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Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

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Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#141

Post by inamberclad »

Cryptoclysm wrote: post #135
rasz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay extra to sleep 10 hours on a train versus 2 hours by plane at half the cost?

Two hours by plane usually ends up as four and a half in total when you factor in time at the airport, plus you can turn up at your destination first thing in the morning feeling refreshed rather than tired from travelling. Then once you factor in the stress, noise, environmental impact and delays that come with flying, the night train becomes a really attractive option.

Not to mention time traveling to and from the airpot. The Hauptbahnhof is usually right downtown.

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#143

Post by lakomen »

xyzelement wrote: post #117

I did the OBB overnight train from Vienna to Venice a few years ago. I did the baller move and bought the 4 person sleeper room for myself, that came with a bathroom / shower. So from a privacy and point to point travel it was great. From the restfulness point of view, not so much. I am not a light sleeper but the train was noisy and jerky and the bed narrow with your body perpendicular to the direction of travel so…

"Climate anxiety" this reads as if you're being defensive about not flying. Weird choice of words.

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#144

Post by prospector1065 »

proto_lambda wrote: post #26
sandman1906 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken that route in a couchette car twice. I haven't had any issues and didn't find the quality of the service to be any different than other NightJets. I mean, it's not exactly luxury travel (in a couchette car), but I have nothing to complain about. I'm not a fan of the fact that ÖBB couchette compartments don't have locks on their doors. But the sleeper cabins do. Were the people who were robbed in a sleeper?

> I'm not a fan of the fact that ÖBB couchette compartments don't have locks on their doors The ones I know have both a turning lock that can be opened from the outside by the conductor or anyone else with a wrench (so more of a protection against someone mistakenly stumbling into your compartment in the middle of the night), as well as a deadbolt that can't be opened from the outside without ripping it apart.

I'm guessing this is what happened to me. I was robbed overnight in a sleeper car, which I assumed was safe because there were literally 3 locks on the door. This seems to be a pretty common occurrence

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#145

Post by kdmccormick »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #134
kdmccormick wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the original commentor, but I'd say two things: * Airport security got much more invasive post-9/11. For decades before that, people flew safely without these tight security measures. So, how much of the intensification is actually preventing another 9/11 versus just making us all feel like the government "did something"? I don't have an answer (genuinely I don't know :), but there are opinions all over the spect…

The issue with removing these kind of regulations is always the same: there's fairly little political goodwill to be gained by it, and massive amount of potential loss if it were to backfire. So it just doesn't happen. It's why it's so important to fight pointless security theaters like this before they are introduced, because it is night impossible to get rid of them later.

This confuses me, because it seems like almost everyone I talk to, across the political spectrum, thinks airport security is overkill.

Conservatives could argue for reducing it because it might save money, and liberals could argue for reducing it because it might reduce incidence if racial profiling.

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#146

Post by xyzelement »

lakomen wrote: post #143
xyzelement wrote: post #117

I did the OBB overnight train from Vienna to Venice a few years ago. I did the baller move and bought the 4 person sleeper room for myself, that came with a bathroom / shower. So from a privacy and point to point travel it was great. From the restfulness point of view, not so much. I am not a light sleeper but the train was noisy and jerky and the bed narrow with your body perpendicular to the direction of travel so…

"Climate anxiety" this reads as if you're being defensive about not flying. Weird choice of words.

The first sentence of the story talks about obb introducing these trains as a less poluting alternative.

As a customer, that is more or less valuable to you depending on how much you worry about the impact of planes on the environment. I am self identifying as someone for whom that isn't one of the decision criteria. If that was my number one concern then I wouldn't fly. But then I guess I wouldn't travel via any mode.

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#147

Post by lakomen »

Nextgrid wrote: post #126
lakomen wrote: post #120

I travelled from Germany to Croatia and had to book a 2 person sleeping cabin (100€ more expensive). When we entered, the sleeping wagon was a seating wagon. We (2) were stuffed with 2 other people into a cabin. No one told us what was going on. Well we travelled for 13h without getting any sleep. I created a support ticket on the same day from inside the train. Only generic response. 2 weeks later I created another…

> I'm guessing they receive a high volume of support requests and are understaffed. No, the reason is that there's no penalty for the behavior you just witnessed, so it's more profitable to stonewall victims in hopes they go away, and only refund when the authority actually forces them to, which only happens in a small percentage of cases where the fraud victim actually escalates their complaint to the relevant autho…

That's what I thought too, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. If that was organized, that would be quite the scandal.

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#148

Post by Findecanor »

MattGaiser wrote: post #95
kaffeeringe wrote: post #61

I love travelling by train. You are not treated like a criminal before you can board a train. You can sit and watch the landscape pass by. It's comfortable.

> You are not treated like a criminal before you can board a train. I have only taken one relatively long distance train in Europe, but they had security checks on par with PreCheck. Bags still went through a scanner and still went through a metal detector.

Was it EuroStar? (channel tunnel) That's the only train service in Europe I've heard of that does any luggage check at all.

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#149

Post by nologic01 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #108
nologic01 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

daily commute is a fairly different story. Night trains are about mid-range distances (say ~500 km) where you might also cross country borders.

Quite a bit further than 500 km; think 600 km (Amsterdam–Berlin) to 1000 km (Amsterdam–Wien). And that is leaving out the additional distance one might travel onwards or towards the night train's stations.

indeed longer distances are within the broader proposition of a night train network. leaving earlier in the evening and arriving before noon almost doubles the distance. though this comes at the expense of a shorter day.

now about that shift key... I think I read somewhere that capitalization is a relatively recent invention (like after 1000 AD). people used to do all caps and then they invented all lower case and then somebody had the idea of complicating things by mixing the two :-)

Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains

#150

Post by KptMarchewa »

kdmccormick wrote: post #115
ddejohn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shoes and belts thing is ridiculous, I agree. But there's a legitimate reason for the liquid ban to which I'm not sure there's much of a solution, is there?

Not the original commentor, but I'd say two things: * Airport security got much more invasive post-9/11. For decades before that, people flew safely without these tight security measures. So, how much of the intensification is actually preventing another 9/11 versus just making us all feel like the government "did something"? I don't have an answer (genuinely I don't know :), but there are opinions all over the spect…

In reality, there were a lot of those measures already before 9/11 - they stopped giant wave of plane hijackings in early 70s.

We can get back to not taking shoes off, but getting rid of xrays is not going to do well.

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