Europe's night trains are on track for a resurgence
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
I love night trains. For distances of around 1000km, they are effectively the fastest way.
Imagine two transports:
- "fast", which can be a plane or high speed train. Travel time is around 3h. The plane is faster but with getting in and out of the airport, boarding, etc... it takes almost the same amount of time in the end.
- The night train, travel time 9h, let's say from 10pm to 7am
You want to get to your destination at some time in the morning.
With the "fast" transport, you have to get up really early and take the first train/flight. Expect a short night, and it may not even be possible without arriving late. The other option is to travel the day before in the evening and book a hotel, not ideal either. In any case, you will spend 3 active hours of your day for travel, or sleep 3 hours less.
With the night train, you have a good night sleep (generally, sleeper trains are comfortable) and didn't waste the best part of your day. And you may even save a hotel night.
Think of it as a traveling hotel.
A trip I've done several times is London to Edinburgh. It's a quick flight and even a quick train during the day but if you want to spend Saturday and Sunday you'd have to get up early on Saturday to catch a plane or train which would get you in by noon.
Instead you take the Caledonian Sleeper on Friday evening and arrive in the morning in Edinburgh, ready to start the day.
Although you won't get the absolute best night's sleep, if you come prepared (sleeping mask + ear plugs) you'll get a very decent night's sleep (better than having to wake up early on Saturday).
It's also fun going to sleep and waking up somewhere different!
If you ever want to go between Britain and The Netherlands this has to be the most relaxing way to travel. Get on the boat around dinner, eat dinner on the boat, have a beer, go to your room and sleep, wake up in your destination.
It's even better than night trains.
For booking, one has to be careful to book the inter-European distances from Brussels with a reduced price a bit in advance (for example from the German bahn.de web site). It's called Eurosparpreis or so. Also, for the British trains there are resellers which sell the seats much more expensive, so one has to watch out not to be short-changed.
By the way, another and often cheaper alternative is to take the ferry from Newcastle to Ijmuiden/NL which is a port of Amsterdam. As well as the Caledonian Sleeper, it leaves in the evening and arrives at breakfast time. And you have a nice two-people cabin which is a good place to sleep. It can be like 120 € per person for a return ticket.
https://www.dfds.com/en/passenger-ferries/ferry-crossings/fe...
Although since you mention using the Internet and also the Eurostar, you probably meant the day train, which is fine but the 6 hours to Berlin take a chunk out of your day. (I once took the one at 5 AM, but that turned out to be too early for me and I can't sleep in a chair.)
It's not quite as seamless as a direct train but still very enjoyable:
You take a train in the evening from London to the ferry terminal in Harwich, then overnight ferry in a private cabin (it's a big ferry with restaurant and bar etc.) to a port in southern Holland. Then a train from there to Amsterdam.
The train tickets are part of the ferry price (rail and sail) and you get into Amsterdam nice and early.
The UK has two sleeper train services- the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Scotland, and the Night Riviera from London to Cornwall.
At one stage, the Caledonian Sleeper stopped selling seats and would only sell sleeper berths (because of coronavirus) while the Night Riviera stopped selling sleeper berths and would only sell seats (for the same reason).
While I understand stopping selling seats, the decision to not sell sleeper berths probably has more to do with cost than protection from the virus. See also Eurostar's short-lived decision to stop offering free Wi-Fi in standard class!
It does not run through Prague. It runs through Poland and then crosses CZ from Ostrava to Břeclav. Then SK (Kúty, Bratislava, Štúrovo) and then HU.
Actually in central Europe the night trains usually join and split at some stations, so in Ostrava two trains join: from Berlin and from Warsaw. Then in Břeclav they split again (two halves from each half), one goes to Vienna, another to Budapest. So at the beginning there are two parts on each train and you have to choose the right one. But since the places have to be reserved, you cannot get on the wrong half.
Why is it suspended?
(I'm surprised, though, that the train would pass through five countries. AFAIK it doesn't pass through the Czech Republic.)
The only thing that changed a few years ago is Prague. Changed for SW Poland.
Restrooms on Amtrak don't make you deaf. No stupid food carts blocking the way to the restroom. Even on parts of the world that have food service on trains, the carts don't block people from walking past them.
You can walk the entire length of the train whenever you feel like for exercise.
Turbulence is not a thing on trains, and there's much more space to get from the window seat to the aisle without needing to crawl over a stranger's lap.
Also, there's scenery almost the whole way.
It's unfortunate you can't seem to make too many stops along the way. The company will allow for one, I believe, but as you try to add more the tickets get more expensive. The timing of arrival and the small-town location of many of them just make the option not very interesting for general tourism. I did have a few hours in Chicago which was pretty cool, though I didn't see much and was very put off by the "if you're being shot at then throw your duffel bag at the attacker" videos at the main station. But it was also the middle of winter and like 7-9am or so, so that definitely coloured my experience. Great diner experience though. No one does breakfast quite like North Americans.
Talking with a nice man from California in the restaurant car when I did go the one time I learned he paid as much as me for one of the private room options, just he'd booked a few weeks in advance. I believe he also had access to a shower, which would have been a game changer for me. I booked the way I did though primarily to test out the "worst" option and compare it to better options as I'd make more trips. This was what I learned so far. I'd like to do more though, because this seems like a great way to travel the country.
(You can get a room with a window, but for an overnight trip it seemed a bit pointless.)
I find it difficult to sleep on sleeper trains, and usually arrive tired at the destination. Where there is the option I will use a night train out of principle (it's still usually more comfortable than a plane) but, if I have time, a daytime rail journey is much nicer.
Eye mask, you want the kind that looks like a bra and puts no pressure on your eyes. "Nidra" is the brand I usually get, they're cheap, I replace mine regularly.
Noise canceling headphones. I go for cheap sets but get what works for you, something wireless. I have found history podcasts and music both work well for me.
I have a neck pillow that basically looks like a cervical collar and is made from memory foam. Works really well for me but was pretty expensive, and it takes up a bunch of space so it's a tradeoff to consider. And wear a zipped sweatshirt on the plane, use it as a blanket - after turning the air vent on max.
My Airpods Pro are great but they only have a battery life of 4-5 hours per charge (20 hours in case, but you have to wake up to charge them).
My Bose QC 15 over ear headphones can stay on much longer (> 20 hours of battery life) and have great noise cancellation, but as soon as I lean my head to either of the side headrests on the seat, the noise cancellation "leaks". I've never been able to sleep on a plane with my Bose QCs.
The best solution I've found so far have been plain-old ear plugs ($5).
Any particular you know that in fact do cancel noise and really work?
And Aeroflot are not known for their hospitality and understanding to foreign travelers...
For a quantitative comparison:
https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm
For example:
London to Nice
Plane: 4 hours, 250 Kg CO2
Train: 8 hours by Eurostar+TGV, 36 Kg CO2
85% less
(BTW this site, seat61.com, is a great and very useful web site, if one likes train travel or wants to travel by train in Europe, one should seriously have a look!)
It gets pretty hard to defend the choice when the economics look like that.
The train ticket will never be one bit cheaper. No promo events, nothing; state-owned enterprises seem incapable of such thinking. The price is simply absurd - renting a car and putting enough diesel into it would've been cheaper even if you went alone.
Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California.
¹ Between 14% and 30% of total emissions are from heating in Germany for instance https://www.bmu.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimasch...
How does that work in practical reality so it doesn't just turn into a money making scheme with no real impact akin to Catholic indulgences?
> Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California.
How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency? [0]
Afaik AC is generally considered way more inefficient, heating can be captured as a side-product from a lot of processes, cooling not so much.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328701132_A_compari...
As a matter of policy? Universal carbon-tax with increasing fee schedules. Everyone pays for their carbon emissions. The sum is then distributed back to everyone evenly as a Green Dividend minus admin costs. Net zero cash to the government, whopping undirected green energy subsidy possible by tuning amounts. It already worked for Sulphur Dioxide.
As a matter of personal preference? Well, I get nothing from this except the right to brag I'm carbon negative so really it could totally be equivalent to indulgences. As it so happens I do care to be doing my part, but you're right in that there's no incentive for that.
> How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency?
Right, but I live in California and have no AC.
You are in denial about the destruction you do. No, you can't offset emissions. A single short flight will release as much as 400kg CO2 to the atmosphere. This amount of carbon was bound by huge forests about millions of years. It is not possible to undo that release by planting a tree. Ask a geologist if you do not believe me.
And I am not saying it is not good to protect forests. Of course it is. But if you have any rational choice between offsetting and not flying, offsetting and flying, not offsetting, not flying -- not flying is always the best option.
Coal is just carbon that is in the ground. Grow a tree, convert most of it back to carbon, and bury it. Roman-era technology.
This is completely tractable, the fact that we aren't doing enough of it is a matter of will, not feasibility.
Heating is a large factor in emissions but if you fly several times a year, it is without doubt the largest source of emissions.
I'm having a hard time understanding this sentence.
In any case, I think its fair to say over time trains win out over airplanes on emissions, but it isn't that cut and dry especially early on.
400k seats a day, or 150 million a year, for an average 10kg co2 per seat in construction costs over the first year.
456km London to Paris is is about 100kg co2 each way per seat.
So construction emissions isn’t even a dent in the first year.
I also doubt they make up a substantial part of the rail traffic, if we go about it that way we there's a whole bunch of vehicles with horrible CO2 emissions that only have gotten barely viable electric alternatives in the last handful of years, like excavators, bulldozers and all kinds of other construction/hauling/maintenance vehicles.
However, railway vehicles tend to last for decades, so it might take a long time for everything to be electric. The people buying them can both afford and have the expertise to purchase reliable, repairable equipment. It's then run on a perfectly smooth "road" without much rough handling.
Why would you use a super-heavy diesel train to pull night-train carriages? Use a little electric one.
I have no idea about the numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if including building the railroads and maintenance would make plane and (electric) train equal. You don't want to know the amount of diesel smoke that's coming from the nearby railroad reconstruction.
I wonder where could one find this data
It's not possible to create a new destination, add additional capacity to an existing destination, or maintain existing capacity without additional costs to all major parts of the infrastructure, for both trains and planes.
These buildings are very similar. The major difference is that while a capital city train station handles around 10-40 trains at a time with short arrival-departure pause (e.g. Prague main station handles around 10-15 concurrent trains), capital city airports are often handling many dozens of concurrent flights (with longer arrival-departure pause and smaller groups per vehicle) -> the airport takes more area but isn't technically sophisticated at all; the train station is denser, but railroad switching at a station isn't easy. So let's just keep stations separate. Of course buildings required by the machines should be included.
It most definitely is possible to build an airport without any costs other than construction of the runway and a fuel pump, and a 2-4 km stretch of dirt is more than enough. If you want airliners landing there then simply pour asphalt or concrete over it, smaller planes can handle dirt. You'll want to bring fuel - a truck that already often drives nearby (to supply gas stations) will bring it to you, and nothing fancier than the simplest second hand fuel pump and a tank is needed.
It is also most definitely possible to add significant capacity to an existing airport with nearly zero costs and it is routinely done - every year from May to September hundreds of tiny airports all around the world start serving (sometimes) more flights than the country's capital city, bringing in thousands of people from dozens or even hundreds of different destinations all around the planet, with flights coming in every 30 minutes from 8 to 22. Usually a travel agency finds a place they like (that probably never had a single airliner fly over there before), they call it and make a deal, and it's done. They'll set up their own ground handling service if they have that many flights daily to improve efficiency - that's as easy as parking a few cars next to the airport and placing staff they already employ there, and it's not needed if it's just a flight per hour or so.
The thing that's hard about capital city airports is that everyone wants to go to a different destination and be there on time, everyone goes to the airport by their own means, the security theatre, etc. I don't know much train stations with numbers of car parking places comparable to airports, and these that do still don't like cars being parked for weeks there. The travel agency has it simpler because they're moving the whole group either by plane or by bus, and they can do whatever they like with the schedule. Many smaller cities have airports that handle few flights per week and that kind of airport is at most a single building next to the runway, nothing like FRA or the new BER.
Maintaining existing capacity - I already talked about the runway pour... That's about it. The fuel equipment will need a refresh every 20 years or so.
Also, it is not my particular field of engineering but there is likely no scenario where fuel efficiency of planes is better than trains. That you can find sources for pretty easily.
Also, the emissions of building railroad track are also on a similar order of magnitude to building highway, so even if the goal is to displace cars instead of planes, it is still more than worth it to build.
I can imagine it being a net negative in the US where trains travel only every few hours, or in some cases only a few times a week, except maybe in the Boston-NYC-DC corridor. SF to LA is only once a day for goodness sake, which is incapable of displacing cars or planes. Compare to Japan or China where service between major cities is every few minutes. Once a day service from a city like SF to a city like LA would be unthinkable in Europe or Asia.
As much as I love high speed trains I hate it when a night train that eats zero of your daytime gets taken out of service and gets replaced by a high speed day train that eats half of daytime.
It is perhaps one of the reasons why my generation defines itself as Europeans. And it is utterly painful to me that my young niece and her generation, at least at the moment, can't do it.
China is another story -- there are no rail passes and you don't need one. The night trains are not that expensive and extremely clean and comfortable.
(Or maybe they will stay in the existing system. Turkey seems to be in it.)
Brexit doesn’t stop 27 forward looking countries from enjoying Interrail though.
Still better than taking a bus.
A lot better! I once took a UK overnight bus from Birmingham to Inverness, it was a horrible experience. Night trains are absolutely lovely, by comparison.
I can't wait for Europe to reopen and travel in a more civilised manner!
Wilderness areas, second homes, minor tourist destinations of all kinds. It has the potential to totally change the economies and usage patterns of those areas.
I live somewhere that's just far enough from the major east coast population centers to keep weekend traffic down. But when sleeping in a self driving car is a reality? We're talking 100 million people who can spend a weekend here easily. It's going to change everything.
even better if my own car could do that - it'd make road trips on vacation so much better.
Edit: There is also a system called "Through coach" or Kurswagen in German, where you enter a coach in the evening, it starts as part of one train, and then, during the night, the train stops and it becomes part of another train - possibly with another change, and in the morning it arrives at your booked destination. (Of course you check the number of the coach well before you enter it, heh.)
From my experience my Nightjet left Düsseldorf to Salzburg or Vienna. It split in Nurnberg and merge with the train from Berlin (which also had 2 destinations).
The fix is not easy. But building taj mahal type trains isn't helpful. (simplistic trains might be - using the lower cost to build more is useful). Those of you watching local politics need to scream "NO EXTRAS, only the cheap reliable system done fast" at all local meetings to counter those asking for beauty.
While slightly pricier than flying, I had a bed and could freely move around the cabin. To top it off - anecdotally, though intuitively it holds - those who travel by train are less stressed than those travelling by plane, and therefore friendlier and open to conversation.
A great experience overall. I hope to do more of this in Europe.
For example, suppose you want to visit Budapest from Rome over the weekend[0].
If you fly out this Saturday, the flight is €10, you arrive at 10AM. If you want to whole day, you can fly out on Friday, for €23, and find accommodation for €45, totalling 68 euros[1]. Traveling by train is sadly way more expensive.
Consider instead Berlin -> Budapest, it's €10 on Friday, direct, with Wizzair, but >100€ on Saturday with stops. The train is both cheaper and faster!
[0] this is where I live and where my family lives, the route I fly most often
[1] prices are from skyscanner, airbnb
Christmas Day, Graz (Austria) to Munich. 5hr 57 minutes. 1 change in Salzburg. €26.90 one-way.
The same journey at decent times in the afternoon on Christmas Eve only increases to €36.90 - €46.90.
Seems pretty reasonable to me!
In general, the trick is to book in advance to make use of Sparschiene prices. Or if a frequent traveller, buy a yearly rail card, which offers the equivalent Sparschiene all the time.
Provided you are in 2nd class or higher, the sleep is generally comfortable and lulling. But I might be used to it, as we also did often when I was a child and I was used to rocking and train noises.
They must have thought we booked that room as a "love hotel".
I mean, I can be at the train station fairly quickly (10 minute walk): The airport is out of town and I'd take a bus - an earlier bus than I think I need just to be safe. Does the flight mean that you get a hotel that you could skip on a night train? How long are you waiting at the airport?
Airport time isn't just flight time.
I traveled a relatively short distance by plane recently and the airport time+location overhead was just about 1 hour (got from one house to my other house in 2 hours with a 1h flight). And the train would have about 20 mins of overhead. So the effective overhead was more like 40 mins in this specific case. Of course it could be much worse for many routes. But probably mostly under 2h even under very unfavorable conditions. So you're looking at 3-4h by plane.
[0] and was being pretty generous by only checking western europe too. In many parts of Europe buses can be faster than trains.
> got from one house to my other house in 2 hours with a 1h flight
That sounds pretty exceptional. 45 minutes is usually given as the minimum time to go through airport security, since you have to allow enough time to not miss your flight if you do get pulled out for some reason (or be prepared to sometimes miss your flight, I guess). Airports are usually about an hour away from anywhere in the city you're going to. So I'd say 3 hours' overhead is the norm, and it gets worse if you're trying to fly after a day's work because the transport system of the place you're going to is usually shutting down by the time you arrive.
I woke up somewhere in Italy. They were good about it and got me re-routed. But I ended up on this extremely slow train that was filled with high school students. Then I spent hours in the Bologna train station which I got to know extremely well ;<). It killed an entire day!
With privacy (alone in compartment) and a non-shared toilet and bathroom?
But the kind of night trains I used to take, no. But that's because I was cheap.
I even took regular, non sleeper night trains. Sleeping on seats is not as good as on beds but much than on planes or buses. These tended to be really cheap.
One interesting thing they did in France was to run high speed trains at low speed through the night (iDNiGHT). The idea was to get an extra "free" slot. Really cheap (I think I paid something like 10€ for a ~900km trip) but not the most comfortable. Still managed to sleep. I liked these but few people did, so they cancelled the service.
The joke was that I had a sleeping pad with me, but I didn't dare try and dig it out of my pack in the dark cramped shared compartment.
Have a lunch appointment 2 hours away? Get in the car at 9, bring a book or some work and tell the machine to take a scenic route.
Need to cross the continent? Bring the sleeping bag to the car and let it roll.
Edit: hyphen.
In Finland I’ve taken one of the more “luxurious” cabins with two bunks and a tiny shower. It’s marginally better but the walls are made or paper and the train stops during the night and you are awoken by passengers coming and going and worse the beeping of doors closing. This is with silicon earplugs.
The second one I took the train turned up at the station but they forgot the sleeper cars. We had to take a bus in the middle of the night across Germany to what where they left them. It was 3am when we got there and they still didn't just let us sleep and were checking our tickets and everything. Our stop was at 6am.
The best overnight travel I did was on a ferry from Oslo to Copenhagen. We had the cheapest possible cabin (no window) but I slept like a log. You can even do a multiple night trip all the way to Helsinki.
It was a 2-berth cabin, with big comfy chairs and a teeny tiny shower/bathroom. Boarded at around 9pm, disembarked at 9.30am. On boarding they showed us to the cabin, then ushered us off to the dining carriage (while they converted the room to bunks).
The package was £289.00 for the two of us, but in addition to a quite fancy meal, as others note, that covered transport and accommodation for two people. Part of the motivation of course was just to try something different. But would, had we stayed in Europe, done overnight trains semi-regularly. (The only other overnight train we've done was Mumbai to Bangalore - a profoundly different experience.)
More anecdata - the sleep quality was excellent, and I usually sleep very lightly & poorly the first night somewhere new.
The Berlin -> Paris connection was amazing and actually part of the Moscow-Paris connection that runs once per week. The food on board was nice (Polish catering wagon).
The Train to Lisbon though was really old and the food well eh. But arriving at sunrise in Lisbon was well worth it.
I am happy that the sleeper trains come back to existence, more eco friendly, more relaxed traveling, more cargo and less restrictions than with air travel (e.g. > 100ml liquids)
Some years ago I did Hanover -> Warsaw and Hanover -> Prague. It was very chaotic to board at night and all the confusion which one of the train parts goes to which end station. Clearly other passengers had the same problem. Seems to be part of the adventure. You also have to get used to sleep in those trains. When ÖBB started to operate them I did Hamburg -> Hanover to ride back home (which continues to Vienna) and Munich -> Venice.
Of course your riding experience depends on whether you book seats, beds, cabins, or just the train ride. One time when I woke up I saw the polish worker standing by the window having his first beer. I didn't even notice him enter the cabin in the middle of the night. We talked for hours. Another time I just booked the train ride and when boarding the train spend minutes to cross the compartments full of people to find a nice spot. There were even some sleeping on the floor. I was lucky to reach the Czech part of the train, which had a lot of empty seats. The ride on the tracks next to Elbe and Vltava rivers is very magical.
For the train ride to Venice I reserved a single cabin which was very comfy. And the one departing from Hamburg had a delay of 120 minutes. I entered the train a searched for a cabin and was greeted by someone who smiled at me. So I entered the cabin and had a chat with her. She told me the delay was due to ÖBB having problems with loading all the cars and motorcycles on the train, and added there seems to be a delay between 60 and 120 minutes every day, because the problems don't go away.
In Hanover I gave my printed reservation to the polish train conductor who told me he'll wake me up when we'll arrive.
A 1980s trip on the trans Siberian express: I remember it as being "third class", though perhaps it was simply not first class; the idea of classes of service in a soviet train amused me, though the realities of the spartan accomodation made it only technically a "sleeper". But the friendly fellow travelers made up for it.
About 15 years ago we took sleeper service from Paris to Berlin, in a bid to convince my wife that it was a fun way to travel. It was not.
The rough estimate of the amount of damage a tonne of CO2 released into the atmosphere causes is $196 (source: wikipedia).
A an economy class return flight from Munich to Barcelona (a typical night train distance) releases 0.45 tons of CO2 per passenger resulting in an additional cost of $88.2 (72.6€), 36.3€ per leg.
Every extra tonne of CO2 does cost $196+ (I’ve seen credible estimates as high as $400), but through offsetting you could verifiably ensure that more tonnes are avoided for far less.
As a crude analogy, if there is an oil spill (causing $$$ of damage), it would still be cost effective to plug the next oil spill for $.
Don’t get me wrong, the ideal scenario would be to not cause the first oil spill at all (in this crude analogy), but given that this seems impossible in our society, an offsetting tax on plane tickets could be a highly cost effective lever instead.
The simple matter is air travel is stupid convenient between any two points not directly connected or where the two points are far apart. Its faster by far on longer distances and scheduling is far more flexible.
... long way around
The cost structure that exist is because train transport suffers some serious disadvantages airlines are not stuck with. If you want to claim an externalized cost that may not be paid in full your only choice is fuel costs but understand only a little over half of rail in the EU is electric. Even with higher fuel taxes trains will be at a disadvantage as shown below.
Airline travel schedules, capacity, and routes, can be varied as needed. Trains are locked into sharing tracks, may have have service requirements, and as a result cannot vary their schedules by much if at all.
Airline travel can also add and drop destinations with ease. Trains obviously require connections to each point separately. Rail construction, maintenance, to include tracks and facilities, can rival or exceed air ports.
Trains have the additional cost of staffing requirements imposed by various governments along with capacity requirements that can be out of date.
Finally, while trains have the advantages of lower cost for the train and carriages adding routes is just terribly expensive and their environmental advantage is being eroded as other forms of ground transport move to electric and all bets are off once air can be done that way
Also interesting: Lufthansa is the company which probably good biggest single Corona-support, yet, in Germany.
I think it's more likely to have been convenient for the politicians, who had incomes that fitted with taking weekend breaks to Paris or wherever, and good for their voters, on a holiday package to Greece.
All the new airports built well outside cities meant that low cost airlines could offer flights to (near) a major city fairly cheaply, which in turn pulled down prices for the entire market.
There was even a planned TV series based on the website around 10 years ago: http://www.guerilla-films.com/man-in-seat-61.html
Most night trains make countless annoying stops. Even just one stop would ruin my sleep. Beds are awful. Regular (ie not high speed) train tracks are awfully noisy. Nothing enjoyable about it, just get into a "container" cabin, wake up in a new town with a beat up body from continuous 12hr motion and noise that is 1000x worse than most modern jetliners (A380, 787, A350...)
During my long 13 yr stride as a consultant in Europe I've tried every possible combination of hotel, flight and trains (and car rental, ships...). The night train is a tourist trap. But also probably good fun for the adventurous at heart. The night train cabin may be a tourist attraction even, an experience you should live once in your life... If you are into that kind of thing. Because to me it is really not worth the trouble. Get a flight or a high speed train and a decent hotel or airbnb. Wake up to a great breakfast cooked in a real kitchen with fresh produce and hit the streets all set and good to go.
Getting actual good sleep can be difficult at times, but it's not like you'll leave the cabin battered and bruised. Modern sleep carriages are excellent at compensating for track irregularities
I love trains. They often go every hour. You can spontaneously take them. Right from the center. And you arrive right in the center. And you can freely chose your seat. So you can pick a pleasant neighbor. Or just change seat if your neighbor annoys you.
In general however it is a compromise. At least "true" sleeper cars often have a (shared, small) shower, but yes, no comparison to equally expensive hotel rooms.
And I couldn't really spontaneously take a train to the center station where I would then catch a night train because of course I have to make sure I get there in time for the train going to where I want to go.
I really look forward to this deregulation (it was about time for Renfe to have real rivals) and I think it will be a huge added value for the people, that Spain has the second longest high speed train network in the world. I guess we'll see how it evolves in around 5/10 years...
This is crazy. It's such a long distance. How can it be so cheap? Is it subsidized? Do Ouigo operate their own trains?
Might this change with carbon pricing?
AFAICT, most trains are electric and so (depending on the method of generation) be better with climate change?
For tourism, and if you're young, the Interrail tickets are probably attractive (one or two months unlimited for XXX EUR).
There are also various methods of price discrimination now being used by rail companies, essentially modelled on airlines'. I. e. buying early, limited tickets sold in specific channels such as discount supermarkets etc.
Of course this negates one of the advantages of rail travel: that you can just hop on any train and buy your ticket after departure (for a small fee), or ten minutes before departure, using using your phone.
The only hassle at the airport is all in your head. As a frequent traveler (I used to fly every 2 weeks) all the screening and getting to the airport was a chore, not something to be angsty about.
It's absolutely the worst way to start and end a holiday.
With a plane, I leave at 10:00 in the morning, arrive at say 14:00 in the other city and check into a hotel at 15:00.
With a train, I leave at 22:00 in the evening before, arrive at say 10:00 in the other city and check into a hotel at 15:00.
Same amount of hotel stays. A few more hours in the other city. But since I have to carry around my luggage and don't have a shower and toilet, I am not sure if those hours are a plus or a minus.
For city travel, I've had good experiences with hotels that let me check in early (before noon). I've never had a hotel that wouldn't let me stash my luggage before check-in.
Basically spending 2 out of 3 nights in hotels due to the night train (compared to if we'd done the same itinerary but with daytime trains).
Train stations in Germany at least generally have luggage lockers, so you can just leave your stuff there. It's not hassle free, of course, but pretty convenient. Not sure if that's common in other countries.
Night trains really are the closest to teleportation that humans have come up with yet.
Even with your example, you're getting an extra day in your destination without an extra hotel stay.
The only problem IMO is that sleeping on a train is not comfortable unless you’re young. It’s basically a minor step up from staying in a hostel in terms of noise, other people, and general cleanliness. I think there would need to be a dramatic upgrade in the quality of sleeping cabins for trains to really replace flights.
[1]: https://www.nightjet.com/en/komfortkategorien/schlafwagen
As for sleeping quality on the train: I'm looking forward to the new one-person ÖBB cabins.
Love the concept. But execution needs to be premium (cabine / bed for myself, pleasent looking interior) and cheaper than alternatives. Otherwise plane or car are the superior options.
Really hoping this will work out well.
Paris to Venice for example (pre covid), prices in the 6 berth couchette were €29, a 1 berth sleeper €170.
Or you fly in the morning, early taxi (€30? €50?) to the airport, queues at the airport, then the transfer at the far end.
And of course someone else is subsidising your €170 flight via the externalities of air travel.
> You need special rolling stock, they only make one journey per day, and can't carry intermediate passengers -- nobody would board at 2 a.m."
This was not the case on almost every overnight train I've taken (not in Europe). With non-private cabins (or worse, standard seats), there's nothing as dreadful as the sound of people boarding or leaving every hour through the entire night.
I've most reliably slept on trains where the journey is usually short, say four hours, yet the night itinerary is stretched to 7 or 8 hours. That's usually a sign the train will stop before the destination and wait until the next morning before pulling in.
That really depends on the individual. Personally I really like that kind of background noise when trying to sleep. I will usually listen to music with headphones and what gets trough is dampened so much that it nearly qualifies as "ambient" music.
But I've spend quite some time as a kid in overnight trains travelling between West-East Germany and Yugoslavia, and even more time in my teens travelling by train across central Europe.
I kind of like the whole experience even without a private cabin. A bit like a travelling hotel with changing sights. I can take along a couple of books and whatever food and drink I like, without having to worry about weird security rules.
In contrast to that long-distance air travel evokes only negative associations for me: Dry circulated air, pressure on the ears, cramped seats, the feeling of being stuck in a completely sealed metal tube, the "streamy" noise coming from the engines is really annoying compared to the rhythm of the sounds a train makes. When walking around on a plane there is nothing really to see because you can only walk between rows of seats with very small windows, which makes me feel weirdly guilty.
While on a train I can walk the full distance back and forth, taking in some of the sights trough the much larger windows. It's also considered much more normal than pacing between the seating aisles of a plane.
I agree with all your other dislikes of air travel though :) I wish we had more high-speed rail in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_pressurization#Mechanics
It was quite expensive. You had to buy a two bedroom coach, even if you were traveling alone.
Recently, the Norwegian train company have made a new offering which I would describe as more "hostel"-like, where you sleep in a coach with 5 strangers[0]. Hopefully this will offer a much more affordable option.
[0]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/bergensbanen-blir-_ny_-med-kraftig-...
I'd only ever try it again in a premium cabin, assuming the cost isn't exorbitant.
It's a bit more insidious than that. I suspect they were deliberately cancelled so they wouldn't compete with high speed rail. HS rail is much more expensive, and can't compete with night trains. So night trains had to go in order to make room for for HS rail.
Of course, now that all forms travel are much more accessible and affordable, night trains and HS rail might coexist -- if we get rid of cheap air travel.
Hartmut Mehdorn, the CEO of DB AG (German rail) from 2009-2019 was an airline executive before and after he wrecked/lead German rail. Rüdiger Grube, who succeeded him, was a former aerospace and car executive. Many (all?) of the chairmen of the board through those years were also aerospace executives, e.g. Christoph Franz was at Lufthansa before his stint at DB AG and the Lufthansa CEO a couple of years after it. Karl-Friedrich Rausch was at Lufthansa for 15 years before becoming a leading executive at DB AG.
In the '90s, when there was no low cost flights, my dad usually took the night train Florence-Paris or Florence-Munchen for business trips. He was very happy about that: they started around 9PM and he can be at the business appointments in the morning relaxed and fresh.
Sadly the German Railways cut them out a couple years ago. As mentioned in the article, they were replaced by the Austrian trains (and also Hungarian), but the options became more and more complicated, at least for me (e.g. instead of boarding in Germany, go to Prague, and then board at 2AM).
Well that is an understatement. Last time I checked to get a night train to Vienna they started at €200 per person. You can fly there for €30.
It's nice that they're expanding, sure. But at this rate you're not going to convince the masses of going electric on their middle-distance travels.
Some don't, some do, but law requires the passing train to hoot when it's coming near the railway crossing regardless. I'm polish, so that's that. Sorry you didn't get enough sleep, though.
The second is the Caledonian Sleeper that goes from London to Inverness in the Scottish highlands. This one is ridiculously expensive. I’ve never seen tickets that cost less than £300 for a lie down seat, which is 8-10x a typical airfare 3-4x a typical seated train fare. Probably will never travel on it but I’ve always wondered why it’s so expensive. If demand is so high, the why not increase supply by adding an extra train?
Much rather just get on a plane.
I'm happy they are making a comeback in my corner of the world.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20324992
Link to the article featuring the rendered designs from back then:
https://www.priestmangoode.com/project/new-intercity-and-nig...
The flight is ~90 minutes, and usually cheaper as well. We try to take the train when possible anyways.
Flying is so miserable, time consuming, and pollutes so much.
The best trains I’ve ever taken were the Swiss ones however. And the French trains were by far the shittiest (late, run down, dirty, no water and/or light in the toilets more often than not)
I liked it back then but sadly flying (and even driving) is faster, cheaper and offers much more flexibility.
I would definitely consider it if they could offer high-speed trainings like I use to go from Belgium -> France.
In Eastern Europe you can still find trains with windows to peek out of and doors to dangle your legs from.
Maybe not the safest experience, but certainly the most memorable.
"One economic analyst and trainspotter said night trains will never disappear because planes will never be allowed to fly at night."
lol :-(
They don't have night flights in Europe? Or is this "economic analyst" not aware of them?
Only very few. Part of it is because of night time flight restrictions at any airport near a population center (which are generally the airports that could support flights at odd hours). For example, Heathrow is severely restricted between 23:30 and 6:00. Frankfurt is restricted between 23:00 and 5:00.
The other part of it is that the distances involve are relatively short. London to Paris is 1.5h. London to Berlin 2h. Even London to Moscow is less than 4.5h.
It’s almost impossible to have an actual overnight journey like you can have flying from New York to San Francisco.
Night flight restrictions are quite common in Europe.
Not for all airports though. I don't think Stockholm/Arlanda has such a restriction - it's located in the middle of nowhere for a reason.
The reason I thought it was funny is because I visit Europe every summer, and I always have a night flight.
Leaving Canada before midnight, and arriving in Europe just in time for breakfast.
I guess a better way to put it would be no landing or taking off at night :-)
I developed a bad case of motion sickness so I had to go to the bathroom several times in the night. :)
They were sponsoring some Rust thing. I'd say they are on top of their game in more ways than 1.
I can think of not having to move luggage (and/or child seats) and feel more "at home" but I can't justify that over not moving a ton of metal over hundreds of miles...