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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

#81

Post by ovi256 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #42
ido wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"airfare-level prices"? In Germany and Austria my experience was that flying was generally cheaper than the train, and sleeper trains more expensive still. I'm on a (day) train between Berlin and Vienna this very minute and it costed me €99 (one way!) where as a flight would have been about €50. You can get cheaper tickets if booking well in advance (months) but the same applies to budget airlines.

The joke is that airfare is way too cheap compared to the damage it causes - be it noise, exhaust gases or land usage for airport infrastructure. In addition jet fuel in Europe is tax-free which enables these ultra low prices.

>In addition jet fuel in Europe is tax-free which enables these ultra low prices.

This kind of Orwellian double speak is amazing. Lack of tax leaves too low prices for the consumer!

If you really feel that this tax is important, you can always tax yourself! Anyone you can persuade can join you, voluntarily. Just estimate the tax you owe (through this as of now not yet enacted tax) and send a cheque to the national treasury, with "Gift" as memo. They will take it!

I hope this voluntary taxation idea catches on.

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

#82

Post by adrianhon »

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…

Beware: The Caledonian Sleeper is experiencing severe teething problems, including delayed boarding times (e.g. past midnight) and last-minute service cancellations. The trains were clearly rolled out with insufficient testing.

If you're travelling on it in the next few months, hope for the best – but plan for the worst.

Epic discussion thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/caledonian-sleeper.1763...

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

#83

Post by deanclatworthy »

Grumbledour wrote: post #15

Those trains look nice, but at the same time pretty cramped and uncomfortable to me. I wonder if its just the photos, but the seats look to straight with not much legroom and the sleeper compartments seem really tiny.

And the photos attached are primarily first-class seats too. I found it odd having two seats next to each other without an armrest or gap in-between. I would not want a stranger next to me without that space/divider.

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

#84

Post by closeparen »

ixtli wrote: post #7

What I wouldn't give for even the slightest interested in the development of public transit infrastructure in the US :(

Amtrak runs extensive sleeper service around the US. I’ve taken San Francisco to Chicago - it’s quite nice, if you’re willing to burn some vacation days.

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

#85

Post by bigmanwalter »

bdamm wrote: post #77
nikodunk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a misleading statement. From your linked article: "Trains in countries like Japan are predominantly electric and transport a much larger number of people per cabin than trains in the US. While it’s difficult to broadly compare trains between regions it’s safe to say that trains in European and Asian countries are far more fuel efficient than those in the US, making them a leading option for travel. In most cas…

Physics gets removed from the conversation when we start to view trains as endlessly more efficient than airplanes. They aren’t, and in the US part of that equation is the requirement to make passenger trains able to survive a full collision with a freight train, adding a great deal of weight and removing much of the physical advantage of low rolling resistance. Other examples are the overly prescriptive regulations…

Trains are amazing when they are built for people to take. Unfortunately, trains in the US were built for industrial transport.

Trains for people have a few cars and go really fast. Trains for cargo have hundreds of cars and go really slow.

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

#86

Post by dexen »

nikodunk wrote: post #61
dexen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air travel is comparable in fuel usage to trains [1]. Which surprised me a bit, as I expected much better mileage for the air travel, thanks to the exceptionally low drag of the rarified air up there as compared to wheels on rails. However the railway ought to be more expensive overall due to the other costs: requires build-out and maintenance of extensive ground based network, including some prime real estate; requi…

That's a misleading statement. From your linked article: "Trains in countries like Japan are predominantly electric and transport a much larger number of people per cabin than trains in the US. While it’s difficult to broadly compare trains between regions it’s safe to say that trains in European and Asian countries are far more fuel efficient than those in the US, making them a leading option for travel. In most cas…

Physics is on the airplane's side [0]. The drag of rolling over rails, and of going through the dense air at ground level pressure is naturally much worse than that of flying up high for any non-trivial speeds.

Right now the trains may be ahead in some regions thanks to their slow speeds, and thanks to the electrification - with the assumption electricity is generated from sources other than fossil fuel.

But if you tried to set up railway at travel time comparable to airways, you'd quickly find yourself doing away with rolling in favor of maglev or maybe air cushion, and also trying to lower the air drag as much as possible. Both are non-trivial engineering challenges - cue the Hyperloop languishing in protracted development. Both have been solved by air travel decades ago.

Meanwhile electrification of the air travel is already underway. Quiet SSTs[1] are up next. And yes, SSTs are rather fuel efficient, thanks to the even higher operating altitude, and also the natural efficiency of the jets at high speeds.

I will miss the railways. It used to be a great adventure back when I was a kid.

[0] well if you disregard travel time, then the sailing ships would be the kings

[1] relevant: the X-59, and the Boom

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

#87

Post by deanclatworthy »

Having travelled a couple of times on overnight trains from Austria to other European cities, these sleeping pods look marginally a larger improvement.

- Tempeature: Having slept in a cabin where the aircon blasts from the bottom into those sleeping there, they inevitably have to turn it off to sleep, leaving those on the top bunks at temperatures of over 40C in the summer.

- Noise/Privacy: In the 4-bunk cabins, I don't want to hear anyone either. Why wouldn't they include the soundproofing curtains in those too.

- Space: There's a tiny gap between the beds currently. Look closely and this is also the case. It's impossible having more than 1 person do anything inbetween the beds and stepping out of your own pretty much puts you about 1foot away from the other person's face/legs.

Maybe someone can tell me why they can't just make lightweight carriages, and put a lot of them on the back of a train car (more than now). By having more carriages you can make the accommodation more spacious and comfortable. This is what stops me considering it as a viable option for European travel currently. Even if they couldn't fit in the station, what's to stop them letting half the carriages off first, followed by the second half?

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

#88

Post by CaptainZapp »

jandrese wrote: post #30
CaptainZapp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not bemoaning at all, it's a matter of size, geography and topology why HSR does not make much sense in a country like Switzerland.

The country is roughly 300km long and ~200km high, add to that a lot of cities, which need to be serviced with relatively small distances.

HSR only makes sense, when a train can travel big distances between nodes.

Instead a different approach was chosen:

The trains are dispatched by clock face scheduling[1], which makes much more sense. Trains leave nodes by the (usually) half hour and deliver passengers to connecting nodes within the time required to connect to transfer. This guarantees scheduled connections, even when there's no direct train.

For example: If you want to get from Zurich to Lugano there are trains leaving at 5:10pm, 6:10pm, 7:10pm, etc.

The first and the last are direct trains, with the 6:10 you need to get out at Arth Goldau to connect with another train, which leaves 4 minutes later.

For a small country like Switzerland this concept makes far more sense than HSR.

It's probably one of the most efficient train networks with the exception of Japan. So bemoaning generally happens on a very high level, if at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling

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

#89

Post by NickM »

2sk21 wrote: post #3

Given how bad domestic plane travel has become in the US, I suspect that many business trips may not be much slower even at Amtrak speeds.

I've certainly found that to be the case when traveling to NYC. From where I live, a plane ride takes about an hour, and Amtrak takes about 6.5 hours...except that really, the total trip time ends up being about five hours for the plane and seven hours for the train. Flying involves driving twenty minutes to the airport, arriving early due to uncertain security wait times, going through security, waiting to board, boarding, taxiing, flying, taxiing, disembarking from the plane, and then even after all that you have to walk a long way through the airport, take the AirTrain to a different station, then get on yet another train to make it into Manhattan.

The train, by contrast, involves leaving from downtown near where I live, sitting on the train, and arriving in Manhattan a few blocks from my office. It's so much simpler and more relaxing, and much easier to actually get work done during the trip, so oftentimes it's worth the extra couple of hours the trip takes. If we could invest in high-speed rail and make the whole train trip even, say, 30% faster, there would be no contest.

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

#90

Post by joezydeco »

dougmwne wrote: post #23

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 w…

The information displays built into the viewing window frames are very nice, but you already know those will be the first things to get thrown out for cost and/or complexity.
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