This is great! I love overnight trains!
Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
201–210 of 274 posts
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#202So back in Russia a trip from my home town to Moscow on a plane takes about 6 hours in total. - get to the airport about 1 hour in advance - about 1.5 hour drive - The flight with all the procedures takes about 2 hours - All the exit procedures can take up to 0.5 hours easily if no longer - Wait for a train and ride to the city on the train - about 1 hour. - Once in the city get on subway and ride to destination - us…
it would be fun to take a trans-siberian rail ... except it takes like what ...7 days? eats up vacation time pretty quickly.
In this case, the trainride IS the vacation. You don't take the Trans-Siberian primarily to get from Moscow to Vladivostok / Beijing, but to check out everything else along the way.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes it unfair? Just curious. Is it subsidized in some fashion that trains are not?
In most EU states, there are VAT exemptions for the fuel used in domestic and intra-EU flights, while no similar exemptions exist for the fuel used in trains (and cars). Likewise, there exist VAT exemptions for plane tickets. At least in Portugal, querosene is also exempt from the ISP (tax on the petroleum products). VAT and ISP make up more than half of the retail price of diesel and is almost 2/3 of the price of ga…
They really need to end these tax exemptions for planes. It makes no sense at all. But old treaties can be hard to end.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#204I 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…
Downvoted - your Romanian stereotype is unacceptable and you need to know this
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#205My experience is that flying inside Europe tends to be cheaper than long-distance train. Does anyone here whether it's simply intrinsically cheaper, or whether it's all because of kerosine subsidies etc? In other words, if countries would subsidize long-distance train as much as they subsidize air flight, would the economics look different? Would train get substantially cheaper? I lack both the insight and the data t…
Train infrastructure is pretty expensive. Planes need much less infrastructure.
Agree, but many railways are already there (needs maintenance of course). Not sure how decision makers count on this though.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#206Sleeper trains are doing fine in Central and Eastern Europe, despite having to contend with some long running times. Sweden is trying to revive them through Denmark, which hasn't hosted night trains since 2014 [1]. There's two viable, existing routes for trains between the Central Sweden and Northern Germany. One's through the Fehmarn Belt rail ferry, and another is the long way through Jutland. Both ways take a long…
If I remember correctly, a night train from Stockholm to south Europe implies a change of train in the middle of the night in either Malmö or Copenhagen - which sort of ruins the the concept of sleeper trains.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#207This 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…
Also very cheap if you claim the refound! Last summer I traveled a lot with these trains and only payed for half of them. :)
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#208The hing about trains in general though is the pricing around it. In Sweden a flight from the northern parts to the southern is about $100 and takes an hour. The train cost $100-200 and takes about 16h depending on where you depart from. I believe a requirement for people choosing to take the train is that they add some facilities (you feel pretty nasty after 16h on a train) and reduce the price. Raising the price on…
Anecdotal argument: I rarely sleep as good as I do on trains, so 16h is not a problem - the price and frequent late arrival is.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#209Excited 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…
I spent a year in Germany circa 1999 and then overnight trains were all the rage. For instance, Dresden to Amsterdam was an easy and inexpensive trip. Going east you could get to Budapest, going south to Innsbruck, etc. At that point an American in Europe would ride the train as much as he could, but the Europeans I knew thought taking a plane was cooler and it was a good experience because the plane had competition…
Train tickets are simply too expensive compared to flights.
Sometimes over 3-4 times.
Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes it unfair? Just curious. Is it subsidized in some fashion that trains are not?
In most EU states, there are VAT exemptions for the fuel used in domestic and intra-EU flights, while no similar exemptions exist for the fuel used in trains (and cars). Likewise, there exist VAT exemptions for plane tickets. At least in Portugal, querosene is also exempt from the ISP (tax on the petroleum products). VAT and ISP make up more than half of the retail price of diesel and is almost 2/3 of the price of ga…
Actually, international train tickets are also VAT-exempt in many countries.