HOTLINE: AN EXPERT'S VIEW.(in-carriage magazine for Virgin Trains)(Brief Article)

The redesigned Hotline, Virgin Trains' in-carriage magazine, reads well

The newly redesigned Hotline, Virgin Trains' in-carriage magazine, invites immediate comparisons with Hot Air, the Virgin Atlantic in-flight title, which was itself redesigned this year under the former Arena editor, Ekow Eshun.

It's not just the Virgin connection, the "Hot" prefix or the timing of the two revamps. The fact is that Hotline's new look seems designed to move the railways' custom publishing closer to that of airlines -- a move that seems designed to bring in more ad revenue as well as to help buff the image of Virgin's west coast rail service.

In many respects, Hotline has pulled this off admirably. The look is clear, modern and stylish and seems to owe much to Eshun's work on Hot Air. In fact, the editorial environment is so good that a couple of very nicely shot photo pieces -- an essay on tower blocks and a spread on modern architecture--don't appear out of place.

There's much to be said too for some of the editorial content, particularly at the front of the magazine. Sharp paragraphs on the state of cod fishing in Britain, the importance of whispering sweet nothings into your beloved's left ear and research that suggests we need to think less all proved fairly stimulating once I'd decided to dip in.

But that's where the first problem comes for Hotline. The editorial mix covers so many bases that it struggles to persuade a passenger that it's worth trying out. This isn't really a fault in the redesign, rather a problem with rail publishing in general, and one that ...