Sweden bows to public vote and christens new express Trainy McTrainface

A Swedish express train has been christened Trainy McTrainface, in an echo of the name chosen by the British public for its new polar research vessel.

One of the new five-strong fleet of Stockholm-to-Gothenburg trains received the moniker yesterday (17 October) in a naming ceremony at Gothenburg's central station, organised by Swedish rail company MTR Express.

The name is a result of a public poll launched earlier in the year by MTR, and harks back to the British vote last April to name a polar research ship Boaty McBoatface, which was later overruled.

Trainy McTrainface received 49% of the votes, in a poll jointly run by the rail firm and Swedish newspaper Metro. That placed it well ahead the other three options: Hakan, Miriam and Poseidon.

MTR marketing head Per Nasfi told The Local: "We saw pretty quickly that Trainy McTrainface was in the lead and the popular option. There was a bit of international attention on the vote, and I imagine that some people were quite delighted to get some revenge for the Boaty McBoatface thing."

Most of the other trains in the fleet have already been named by the public. One has been named Estelle, after the five-year-old daughter of Sweden's Princess Victoria, the next in line to the Swedish throne.

Another is called Glenn, after a long-running joke that everyone in Gothenburg is called Glenn. The name is common in the city and the surrounding region, and in the 1980s local football team IFK Göteborg had four players called Glenn in its squad.

The fourth train has yet to be named. A fifth train, Ingvar, after the Swedish TV personality Ingvar Oldsberg, was named before voting began.

In Britain, the public vote for Boaty McBoatface was eventually overruled by the ship's owner, the British Antarctic Survey. In the end the £200m state-of-the-art vessel was named after TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough, with an onboard remotely-operated submarine receiving the Boatface moniker.