131–140 of 274 posts
I'm not sure about "revive," since sleeper trains have been coming back in Europe for years. There was a Wall Street Journal article about it recently. Sorry the link is Apple News, but that's where I bookmarked it from: https://apple.news/AdFPGWf-GTmOabJK30Za0ZQ
I was disappointed when I checked if it was possible to do Paris-Warsaw by night train. I imagined entering the train at 5pm, eating something, watching a movie and waking up in Paris in the morning. It sounded much better to me than spending an actual day commuting to/from far away airports and waiting in queues. Unfortunately such train does not exist, but neither does the platform that would allow searching and bo…
Warsaw on a warm summer evening. The sun is setting and there is a beautiful sky above the equally beautiful city. You relax into you sleeper cabin, and gaze out of the window waiting for the train to depart. 'Such a friendly city. Beautiful country.' you think to yourself. The train pulls out of the station. You watch the countryside pass as the night turns dark. You go to sleep. - You wake up at Gare du Nord. At le…
Excited about this idea. I wanted to do an overnight train in a Europe trip I did last year, but the timing and quality never quite worked out. A lot of the time, trains between cities in western Europe are annoyingly long for a day trip, but slightly _too short_ for overnight trips - almost like an NYC->London red-eye, where you arrive just after you fall asleep. The couple of overnight trains I saw that seemed like…
You write "_ferry_" like it's something weird, but it's a completely normal transport option for a huge number of Europeans -- usually for longer journeys, but sometimes to cover a short distance in 20-30 minutes. There are many ferry connections across the Irish, North, Baltic and Mediterranean seas. Ignoring the price, I'd choose an overnight ferry over an overnight train. The worst room on a ferry is probably as l…
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I second the recommendation of Bahn.de. For like two decades now it has provided a way to search train schedules across Europe when the national rail companies didn’t bother to provide their own accessible interface.
Bahn.de is remarkable. You can search for Paris->Beijing if you want(202h with one change or 173h with three changes). Or you can look up the train schedule of a remote Scotish villages.
Edit: 1994! The page: https://www.remote.org/frederik/projects/railserver/history.... , and it was just an email address where you could send an email with a special syntax
#FROM vonbahnhof
#TO tobahnhof
#DATE mm-dd-yy
#TIME hh:mm
The (German) how it worked page is even more fascinating: https://www.remote.org/frederik/projects/railserver/technik....
"If we are at step 4 for a long time, I'm probably personally at the machine and doing some tinkering.". I love that there's no separation between a developer and productive system.
This is a very good idea if it works reliably. However, from my experiences with sleeper trains in Sweden (via SJ), it's quite inconsistent. Just the other month, I took a sleeper from Stockholm to Kiruna and it was delayed by 9+ hours! Good thing this was an unplanned vacation so I had time. The customer service was excellent though, they were attentive and reimbursed me for the train tickets, hotels, food and car r…
The "new economy" made popular round the turn of the millennium didn't deliver on it's promise of solving everything imaginable, just by turning maintenance of public assets over to lowest bidder private entrepreneurs. Go figure.
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I just plugged those two cities into the Deutsche Bahn website, and can now buy a ticket for a train leaving Stockholm in 8 hours (6:25 local time). 2 transfers (although routes exist with only one), 11:37 travel time. Saver fare still available: 99,90 € (regular would be 225 €). And it's not the only connection tomorrow. That said, your point somewhat stands: it really depends on the route if good options are availa…
Just plugged it in to SJ.se (Swedish rail). Doesn’t even have Hamburg as a selection. So I need to somehow know that Deutsche Bahn ofers the search capability. True two to three train changes, 90 to 220 euro. I guess I’ll use bahn.de from now on (and learn some German :) )
reiseauskunft.bahn.de knows several languages, including of course English.
There are also some pan-European booking sites, like loco2.com, happyrail.com and a few others. But these don't always manage to find the saver tickets, so you're sometimes stuck with full price.
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> > a private room, bathroom, and shower > What trains have you found that offer this? As an American unaccustomed to such trains, I'd be super interested to try them. Just FYI, we have those in America on Amtrak long-distance trains; the Bedroom and Bedroom Suite (on both Viewliners and Superliners) have these features, as does the Accessible Bedroom on Viewliners. Roomettes don't have the shower (or the bathroom, o…
Awesome, TIL! I live in Boston and have only traveled to New York often, but maybe I'll try a longer route sometime. :)
The only problem is that the schedule is kinda of aspirational. The train from NYC attaches in Albany, and the times often don’t line up.
When the economy is good, the westward tracks are busy with frieight traffic so you wait.
I enjoyed the trip though and got a lot of work done.
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Uh, no? Stockholm to Copenhagen on the X2000 then an overnight train to Hamburg. Not the cheapest, but it’s totally feasible.
AFAIK, the Copenhagen->Hamburg night train is seating only, it's not a sleeper train any more.
Excited about this idea. I wanted to do an overnight train in a Europe trip I did last year, but the timing and quality never quite worked out. A lot of the time, trains between cities in western Europe are annoyingly long for a day trip, but slightly _too short_ for overnight trips - almost like an NYC->London red-eye, where you arrive just after you fall asleep. The couple of overnight trains I saw that seemed like…
Edit: If you're wondering what I find unfair about it, I'm mainly concerned about the lack of taxes on kerosine.
Excited about this idea. I wanted to do an overnight train in a Europe trip I did last year, but the timing and quality never quite worked out. A lot of the time, trains between cities in western Europe are annoyingly long for a day trip, but slightly _too short_ for overnight trips - almost like an NYC->London red-eye, where you arrive just after you fall asleep. The couple of overnight trains I saw that seemed like…
Honestly if the unfair competition from budget airlines doesn't stop I don't see overnight trains coming back in any significant way any time soon. Edit: If you're wondering what I find unfair about it, I'm mainly concerned about the lack of taxes on kerosine.