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The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

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Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#21

Post by m_mueller »

distances wrote: post #14
Freak_NL wrote: post #4

Österreichische Bundesbahnen (ÖBB) took over all remaining sleepers run by Deutsche Bahn (DB) some years ago. One downside of this was the dropping of the Amsterdam–Munich sleeper — ÖBB's nexus lies in Vienna. The Netherlands currently has no sleeper trains, which is rather unfortunate, because the sleeper train appears to gaining in popularity after a period of decline. Increasingly, people want to avoid flying if r…

Then problem of price still remains before wide popularity for sleepers or even just long daytrips. I'd love to use trains more often, but I'm not willing to pay through the nose. A trip in Central Europe I recently booked would've been over twice the price with a train, with maybe a couple of hours longer travel time when accounting for airport trips and waiting. Second class, just a daytime journey without sleeping…

I think there's probably some crossover point that makes it more expensive to house people for longer amounts of time with more space required on a train, compared to burn a bunch of hydrocarbons to boost them to 800kph and get rid of them as soon as possible. Not sure whether physics make cheaper pricing possible as long as externalities aren't fully factored into the price of fossil fuels (i.e. flying gets more expensive and trains stay the same).

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#22

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

TKAB wrote: post #6

As a regular train traveller here in Austria and I'm very curious how this turns out. Currently the Intercity/RailJet trains are more like a downgrade to what was available before. They look nicer, but provide quite uncomfortable seating and offer no possibility to change the seating inclination; due to the air condition it's very noisy; there's no place to put your feet in an elevated position; there's no compartmen…

> Currently the Intercity/RailJet trains are more like a downgrade to what was available before.

I strongly disagree with this. I really like the railjet. My issue is that it's still on an elevated platform which is super annoying if you have strollers. But in terms of comfort I think it's their best product yet. I definitely prefer that over the compartments that were there before.

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#23

Post by dougmwne »

This design is wonderful and it reminds me a of 21st century version of this: https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/venice-simplon-orient-...

Train travel can be absolutely luxurious in a way that a plane or self-driving car could never be. You don't even need to book a $3,000 historical reenactment to get a taste. On a whim, I once booked a 1st class AVE train in Spain for an extra $10 and ended up with bottomless wine/champagne and a several course dinner for 3 hours. Would I ride a chicken bus for 7 hours through Honduras? Sure, but there are points for style too.

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#24

Post by atoav »

jschwartzi wrote: post #12

In the US I would take a sleeper train from Seattle to Chicago instead of a plane provided the sleeper train runs 180 mph on average. That would put me in Chicago in about 10-12 hours, meaning I could get to Union Station in Seattle, get on the train, sleep a full night, wake up, eat breakfast, and disembark in Chicago. The red-eye to Chicago, which is a comparable trip, really sucks because you only get about 3 hour…

I grew up in Central Europe and used the hell out of night trains. It is really one of the best ways to get around, if available.

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#25

Post by princekolt »

jschwartzi wrote: post #12

In the US I would take a sleeper train from Seattle to Chicago instead of a plane provided the sleeper train runs 180 mph on average. That would put me in Chicago in about 10-12 hours, meaning I could get to Union Station in Seattle, get on the train, sleep a full night, wake up, eat breakfast, and disembark in Chicago. The red-eye to Chicago, which is a comparable trip, really sucks because you only get about 3 hour…

In Europe it is standard to have silent cabins, especially on first class.

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#26

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

arien wrote: post #20

Slightly off-topic, but couldn't help but notice on the Projects list a really cool version of the London tube. Unfortunately it seems it's from 2014 (there's even some quote from Boris as Mayor), so probably scrapped by now? Makes me wonder if these Austrian train designs are already set in stone or just a proposal that might or might not happen.

> Makes me wonder if these Austrian train designs are already set in stone or just a proposal that might or might not happen.

I would assume they are pretty much set in stone. I was in a mock model they had standing around at Vienna central station. They got the budget and are currently ordering the trains.

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#27

Post by CaptainZapp »

jschwartzi wrote: post #12

In the US I would take a sleeper train from Seattle to Chicago instead of a plane provided the sleeper train runs 180 mph on average. That would put me in Chicago in about 10-12 hours, meaning I could get to Union Station in Seattle, get on the train, sleep a full night, wake up, eat breakfast, and disembark in Chicago. The red-eye to Chicago, which is a comparable trip, really sucks because you only get about 3 hour…

In the US I would take a sleeper train from Seattle to Chicago instead of a plane provided the sleeper train runs 180 mph on average.

Not really doable for a lot of Austria and generally the Alpine regions.

There are not many high speed tracks in Austria and Switzerland, the reason being that the countries are relatively small and that building high speed tracks through the alps is insanely expensive.

Switzerland built two base tunnels through the alps: The Lötschberg[1] - and Gotthard[2] base tunnels, which are geared to a top speed of 250 km/h (ca. 155 miles/h) and a normal travel speed of 200 km/h (125).

That's why it takes roughly 10 hours to get from Zurich to Vienna, but only 4 to get from Zurich to Paris (after Mulhouse the whole track is high speed capable and trains run with up to 320 kmh (200 m) on that track.

Edited to add: Of course night trains make a lot of sense on that route.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6tschberg_Base_Tunnel

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#28

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

amit9gupta wrote: post #16

The images are computer generated graphics, not real photographs taken with a camera.

Correct. This train is yet to come but there are pictures of model in 1:1 scale.

https://schienenradler.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/1130081-0...

https://schienenradler.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/1130082-0...

https://schienenradler.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/1130097-0...

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#29

Post by arethuza »

ganonm wrote: post #2

Sleeper trains make so much sense for travel over land. They are often competitively priced with air travel, they pollute a lot less and the time saved can be huge when you consider that you spend time travelling when you would otherwise be asleep (although this is sometimes true for air travel, many/most people find it difficult to get quality sleep in economy class). The London - Edinburgh sleeper train (Caledonian…

Worth pointing out that the sleepers don't terminate at Edinburgh - they continue further north to Fort William and Inverness - the former being the "Deerstalker":

https://www.seat61.com/deerstalker.htm

I have chatted (T-bars being quite sociable) to people who had come up for skiing on Cairngorm on the sleeper as well.

Edit: Replaced "stop" with "terminate".

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#30

Post by jandrese »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #27
jschwartzi wrote: post #12

In the US I would take a sleeper train from Seattle to Chicago instead of a plane provided the sleeper train runs 180 mph on average. That would put me in Chicago in about 10-12 hours, meaning I could get to Union Station in Seattle, get on the train, sleep a full night, wake up, eat breakfast, and disembark in Chicago. The red-eye to Chicago, which is a comparable trip, really sucks because you only get about 3 hour…

In the US I would take a sleeper train from Seattle to Chicago instead of a plane provided the sleeper train runs 180 mph on average. Not really doable for a lot of Austria and generally the Alpine regions. There are not many high speed tracks in Austria and Switzerland, the reason being that the countries are relatively small and that building high speed tracks through the alps is insanely expensive. Switzerland bui…

It's not every day you see someone bemoaning the sorry state of their European rail lines compared to the US.
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