Festive travellers will be presented with the largest ever replica train made entirely from presents, in Virgin Trains’ now traditional annual bid to spread Christmas cheer.

Life-size replicas of the iconic Azuma and Pendolino trains will be unveiled at King’s Cross and Birmingham New Street stations this week, with lucky passengers able to take a present home.

It follows new research* which reveals that when it comes to Christmas this year, the average Brit will give 18.5 presents and spend £388.50 on loved ones, family and friends. In spite of this generosity, all is not rosy with the findings, showing that the magic of Christmas disappears when we reach the age of 18.

On Tuesday 13th December, a model of the Virgin Azuma train, which comes into service on the East Coast route in 2018, will be presented to passengers travelling through King’s Cross. The 12m long by 2m high replica has taken a team of eight 1,500 hours to build. It consists of over 1,000 individually wrapped presents, including iPads, folding bikes, Virgin balloon rides and pamper days, robotic dogs and a lorry load of chocolate. A replica of the iconic Pendolino train, which is also made up of 1,000 presents, will be unveiled at Birmingham New Street station on Thursday 15th December.

For those unable to attend in person on either day, Virgin Trains will be hosting a Facebook Live event where people can tune in for the chance to win one of the presents. Passengers will be given live clues by one of the helpers at both stations and have to guess what present is in the helper’s box. The first person to guess the present correctly will win it.

Patrick McCall, Co-Chairman for Virgin Trains said; “We know Christmas is here when we get to unveil our Virgin Christmas Train. This year we’ve broken from tradition and taken it off the tracks for the first time and into stations – giving away an amazing 2,000 presents over the week. After finding out that people believe the magic of Christmas disappears at age 18, we wanted to spread a bit of sparkle for the two million customers expected to travel with us over the festive period.”

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