Scarf knitted by commuter in protest at train delays sold for thousands on eBay

The scarf has stripes to represent the length of delays during 2018

A scarf knitted by a German commuter to show how delayed her trains were has been sold for thousands at auction.

The 1.5-metre-long red, blue and grey scarf sold for €7,550 (£6,721) on eBay, with 134 bids from 45 bidders.

The commuter, who lives in the Munich area, knitted the scarf during 2018 using different coloured stripes to represent how delayed her Deutsche Bahn trains were, according to her daughter, Sara Weber, who posted a picture of the scarf on Twitter.

Grey stripes denote a delay of under five minutes, pink stripes for between five and 30 minutes and red when the trains were delayed for more than 30 minutes. In 2018, one in four trains were delayed.

After an enthusiastic reception to the scarf, Weber said that her mother decided to auction it off for charity.

In further tweets, Weber explained the different delays throughout the year.

“In the spring, everything was still ok. Lots of grey and pink. Then everything was red for a while: rail replacement traffic, the whole summer holidays long. It didn’t take 40 minutes per trip, but just under two hours. Every day. For six and a half weeks.”

Then in an area with lots of different coloured stripes knitted close together: “She has hoped it will get better by the end of the year. But: again, a lot of red. Door disturbances, congestion, delayed trains from ‘train sequence’”.