London – July 21, 2026 Thrust Carbon today launches train.thrustcarbon.com and industry-first, publicly available tool to plot the carbon footprint of any UK train journey on a map of the rail network, colour-coded by how each line is powered.
The emissions shown are based on Green Travel Data, the Rail Delivery Group’s (RDG) new industry-benchmark dataset for rail emissions. The data is available across roughly 6.5 million station-to-station combinations in Great Britain, and built using a carbon methodology co-developed by Thrust Carbon calculated from granular inputs – engine and fuel type, carriage numbers, travel class, real occupancy and live timetable data. This methodology means every train journey now gets a unique carbon calculation rather than an average. The findings are stark. Across UK routes, rail produces lower per-passenger emissions than the equivalent car journey 79% of the time, and can be up to 13 times greener than flying domestically [1].
For example, on the 632km journey from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh, a standard-class ticket produces 13.8kg of CO2e per passenger – compared with 68.2kg and 121.8kg by car and air, respectively [2]. The tool converts that 54.4kg CO2e saving into terms that everyone can understand: the same as 13,265 cups of tea, 27,192 phone charges, or driving 337km in a petrol car [2].
The tool also puts a number on something often overlooked: time. A dedicated "What the time is worth" feature compares the roughly 7.5 hours a driver spends hands-on-the-wheel against the time a train traveller gets back for themselves – enough, on the King’s Cross to Edinburgh route, for six episodes of The Traitors UK, 180 emails, or 18 chapters of a book [2].
The data behind train.thrustcarbon.com is now open to the public for the first time, and will be accessible by TMCs, OBTs and Thrust Carbon’s other industry partners for enhanced point of sale and analytical data.
"We wanted to release something people would actually enjoy using – free, visual, and yes, a bit of fun. Most people have never really been able to picture their own carbon footprint. Behind every line on that map sits some of the highest-quality emissions data in the industry; we just wanted to give people a way to actually see it, and see the impact of their own journeys." – Kit Aspen, Founder and CEO, Thrust Carbon
"At Mott MacDonald we are committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2040, our publicly committed target is validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). We have established that improving our corporate travel approach needs to be a key part of our carbon reduction plan, exploring the carbon cost of all rail journeys will help us prove to the business that the shift to rail is helping us reach our SBTI." – Mike Heath, Travel Specialist, Mott MacDonaldtrain.thrustcarbon.com is live today, free to use, for any journey on the National Rail network. Find your journey and share your journey card.
Sources
[1] Rail Delivery Group, Green Travel Data (April 2026 refresh) – https://www.raildeliverygroup....
[2] Rail Delivery Group, Green Travel Data (April 2026 refresh), via train.thrustcarbon.com.
Media contact: Josh Loyd – josh@thrustcarbon.com