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.
They are great for weekend trips and you're absolutely right about relative time saved.
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!
The Caledonian sleeper is a funny one because the trains got to fast so the train now just stops in a siding near Edinburgh for a few hours to let people sleep and continues a little later in the morning
Barcelona - Seville did the same, as it went through the high speed rail network, and I couldn’t sleep during the stop because the absolute silence, meanwhile while it was moving I sleeped very well. shame that they closed the line, I recall boarding at 9, having a nice dinner on the restaurant, and sharing the bunk with my girlfriend. Then, waking up, taking a shower in the smallest posible bathroom and be ready to visit the city.
They do this on the ferry ride from Rotterdam to Hull as well. I think the ferry just goes really really slow to make sure it arrives at 7am. I bet they save on fuel doing this as well.
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.
I couldn't agree more. I used the Barcelona-Torino a few years back. I loved it. It felt like teleporting from city center to city center. You don't even have to worry about passports or anything you just hand it out to the train staff.
I've taken it a few times from Edinburgh to Cologne. You enter the train at around 22:25, then it arrives at London around 6:45 in the morning, then you have breakfast and walk over to St, Pancras International and can get the leaving Eurostar at 10:00 or so. Only two train changes. In the afternoon in Brussels and around 17:00 in Cologne. It is very convenient when you have either a good book or work on a laptop because you are going to have quiet quality time which you will probably not have in an airport.
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.
We took the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Glasgow in June of 2019. Saved the hotel night and were hiking the West Highland Way by 9:00. Scotch in the dining car + a private bathroom and double bed. Fantastic experience.
I did the same on Amsterdam - Berlin and vice versa. Internet (4G) is terrible in rural areas of Germany though but if you prepare for thst its no problem. You can also take a night bus. Amsterdam - London should be open now too though not as useful with Brexit (I previously took a night bus on that trajectory).
The night train? If I remember correctly, when it still ran it stopped in Berlin around 4:30 AM; not a fun time to get up. I did use it to go to Dresden though; got out at 7, had breakfast, then a train to Leipzig. Excellent way to travel.
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.)
Right, it was more like an early morning train but practically everyone slept. Not the best rest of my life, agreed, but it was terrific (we went on babymoon to Berlin).
Best way between London and Amsterdam is the ferry!
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.
I regularly take the Berlin - Budapest overnight train. Usually it's lovely, but now during Corona times it's an absolute nightmare. There are no sleeper trains, because something something infection, so you get to sleep in normal compartments. Also, the train passes through five countries. Normally you don't notice, but now they'll wake you up at every single border too look at your passport, say hmmmm and then let you sleep again.
>There are no sleeper trains, because something something infection, so you get to sleep in normal compartments.
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!
Yeah the way we are travelling right now in Europe is absolutely not what it used to be. Reminding a whole generation (mine and beyond) that nothing is granted.
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.
Western Europe too: in Hannover there used to be a great switcheroo between the coaches to and from Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Warsaw/Prague (split in Berlin), and Basel. The currently suspended night train to Lisbon also split into parts to Madrid and the French border halfway.
As I wrote, one part to Madrid, the other to Irún at the French border. Initially suspended because of corona, but RENFE said they're not coming back; I don't know why.
No, this is definitely a COVID scenario. There have been spot checks in the past because of the high number of refugees but this was back in 2015 or 16. Took a sleeper in February this year, crossed four borders, no checks at all.
Even Amtrak's coach class is a hundred times more comfortable than flying coach. I'd sooner spend ten hours in a train than two hours on a plane and try to do so whenever I have a chance (which is not nearly as often as I'd like.) Not getting molested by the TSA is a huge bonus.
Yes this, and also, it's such a pleasure to just cook food at home or visit the supermarket and meander over to the train station and eat it on the journey. No restrictions on liquids/gels, and you aren't restricted to expensive crappy airport fast food.
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.
Took the train from NY to Settle. Learned to not do it in coach ever again for anything more than a day's worth of traveling. The seats are comfortable (much better than VIA Rail, which I took from Vancouver-Toronto earlier), but the random people getting on a random times, including in the middle of the night, is what got to me (VIA didn't have this so much). Had a very sketchy homeless guy with clearly some mental affliction in front of me talking to himself for about 1.5 days, and two others quietly murmuring on their phones for 5h+, late into midnight or later. I'd also pack my own food because the restaurant car required appointments and the snack kiosk had nothing good or healthy. Both were severely overpriced.
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.
Yeah there's a shower in some of the sleeper cars. It's pretty funny to use, the drain hole actually just drains on the tracks so you can see the gravel and rails pass by while taking a shower.
While still comparatively light, TSA has been increasing their footprint with Amtrak, as in giving the full pat-down and wands treatment when boarding, and in some cases even when disembarking.
Where have you seen this? I've been in and out of Penn Station (NY) and Union Stations (DC, Chicago) a lot over the years right up until COVID and have never encountered any TSA.
Somehow I'm completely unable to sleep in a plane. Even when it's a 10-hour trip to the other side of the world. Train is by far the most comfortable way to travel. Maybe ship too; I don't have a lot of experience with that for long trips.
I've slept on the Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry a few times. It is very comfortable, and much quieter than a sleeper train -- it was like being in a slowly rocking "cabin hotel", where you don't have a window and the room is tiny.
(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.
That ferry is cool! Last time I was on it, there was a gang of bikers on board, returning from their Eurotrip. Then there's all the lorry drivers drinking lager in the bar. They wake you up at 6 am with a cheesy chime to sell you their overpriced breakfasts, though.
Melatonin patches. Just be aware it's going to start shifting your sleep cycle so don't apply it until you're aligned to bedtime at your destination. I recommend wearing an analog watch and aligning to destination time as soon as you get seated on the plane. These are also great for dealing with jet lag.
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.
Noise cancelling headphones, a small amount of alcohol(1-2 find), (and preferably a lie flat bed) combined with staying up the night before travel (if going west) has a fairly high success rate for me.
Out of curiosity, what noise cancelling headphones do you have that lets you sleep through the night on a long haul?
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).
I have the same problem with sleeping in over-the-ear headsets. The best I've found for sleeping on long flights are the Bose QC20 - the noise cancelling is as good as their over-the-ear headsets but the in-ear design makes them much more comfortable if you happen to rest your head on one side while sleeping, and doing so doesn't interrupt the noise cancellation.
Since they're cabled to an external battery box they can easily last through any flight, and you can leave the USB charge cable connected to an in-flight power socket while you use them to keep the battery full.
The big thing is how much noise canceling you're after. A $50 set of Anker Soundcore's will remove engine noise but not a noisy neighbor - I like them for travel because the battery is solid and I won't cry if I lose them.
On the other hand, a $400 set of Sony's will basically put you in audio isolation - to the point that some people genuinely don't like them. A friend had me put his pair on in the middle of a busy restaurant at lunch time and I'm not kidding when I say it felt pin drop quiet.
I use noise cancelling in-ear headphones and on top of that I wear ear muffs intended for operating heavy machinery. I've never found a single pair of noise cancelling headphones that actually cancel all noise, so I layer them.
Those certainly help but I have yet to find the right neck pillow for me. I am a side-sleeper at home, almost exclusively on my left side FWIW. I'm not willing to pay for a lie-flat seat when it's my money but I would pay dearly for the pillow that will allow me more than 15-30 minute cat naps on a 10 hour redeye flight.
Would advise against that. One time our flight got delayed for six hours (ugh) at a lay over - some technical glitch so they were not sure when the plane is going to actually depart. My partner didn’t sleep the night before because of anxiety and she was extremely sleep deprived - would have easily hmissed the flight without me being there with most of my faculties intact.
And Aeroflot are not known for their hospitality and understanding to foreign travelers...
There's also the environmental angle where trains are generally way more efficient [0] in terms of emissions per passenger, particularly compared to plane travel.
Does this count in the building and maintenance of railroad and the movement of all the maintenance/support/construction equipment (-> super-heavy diesel trains) etc?
London to Nice
Plane: 4 hours, 250 Kg CO2
Train: 8 hours by Eurostar+TGV, 36 Kg CO2
85% less
Traveling short to medium distances by plane is simply indefensible if you care about climate change. For an average European, it can easily make up one third of their total yearly carbon emissions, more than 1500kg, or even more.
(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!)
i would prefer the train for almost any travel of less than 5 hours, that’s a 1200km radius on HSR, the thing is that Barcelona - Paris is 120€ by plane and 250 by train. Planes are way cheaper than trains.
I used to fly Stockholm-Copenhagen regularly some years back, and even though I would have preferred to go by train, it was much more expensive, and slower door-to-door.
It gets pretty hard to defend the choice when the economics look like that.
I had the opposite experience, my flight from Bordeaux to London was cancelled. By the time we’d realised the next available flight was 2 days later and €500. The train next day was €300. It took 2hrs for Bordeaux-Paris we decided to hang out in Paris for a few hours then 2hrs to London.
I would simply wait for the plane ticket to be available and cheap again, I know it will because I paid jack shit for flying a lot of miles over the last decade (your route is offered for 40 USD on Skyscanner right now).
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.
Well I couldn’t wait, and the airline that cancelled my flight had to pay up to €400 costs anyway. The ticket to Paris was €60 for a 400 mile journey that takes 2hr15 pretty cheap. The cheapest option for that leg if we’d got up really early was €33, this was booking less than 12hrs before travel. That’s on the SNCF which is state run. The Eurostar from Paris to London is privatised and is much more expensive for some reason. Trains in the U.K. tend to be ridiculously expensive and slow compared to France but we have a privatised system that’s based on a poorly designed artificially created competitive market that just created a huge amount of expensive contract bureaucracy and no coordination between operations and maintenance.
Nah, flying is totally defensible. I fly everywhere. The problem is offsetting your emissions. Most people are offloading their externalities to the Earth. Since climate change is a non-local phenomenon you can be carbon negative for very cheap if you pay to reduce carbon emissions.
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.
> Since climate change is a non-local phenomenon you can be carbon negative for very cheap if you pay to reduce carbon emissions.
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.
> 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?
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?
I think the practical question is, how do you know when you buy carbon offsets that you are really offsetting carbon? There's an awful lot of scope for fakery out there.
> Nah, flying is totally defensible. I fly everywhere. The problem is offsetting your emissions.
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.
Yeah, there's a timing issue with tree planting certainly. You have to discount the trees some amount for the effect. And it's not a 100 years. That flight will be covered by the oak in under 20 years.
Of course, you still have to discount but it makes things much more feasible.
That's why you usually don't plant trees. You can do other stuff that wouldn't otherwise get done.
A tree that only lasts 20 years will probably return all of its stored carbon to the atmosphere by burning or rotting. Only the old forests (100 years) retain it long enough to make it an effective carbon sink.
> CO2 from ancient sources doesn't have some special provenance, this is magical thinking.
Chemically, it is the same. The difference between CO2 bound in coal or oil to the CO2 bound in a tree is that the former would very probably remain bound for millions of years while the carbon bound in a tree will, with an overwhelming probability, will be released back in the atmosphere when the tree dies and its organic matter decomposes. And this will also happen if you bury the tree in the ground. It might not happen if you make charcoal from the tree and place the coal thousands of meters under the ground, where no oxygen is present. But this process is itself so energy-intensive, and therefore carbon-intensive, that it will not reach a net reduction of carbon.
Yes, in the case of a tree, it is theoretically possible that a vanishingly small fraction of the carbon it contains gets fossilized. But, there are at least two major problems.
Fossilization is very, very, very rare, and it is very, very, very slow. Told plainly, it normally does not happen.
The first is that you would have to plant so many trees that you would retain, as an extremely small fraction of the biomass of the tree, the amount of carbon released by your flight in geological deposits. This would take millions of trees and also millions of years, and is clearly infeasible. Nobody is even promising that, and suggesting that by planting a tree you could bury carbon permamently is just self-deception by people who buy such schemes.
And by that account, carbon-offsetting is just a scam. You pay money to extract the carbon you released by taking the plane from the atmosphere, but you can't permanently extract the carbon you released, at least not at a price that anyone is actually going to pay. It is a scam.
> Coal is just carbon that is in the ground. Grow a tree, convert most of it back to carbon, and bury it.
There is another factor which I find at times even more shocking. You suggested trees as a means to bind carbon. In fact, the fossil fuel from your plane flight is from oil and this is in large parts formed from marine sediments, also formed over geological times. What can be formed from trees is coal. Now, much of the large coal deposites we used today were formed in the carboniferous geologicial period, which was 358 million years ago:
Basically, trees use lignin. At this time, lignin was something new on our Earth and there were no fungi which could decompose lignin, so the biomass of the trees could not decompose. Only later, lignin-eating fungi evolved.
That means that these coal deposits can never be re-created, even over a time of millions of years.
One mature oak tree is like 20 kg / year. You can easily plant a sufficient quantity to cover that. Especially since Earth is not at carrying capacity yet.
But that's hardly necessary. I can just pay you the minimum necessary to get you to shift off fossil and I make some good savings.
Please note that all coherent carbon neutrality scenarios use tree planting for carbon offsetting PLUS a reduction in plane travel. There are more essential services that will require carbon sinks to function at full regime.
Air travel is easily replaceable by low-carbon alternatives that exist today. When you do the accounting of carbon offsetting/carbon sinks capacity, it becomes quite obvious everything unnecessary must go.
Of course, I don't disagree with the reduction. But an economically efficient reduction will reduce from people who can't afford to pay the premium and leave people like me to spend appropriately. This is possible precisely because it is unnecessary. If air travel were necessary then we'd have to ration it by person. Since it is not, we can afford to ration it by the dollar.
That it's not an immediate live or die situation does not mean that lives of many people won't be significantly worse. I generally dislike the argument because I care about Earth and the life on it, but it would be really interesting to see how bad would increased temperature be in terms of dollars.
> Air travel is easily replaceable by low-carbon alternatives that exist today.
Intercontinental and cross continental travel are a bit harder to replace with low carbon alternatives.
Europe has a functional high speed rail system due to its high population density, but the distances between some city pairs in the are hard to replace with rail or other low carbon alternatives. Think of Los Angeles to NYC, or San Francisco to Paris.
Many of these flights could be replaced by video conferencing, but if one really has to travel that distance, rail is a hard sell. It's not unpleasant to take Amtrak across the continent, but it's not fast either.
1) A high-speed rail from LA to NYC would take ~15h with stops in the middle. While it's a large investment, it would shave off millions of tons of CO2 released every year. Of course, you cannot travel oceans with high-speed rail.
2) Again, fast travel across the globe is a luxury, not a necessity. More than 80% of the world's population has never been near an airplane.
A large investment is quite an understatement. At say, ten million USD per kilometre (a low estimate compared to actual costs borne by France for building the TGV [0]), and a bird's eye distance of 3966 kilometres between LA and NYC [1], that's almost 400 billion dollars, or about 60% of the non-defense discretionary budget of the US for a single year. Keep in mind that's a very generous cost per kilometre; California's HSR projected costs are north of 60 million USD per kilometre.
And that's for a single pair of cities, with no cost overruns, no tunnels, straight line distance. It also excludes things like stations, rolling stock, and maintenance.
It's not impossible to build, but having high speed rail throughout the US is an investment that would be a multiple of the costs of building the entire interstate highway system.
Mind you, I'd love it if that were to happen, riding high speed rail is much more pleasant than flying. Speaking as someone who has gone across the continent a few times on Amtrak and enjoyed riding high speed trains in Asia and Europe, it's just hard to see it happening. Recent US infrastructure projects have had massive cost overruns, and there is a seemingly low political appetite for building large infrastructure compared to the 20th century.
Great, that's about 2 thirds of the yearly US defense budget! You have the workforce, the discipline, and as a bonus the defense industry can be repurposed for building rails and trains. Once the transition is achieved, you can build such a line every year at no added cost to the taxpayer.
(I know, that's completely unrealistic... it shows the priorities of the US government...)
You know, it's not that long ago people feared nuclear attack daily. I think Americans are projecting their priorities through the budget, not the government.
> Intercontinental and cross continental travel are a bit harder to replace with low carbon alternatives.
But much of it is either for leisure or can be replaced by videoconferencing while saving money.
Regarding leisure, it might feel great to do fast intercontinental travel. But realistically, it is not something which will make you a happy person. Most people who are living today could not afford that luxury and are still living a happy life. Maybe even happier than the average American if their culture is a bit less materialistic.
In the light that it is going to devastate our planet, travel for leisure is not necessary at all.
Really? They’re saying that most people who fly are unaware and unaccountable for the negative impact their flight has on the health of the planet due to carbon emissions, among other things.
In Europe all the major lines are already electrified, and because all the lines were built a long time ago (generally in the 19th century), the construction carbon emissions are divided between 150 years of transported passengers.
This is not particularly accurate, train lines have had to be rebuilt multiple times to support increasing speed of trains. The current TGV lines in use in France are not capable of running on old track, they need to be on modern infrastructure which continues to be built out.
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.
The StopHS2 Anti high speed rail group says that the 530km HS2 line (and tons of stations) will generate 1.5 million tons of co2, for 18,000 seats an hour 12 hours a day in each direction.
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.
Night trains won’t be high-speed TGV services, they will use the regular main lines.
Track maintenance needs much less energy than building brand new lines.
And yes, the carbon emissions per passenger are higher for high-speed trains compared to the regular ones, mostly because of their construction.
Of course all of this works when the electricity produced by renewables or nuclear. If these trains are powered by electricity produced from coal, their carbon emissions are equivalent to using diesel trains.
Don't discount the energy cost of air infrastructure in this comparison though. Airports have a huge amount of tarmac that must be built and maintained, there's the jet fuel production/transportation infrastructure, and of course building the planes themselves. Rail may have the larger overhead, but air has some too.
Those are very specialized vehicles, that's most likely the reason they haven't been electrified yet, that will probably only happen as they age too much and can't be maintained anymore, mandating a complete, more modern replacement.
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.
There are electric (battery) versions of these vehicles for use in tunnels, where diesel fumes would be a problem. Much construction equipment is often converted roadbuilding equipment, and that's still diesel powered.
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.
Nope - I didn't ask to include train stations. You can include runways only.
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.
Why would you include railways and runways but not train stations and airports?
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.
Because the machines don't care whether the humans inside are fed and warm, and won't emit more/less CO2 because of it.
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.
I used to fly to Leipzig Altenburg. It was basically a shed plus a line of asphalt, in the countryside. The guy checking your baggage and the guy selling bagels looked kind of similar and I suspect they were brothers.
The airport eventually lost its Ryanair connection because - allegedly - one day the plane approaching called air traffic and got no response. The air traffic controller had slept in late....
Sorry to make you so angry you stopped reading right at this word, though that means you might be positively surprised to see the sentence that immediately follows. ;-)
The thing is, the cost of building rails is amortized over, in some cases, well over a hundred years. Most of train travels emissions are fixed emissions, marginal emissions being much lower. On the flipside, air travel has a much smaller fixed emissions amount but drastically higher marginal emissions.
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.
This is a valid question and not sure why it is being downvoted. As far as I know the answer is it is a net positive for most frequently used passenger lines in the world, e.g. most in Europe and Asia.
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.
YES! I love night trains and I travelled all over Europe and China with them. I've travelled probably at least 100000km on night trains.
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.
You are perhaps of a different generation. In the 1980s, it was possible for young people in Europe to get a all-in-one ticket where you could travel as much as you could for four weeks in the summer. The tickets costed about 250 €. It was a bit a thing that defined my generation. People who traveled on budget did meticulous time-tables to spend as few nights as possible in paid hostels, traveling to Paris then to Vienna to Athene to Rome then to some small place in Portugal and so on. Returning hungry, exhaustauted and longing for a good shower but with bright eyes and full of experiences, meeting unknown people, made many new friends, and seeing a nice bit of the continent.
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.
You can still do Interrail! Me and my wife did it a couple of summers ago, a great experience. We weren't on a budget so we got to stay at a few nice hotels. Half a grand tour -- Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Žagreb, Trieste, Florence, Milan, Venice, Zürich... I can warmly recommend it. We would have loved more night trains so I am eagerly awaiting the new Stockholm-Berlin sleeper.
I did internships twice in Europe in 2005 and 2007 and used railpasses to travel on the weekends to other countries. They were a lot more than 250 € but it was worth the experience and learned a lot in the process.
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.
It is still possible: https://www.interrail.eu/ . I took a 3-months sabbatical last year and did it before arriving in Spain and did the Camino de Santiago :). One of the best experiences ever!
My wife and a friend did this about 6 years ago but it was tragic, in a way, that they almost always ended up taking cheap flights or the odd intercity bus instead of the train because it was just cheaper.
Covid of course has caused all sorts of issues but that’s an odd thing to find utterly painful compared with everything else. There’s always next year.
Firstly, that's how democracy works; those people are as entitled to a vote as anyone else. Secondly, 48 percent of 35-44-year-olds and 38 percent of 25-34-year-olds voted for Brexit.
I was traveling by night train twice a week for multiple years in early 2000s, Vienna to Bonn, Cologne and other places in Germany. If I could afford to fly, I would. It got me to the destination, but I never learned to fall into relaxing sleep - the day after the travel was always bad.
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 did Amsterdam to London by bus overnight once. From memory via Rotterdam, Antwerp and Lille. It was appalling but really something to be experienced. The next day was a write off but I suppose we didn't help ourselves with pints on the ferry and arriving just in time to wait outside Wetherspoons for it to open.
I can't wait for Europe to reopen and travel in a more civilised manner!
The best sleeping train experience I had was from southern Thailand to Bangkok. The whole car was one big compartment, but it was surprisingly clean and comfortable.
Did you have a bed or were you in a seat? Because I can't sleep sitting, even in the reclining seats available in some night trains. But give me anything truly horizontal and I sleep decently. I love night trains.
Now imagine the consequences to people's travel decisions when you can do this for any two locations within, say, 500 miles of each other, because you can sleep in your self-driving car while it takes you there. Not just locations linked by train.
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.
This sort of thing may be further out than many here think. But it will absolutely change the equation when a 2-3 hour each way day trip or a 5-6 hour each way weekend trip is practically effortless. (Not sure about 500 miles but definitely distances that aren't easy today.)
500 miles of highway/autobahn/autostrada is definitely possible, i'd say even with 2020 tech. i fully expect a long-distance self-driving passenger van/minibus service in the next 5-10 years - get on on a park&ride close to a highway, get off in the morning 500 miles away in a park&ride, take taxi/uber/train to the city center.
even better if my own car could do that - it'd make road trips on vacation so much better.
Problem is you need a destination that is 7-9 hours away. There are not a lot of those. Europe doing away with customs inspections at all the borders made it possible.
Nah, you can conveniently stop the train in the night so that it arrives at breakfast time.
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.)
That's probably because they split the train and/or attach another half train from another departure.
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).
IME they also let it sit around for a while. We were stationary for more than an hour. Sadly still not long enough to make my 05:30AM arrival time bearable for a night owl like me.
There are a few city pairs that are linked by Amtrak overnight, for example Pittsburgh->Chicago, Buffalo->Chicago, Omaha->Denver, Flagstaff->LA, Salt Lake City -> Reno.
As an aside, I used Amtrak to travel from Rochester, NY to NYC and it was totally weird when I asked people in Rochester (which has a population of about 200,000) for the train station. Most people literally didn't know where the train station of their city was! And it turned out to be as small as a regional rail or European sub-urb S-train stop. Only two platforms with no people on it.
Rochester Native here, and yep: I've never been to the rail station. Probably because the frequent, short flights to NYC are relatively cheap. Checking amtrak vs delta for a random date in january, your options are a 7-9 hour train ride for $54 in coach, or a 1hour flight for $64 in economy basic.]
For context: medium sized European city will have anything from 12-30 platforms - and often several main train stations and several dozen local ones in the city. E.g. Brussels, Paris or Berlin have several huge stations.
It will never work in the US until cities get their public transportation act together. Even if I can get to my parent's city, I can't get to their house (without walking many km). Since there isn't good transit (and never has been), they need a place with plenty of space to store a car, and there is no downside to getting way out where transit is hard to serve since transit doesn't serve the types of places they go anyway.
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.
Pre-Brexit, those in the UK were immigration controls, to be precise. In Switzerland they are in fact customs controls (and not typically immigration controls barring Schengen restrictions such as those during COVID-19).
Even Pre-Brexit the UK was not part of Schengen, so you had border controls even when inbound from a EU country. On the other hand, Switzerland joined Schengen some years ago, yet you still have border controls as they are not in a free-trade/customs agreement.
Right. My point was that the UK controls were (and are through the transition period) immigration and not customs controls while the Swiss ones are customs and not regularly immigration controls.
Couldn't agree more. Though I've taken only a single night train in my life: from Beijing to Xi'an.
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.
Did the same trip, just the other way, in 2010. Clean, comfortable, cheap (comparing to night trains in Central Europe). Couldn't get much sleep though, because as the only European in the car, so many people wanted to chat with me. And we were all very slow in looking up in the dictionary.
it really depends on the routes and specific fares, even ignoring the availability of early morning/late night flights or existing accommodation in place (when I visit friends and relatives I don't pay for lodging).
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
Not a night train, but a reasonably random journey I just looked up.
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.
I'm laughing at the 'good night's sleep' bit! After a lot of sleeper train travelling (mostly in Europe but also Russia and China), I still sleep incredibly badly on them and have had times where I have arrived exhausted but not able to check-in to my hotel for hours.
For me I have travelled many time in sleep-trains in the post soviet countries.
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.
I took several night trains in my life (Prague-Warsaw, Prague-Tatras, Wien-Venezia, Prague-Frankfurt) and while the experience is interesting, the shaking movement of the train underway plus the freaking loud station loudspeaker announcements whenever you arrive somewhere resulted in very bad sleep. 2-3 hours at most.
Also short beds. I'm not freakishly tall, so the bed was missing just a few centimeters, but combined with the other factors you mentioned it wasn't a great time.
Yeah :( I remember being on the night train from Munich to Vienna and the bed being only 180cm or something. Though I had booked the cheapest sleeper option that was available (sharing the room with 5 other people), so maybe this is different in the upper classes?
These are the same arguments I make in favour of airships - I can see people preferring a slower transoceanic trip in much greater comfort than a jet affords. Also, sky cruises. The cruise industry is going to need one hell of a hook to recover from this year’s PR hell.
How many such routes are there in Europe? Checked a bunch and seems like 9 hours is a decent timing even for the fastest train option. While by plane you're always looking at something under 2 hours.
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?
The main point is the ideal night train scenario as per grandparent comment could be rare. Checked a number of possible 1000km routes [0], most were over 10h. Found just one that took 8h, Paris - Berlin. And these are not night trains. The night train for Paris Berlin seems to take 12 hours.
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.
Berlin is the end of that route, so the arrival is a bit later than ideal - Paris to Hannover (say) will be more conveniently timed. Maybe the ideal pairs are 800km rather than 1000km, but there's quite a few of them - I've done London-Glasgow, Paris-Munich, Munich-Budapest, Paris-Rome, Turin-Salerno. Even if it does end up being 10 or 12 hours, it can still be more convenient than a night flight in terms of "can I finish work here at 18:00, have a decent dinner and a good night's sleep, and be ready to start work here at 09:00" - that's the question that actually matters.
> 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.
> 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.
This document [0] has airport-to-city-center-by-taxi timings for top European airports. 1 hour seems to be the absolute worst, 27 min average, 22 min median. And it only gets better with smaller cities [1].
Almost any airport nowadays lets you walk in with your boarding pass. You scan it, go through security and go straight to the gate. You'd need to be very unlucky with unusually clogged security (unlikely early in the morning). Or be dealing with a huge airport where it takes a long time to get to the gate.
Boarding for short flights shouldn't close earlier than 20 minutes before departure. For large airports 40 mins should be enough. For tiny regional airports 30. Even check-in counters will sometimes close as late as 30 mins before departure.
Also note that the arrival time given on the ticket, isn't touchdown time. It's either aircraft door open or final parking. There's often a bit of padding added too. So for arrival 10 extra minutes should be the absolute worst case.
Very conservative average for first-time travel between sizable EU cities: 50 mins before departure + 2 x 30 mins for taxis + 10 mins for exiting the airport = 120 min = 2 hours. Subtract 10-30 minutes for repeat travelers.
In my example I was going from a small city to a capital city and the breakdown was roughly: 10m taxi + 30m before departure (20m would have been fine too!) + 20m taxi + 0m for exit (disembarked before claimed arrival time) = 1 hour.
[1] in my example the airport was in fact closer to my house than the train station. No other departures at the same time, 0 people in line for security, 1 minute walk to the gate.
> This document [0] has airport-to-city-center-by-taxi timings for top European airports. 1 hour seems to be the absolute worst, 27 min average, 22 min median. And it only gets better with smaller cities [1].
Sure; rail times were what I was assuming; your document puts them in the region of 40 minutes from a "hub" (though there's a lot of variation), so I stand by about an hour from a typical origin/destination. If you routinely take taxis then fair enough, but that comes with its own set of downsides.
> Boarding for short flights shouldn't close earlier than 20 minutes before departure. For large airports 40 mins should be enough. For tiny regional airports 30. Even check-in counters will sometimes close as late as 30 mins before departure.
I've never seen an airport that didn't officially advise 45 minutes, and every major airport I've been to had check-in counters closing an hour before departure. (Whereas, Eurostar excepted, the official number I've heard from train operators is 5 minutes). You can probably get away with less most of the time, sure, but I wouldn't want to take the risk.
And again, these don't matter to us if we have out boarding pass and only carry-on luggage. But it clearly demonstrates arriving 45 minutes before departure is hardly tight. And many airports and airlines don't consider 30 minutes crazy.
You want sleeper services to take long enough that you don't end up with interrupted sleep. They're not competing on speed. They're competing on comfort in a scenario where getting there faster doesn't help you.
They stopped service on many routes in the last 10 to 15 years, this news is about rolling back that policy. 9 hours is kind of the ideal length for a night train journey, e.g. board at 11 pm, arrive at 8 am.
You need to compare door-to-door time which is a lot longer for air travel, partly because the airports are outside of the cities while the train stations are in their very heart.
In general I agree, but there are exceptions. I was taking a night train from somewhere in Germany to Nice, France and the conductor put me on the wrong car.
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!
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.
I took a cheap sleeper train across Germany once and the sleeping surface was essentially unpadded. I don't know if this is normal- maybe everyone brings their own?- but sleeping on an upholstered plank (billed as a "couchette") did not make for a restful night. I don't think I slept at all.
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.
Yes, couchettes are differ a bit in hardness, but not everyone can sleep on them (I can about half of the time); in other languages they're called "lying-down cars", as opposed to "sleeping cars", where you get a proper mattress. I've never seen someone use a sleeping pad on top, but you could definitely try; I have thought of doing that too but not tried it yet. It would be easier if you get on a bit earlier in the evening, or the starting station.
I usually use a thin (cotton/silk) sleeping bag because I can't be bothered with the provided linens. No sleeping pad, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone use one. I think the padding is fine, it's certainly not unpadded. The more expensive compartments do have more comfortable beds.
It’s not that expensive, we had a private cabin going Florence - Munich for about the same price as a hotel night. That was with a shared bathroom but we had a sink in the room.
Yes I took a night train trip from Vienna to (I think) Göttingen (final destination was Kassel) last year and was able to have a single compartment with bathroom all for myself. It was pricey but not pricier than a flight from Vienna to Frankfurt and then a train from there to Kassel, because low-cost airlines don't fly this route.
Of course it's a matter of personal preference, but I love the clack-clack noise. I think trains are second only to coastal ferries for a comfortable night sleep.
I have found them to be highly uncomfortable. I’ve taken several night trains in and around Central Europe and the rooms are claustrophobic, and god help you if you are in a four person. There’s barely any room for two people to stand. I’ve had arguments about temperature control where a lower bunk wanted air con off as it blew on their face, leaving it about 40c on the top bunk in summer overnight.
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.
I used to take one in France, but I could not sleep well (like when taking an overnight flight) and arrived tired. It was a alternative to spending 5.5 hours in the train during the day, or flying. (then this service stopped)
One thing that is missing is the possibility to take a shower before leaving. I don't think there is any public shower in train stations in France any more. Same problem with night coaches: after having walked in a city the whole day, I don't want to make the experience bad for the other travellers.
Same. I really wanted to like the sleeper train I went on but I just couldn't sleep. It might be better for heavy sleepers.
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.
I remember the time when I was a kid and travelling with my brother and parents that there were 6 people sleeping in a cabin, so two other adults we didn't know.
Last time when we took a car/sleeptrain from Dusseldorf to Austria I used an over the earmuff or an overear sony nois ecancellation combined with earplugs. Works well
i had food poisoning and took a night train in europe. i was that asshole banging the doors all night and making the train smell like shit. it wasn’t fun for me. i doubt it was fun for anyone else. especially the people in my cabin
We did the Paris -> Barcelona night train back in 2013 - reading TFA this sounds like it was just before they stopped running them, though I recall back then that they'd only recently re-fitted out a lot of the carriages.
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.
Last year I did Berlin -> Paris and Hendaye (French-Spanish border)-> Lisbon.
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)
The food on Polish trains is excellent and very affordable. I've heard good things about Slovak restaurant cars as well. (Swiss are also fine I hear, but expect Swiss prices.)
I'm lucky to live in a city (Hanover, Germany) on the intersection of many night train routes. Back when Deutsche Bahn operated their night trains one could travel to Amsterdam, Brussels, Warsaw, and Prague. Now with ÖBB operating them one can ride to Hamburg, Vienna, Innsbruck, and Zurich.
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.
The trains were shunted in Hannover, but as far as I remember it wasn't an official stop that you could book when I was using them (late 2000s, and 2010s while DB were running them). Or did you just book from the station before and got on clandestinely at Hannover anyway?
Nope, 2014 and 2015 (when I travelled) Hanover was an official stop and there was a train to Amsterdam/Brussels and one to Warsaw/Prague. Both stopped in Hanover between 2am and 3am. I remember the train eastwards was split in Berlin-East.
In Hanover I gave my printed reservation to the polish train conductor who told me he'll wake me up when we'll arrive.
Sleeper trains were de rigeur for our travel when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s: Paris-Simplon, The Flying Scotsman and regular trips between Melbourne and Adelaide. All are now gone, or recreated as shadows of their former selves.
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
Nothing to do with the planes themselves. Basically Ryanair business practice forcing competitors to up their game resulted in an ultra-competitive slim margin industry.
On top of that many smaller cities actually paid airlines to fly to their muicipal airport. The idea that Brest would pay €2000 a day to fly 200 passengers from London to Brest, and those passengers would spend far more than €10 each in the local economy.
Lots of railway equipment (vehicles, signalling systems) is designed and manufactured in Europe, and obviously the construction and maintenance staff have to be, so I don't see why this decision would have been done for Airbus.
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.
Further conjecture I heard that I'm repeating with no supporting evidence: it was partly a side effect the Cold War.
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.
This brings back memories. I used Seat61 to plan a 40-day-long trip across Europe and Asia back when I was an undergraduate, and it was an invaluable resource.
Unless you're a heavy sleeper or are really used to the ride, sleeping on a night train, even in the best of cabins, is for the initiated.
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.
The benefit of a night train is that you get an actual nights' sleep. On shorter distances going from city center to city center by plane is only a few hours faster, but you can't sleep much during this time as you have to get to the airport, go through check-in, wait for your plane, etc. With a good night train you can travel without losing a day.
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've found that the few times I afforded myself a sleeping cabin with proper mattress, I slept fine or even excellently. Couchettes are more of a mixed bag. YMMV.
I would love to use trains more in Europe, but their prices cannot compete with cheap flight providers at all, 30ish EUR flights pretty much from any country to any country in Europe are hard to beat
Flying is a lot of hassle though. You need to go to the airport which is far away from the center. In most cities half an hour to an hour. And you have to arrive at least an hour before your flight takes of. And you cannot buy a ticket spontaneously.
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.
Especially night trains - if you are able to sleep in that somewhat noisy and shaky environment. You travel overnight, where you can't do anything anyways and come up in the other place in the morning and have the full day available. When flying you typically need a hotel night more and have to get to city center first.
Personally, I can't start a day without a proper bathroom to shower and groom myself. An overnight train doesn't even come close to a hotel replacement in my book.
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.
That's a super-expensive luxury cruise train that only does irregular (and mostly circular) tours - it's the equivalent of the Venice Simplon Orient Express. There's one scheduled sleeper train left in Japan, the Sunrise Izumo/Sunrise Seto.
We almost rode Sunrize Izumo last year in Japan! We even booked accommodation accordingly, leaving out the one night we ecpected to spend on bord of Sunrise Izumo going from Izumo to Tokyo.
Unfortunately even though we tried to book the train as the first thing after arrival, right on the Narita train station ticket office, it was already fully booked. :P
At least we managed to book the marvelous SL Hitoyoshi steam train from Hitoyoshi to Kumamoto over Hisatsu line. We were actually double lucky on that one, as SL Hitoyoshi is actually out of service right now as floods in July 2020 washed away key bridges on the Kuma river, cutting the rail connection between Hitoyoshi and Kumamoto, until the bridges are repaired...
Still we did go to the very inaka Izuma anyway and spend a very nice old school and almost mythical four days there.
And what we did about that missing accommodation? We booked a night in a ryokan in the splendid Kinosaki onsen town instead and it was indescribably good decision! :)
It took as like 6 hours by multiple small local diesel trains to get from Izumo to Kinosaki, possibly the only tourists to arrive from that direction in quite a while! :)
And on the very elegant Kinosaki station we even discovered a special gate reserved only for guests arriving by one of those luxury cruse trains - namely Twilight Express Mizukaze: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Express_Mizukaze
Likely inspired by the special gate only ueed by the Emperor on Tokyo station. :)
Ideally you could have a lounge area at the start and end stations where passengers can shower and generally freshen themselves up. Kings Cross in London already has shower facilities, which are wonderful for long days as a tourist.
The Italian ones are nice, as are the UK ones (if a bit cramped). The Nightjets mentioned in the article (mostly taken over from DB's CityNightLine a few years ago) are variable; the Poland-Ukraine one is pleasant enough but poorly timed. I had a pretty bad time on a Hungarian Railways one. The Russian Railways ones from Paris and Nice to Moscow have a reputation for luxurious looks but bad (or at least not westerner-friendly) food.
Austrian ÖBB, which runs in multiple countries like most lines going through Germany, is working on modernizing their trains, but they also have quite old cars. Not sure if there is a good site showing car types and train lines.
https://www.nightjet.com/en/komfortkategorien/nightjetzukunf...
That is, "Most Nightjet trains use Comfortline sleeping-cars built by Siemens in 2003-2005 for German Railways' City Night Line sleeper trains." and "Below: Comfortline sleeper layout. All compartments can be sold as a single, double or triple."
I picked 14 April 2021, leaving Wien Hvf (U) at 20:13 arriving Berlin at 08:55. "Sparschiene Nachtverkehr Nightjet + Anschlussticket Nightjet." "Sleeper Bed", "Compartment with 1 bed (Single)".
€ 216,00.
Bear in mind the comment at https://www.nightjet.com/en/ : "Due to the travel restrictions caused by the corona pandemic, we are reducing the Nightjet traffic to probably 8 February 2021 ... As a precautionary measure, no bookings are currently possible for the affected trains from January 10th to March 24th, 2021", confirming johannes1234321's comment "During Cornona this probably is different".
Well I sort of prefer night trains also, in theory at least, but I have to say where I am in a suburb of Copenhagen, it takes me 20 minutes to get to the center station where I could conceivably board a night train.
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.
The upcoming night trains will depart from Høje Taastrup since they arrive from Sweden, and don't want to go to the Central Station just to turn around (takes another hour or so to do).
You should look at how the new low-cost high speed trains is looking now in Spain. The high speed rails are now open to the market and a Madrid-Barcelona ticket would be around 10 EUR (12ish USD) and a 2:30h trip.
https://www.ouigo.com/es/en/barcelona-madrid-train
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...
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.
If you travel longer routes sure, but to neighbouring cities and countries? Here in Vienna I can get to all larger nearby cities and capitals for 30-50€ in a cheap seat that easily beats anything economy class on a plane has to offer. The journey takes longer of course (sometimes), which may not be for everyone but I take a longer ride vs all the airport hassle any day. Plus on a train first class is something you can actually afford if you want more space and quiet (another 30 to 50€ extra here).
The point of travel is to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. It's never about the journey and it's always about the destination.
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.
I'll bet you've never been through airport security carrying a bored toddler, pushing a buggy (in which you have balanced a child car seat), two extra bags full of baby stuff over your shoulder, all whilst your trousers are falling down because they made you take your belt off ?
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.
Leave at 10 pm, arrive at 8 am in Austria, connecting train to a village in the middle of the Alps, get some last minute supplies, start hiking at 10 am, arrive at the mountain hut at 5 pm. Not really feasible with air travel without spending a night in the valley where you don't actually want to be as 2 or 3 pm is too late to start the hike. Admittedly that is a very specific example.
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.
Obviously depends on the user. When I was younger I tried the night train thing on a trip that hopped a few European cities. So, stay in Munich for 2 nights, then on the 3rd night, get on the train to Vienna. Stay in Vienna for 2 nights and get on another train ...
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).
You're missing a night somewhere. Day 1 10:00 - Day 1 14:00 means you need a hotel room Day 1. Day 1 22:00 - Day 2 10:00 (more like 6:00 IME tho) means no hotel room for Day 1.
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.
Back in the old days when I traveled for work, I had to be in the other office at 9am, which meant I would travel the previous afternoon and grab an extra night at the hotel.
Even with your example, you're getting an extra day in your destination without an extra hotel stay.
The point would be to skip that hotel stay alltogether by arriving the next day. If you have things to do during the afternoon the day before resulting in an extra night then it will not save anything.
you can
a)leave your luggage at the hotel early
b) use a locker at the train station to store your luggage
c) avoid bringing a lot of luggage for this trip
I once took an overnight train from Paris to Berlin, arrived at about 7:00 a.m., and walked clear across the city to my AirBnb (from Mitte to south Neukölln, for any Berliners.) It was a really fantastic way to discover the city for the first time. I don’t think flying in to an airport then taking a taxi would have been nearly as memorable.
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.
ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways), who are slowly taking over night train service all over Europe, have single or double Deluxe cabins [1]. You can have your privacy and your own bathroom with shower. It can be pretty private and comfortable.
i've had a Deluxe cabin experience with the shower. it was wonderful and private but anecdotally i still ended up sleeping better in the first class seats of the TGV that we had connection to right after the night train
One problem with AirBnBs and sometimes hotels is that they're not really set up to receive new visitors early in the morning, even if you only want to drop off your bags.
As for sleeping quality on the train: I'm looking forward to the new one-person ÖBB cabins.
I used one, once. Ride took roughly 10 hours. 6 seats cabine, with people leaving and boarding a couple of times. Never again.
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.
> 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.
> there's nothing as dreadful as the sound of people boarding or leaving every hour through the entire night.
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.
The dry air in airplanes is not circulated. The cabin is pressurized with air from the compressor stage of the jet engine. Pressure is regulated by letting some air out of the cabin. It feels stale because the rate of air replacement is not fast enough.
I agree with all your other dislikes of air travel though :) I wish we had more high-speed rail in the USA.
It takes some getting used to. I used to make frequent trips by overnight coach between the north of England and Belgium. The coach would make several stops throughout the night, people would come and go, there was a pesky check at the UK/France border, etc. It was a dreadful experience (sleep wise) the first couple of times. But after a while I got used to it and just slept through the whole thing. Even managed the pesky border check while half asleep.
Can we get the Hellas Express back? Dortmund -> Athens. It was ended by the war(s) in the former Yugoslavia. Yeah, cheap EU flights probably eat into its viability now, but I rode that train all the way to Athens twice and it was two of the most memorable (if uneventful) experiences of my life.
I love the Berlin -> Vienna route that already exists. The private cabins could do with a bit of a facelift, but it really is a nice experience to wake up in a new country without any of the hassle of an airport.
I have taken the Oslo-Bergen night train line multiple times.
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.
The one overnight train I took in Germany was one of the most unpleasant nights of my life. The bed was so small and uncomfortable, and the temperature so erratic, I spent much the night in a bathroom reading a book.
I'd only ever try it again in a premium cabin, assuming the cost isn't exorbitant.
German Rail cancelled their night train service a few years ago, and then Austrian Rail took over and offered a proper service. As the article covers, the Germans were neglecting this service, which in turn probably lead to their poorer service and poorer uptake, and they presumably thought "well, it seems nobody likes taking night trains any more, so let's cancel them".
> "well, it seems nobody likes taking night trains any more, so let's cancel them"
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.
They also thought it was pointless to even try to compete with 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.
I took night trains many times during my trips (India, China, Norway, etc.). They are comfortable and cheap.
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.
When I did a summer eurailing it across Europe a million years ago, the overnight trains were a handy budget saver. Every few days take a train to whatever city was an overnight journey away and save on lodging costs. Not the most organized way to travel, but it was fine when I was 20.
It's a really nice way to travel for families. We've used it several times, and despite the fact that I don't sleep amazingly well on them, the fact I can stash my kid and not hear a word about being tired and bored until the next day is really amazing. And then you get breakfast, and sit in pyjamas, watching the landscape as the train takes a smooth ride to your final destination. It's just a nice way to start your day.
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).
I took night trains a handful of times in China, and loved it. China is big enough that you can get a nice long journey in. I found that people were respectful and quiet for the most part, so I didn't have any trouble sleeping.
Same here. The first thing I look for when I want to visit a country is if there's night trains or other cool train routes available to explore. It's by far my favourite way to travel.
"There are high costs, but a lot is down to attitude, willingness and management focus," says Smith, who praises ÖBB CEO Andreas Matthä, who took over in 2016, for "making night trains wash their faces commercially."
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.
There are a lot of trains I'd take in America if they were also had car carriages. There's only one East Coaster that does it. Pity, and I get why (no one else seems to want it) but if it were to happen, I'd be pretty happy. Imagine parking your car on the train, hanging out with your friends in a private room, sleeping on the train and then waking up in Denver and just hopping into your car to go up to Aspen. Nice.
How little would it have to cost or how long would your vacation have to be to compete with a simple rental? Sometimes you can rent for $15/30 a day and I don’t think transporting a whole car would be particularly cheap, given the price of a train ticket in the US.
Yeah, it's possible that it's not economical. I think I'd do it for a $200 SF to DEN premium. I would expect the train tickets for passengers to be cheaper than the flight, though. A flight is currently $150 round trip. And I'd expect a four person room on a train to be approx $400 round trip.
High-speed, on-ground (or underground) transportation will be the future for the average Joe. While low-orbit flights may be a viable solution to transport for the upper class I bet that a sustainable railroad network will keep the folks moving in the mid term. It is not so hard to get carbon free and yet so effective.
The time of the night trains in Europe was the seventies with all kinds of nice routes like Lisabon-Paris,Munich-Roma,Amsterdam-Vienna,Munich-Copenhagen,Vienna-Oostende,Helsinki-Oulu-Narvik,Bodo-Oslo and many more come to mind. Hopefully these kind of trips will be possible again.
I was on a night train of ÖBB (Austrian rail) from Vienna to Berlin last summer, and unfortunately it was not very pleasant. When we got on the train, one of the staff told us to keep our belongings safely stowed within the interior of the compartment, far from the windows and door. Also, he advised us to keep the compartment door locked at all times. The train stopped in Prague for hours, during which time the station announcements kept me awake (they are really loud!). Then, when travelling through Poland, the train hooted every couple minutes when it approached a railway crossing. I ended up getting maybe 2 hours of sleep on the whole trip and my body was aching the next day. Never again!
"Then, when travelling through Poland, the train hooted every couple minutes, because apparently railway crossings in that country don't have automatic boom gates, so the trains just hoot to warn cars."
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.
I understand, no disrespect meant to Poland - I've edited my answer to not sound disrespectful. My grandfather on my mother's side was Polish. It was just an awful trip. I guess I had built up this romantic idea in my head about night trains, but the reality is that the they are extremely noisy, so you should at least pack some earplugs. Also, the security warnings by the train staff made me nervous.
When I was young and bumming around Europe on an Inter-rail pass I took night trains all the time in order to avoid hotels. I would just find an empty cabin, lie down on the floor with my feet against the door and use my backpack for a pillow.
We have two night trains in the UK. One of them is the Riviera express that goes west from London to Penzance in Cornwall. I’ve traveled on it, it was an expensive but convenient experience.
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?
Night trains are only cool and romantic if you can afford a decent spot. Otherwise it's a long literal nightmare of being woken up constantly through the night as people get on and off, rattling or opening your cabin's door, border checks, waking up with a start to see if someone is picking your pocket or wandering off with your backpack, watching as guard shakes down one of the other people in your room in another language and you having no idea what's going on until money changes hands, loud noises from weird places, horrible bathrooms, cramped space, and more.
Was actually looking at flying to Austria in June for the Global Mountain biking festival. Obb's website has a decent English translation which I'm thankful for, kinda cool to see them pop up in the news.
This is great news, but it's also compleytely artificial. People are now spending 3-5h doing a 1h flight, when it could theoretically be done a lot quicker. When I fly from my regional airport I arrive 30 minutes before departure, if I have luggage to drop. 20 if I don't. That's how flying should work, even at larger airports.
I used a few in France a decade ago when they still had bunk beds (right now I think they don't have bunks anymore). It was nice if you wanted to arrive very early and tired (never could sleep well). But now, with the increased number of fast train lines, I don't really see the point when travelling in France.
Fun fact - night trains are the only real way to travel by train to/from where I live. Closest city is ~4 hours by train from here, and the _closest_ major city is ~15 hours by train from here.
The flight is ~90 minutes, and usually cheaper as well. We try to take the train when possible anyways.
I’ll take the train over the plane or the bus for longer distance travel any time.
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)
Unfortunately, high speed rail isn't easily compatible with open windows. From what I understand, it's a safety concern when entering tunnels at high speeds or when passing an oncoming train. There's also aerodynamics to consider. I miss the windows, too. And it'd have been an easy (if drafty) way to make travel safer during the pandemic.
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.
China is really a resurgence of this already. I absolutely loved the train rides from Beijing to Shanghai, or to Hong Kong. Cheap and amazing scenery + actually quite comfortable.
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...
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.