by internet on certain long-distance French trains can arrange to sit next to other passengers with similar interests.

Would you like to travel from Paris to Marseilles while discussing Nietzsche or football or prospects for next year's presidential elections? Would you like to exchange 90 minutes of conversation in French, for 90 minutes of conversation in English? Would you like to learn to knit? Or play snap? Or combine forces to defeat diabolical sudoko puzzles?

All possibilities - save one - are open to passengers who pay an extra €1.50 (£1.03) to consult the declared interests of passengers already booked on their intended train. The one exception, insisted upon by the surprisingly prudish French national railway system, is that there must be no lonely hearts or erotic proposals. "The mission of the SNCF is not to be a go-between for amorous meetings," said a spokeswoman for the state railways, Mireille Faugère.

There will even be a kind of internet chaperone service, manned by the SNCF, to weed out suspected lonely hearts. Anyone judged to be racist or violent will also be excluded.

To use the new service, you must travel on one of the special, cut-price, high-speed trains offered to internet bookers only. The ID-TGV trains connect Paris with 11 cities - Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Bordeaux, Cannes, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nice, Nîmes, Saint Raphael, Toulon and Toulouse - from €19 for a one-way trip.