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The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

cnn.com

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Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#61

Post by citrin_ru »

baz00 wrote: post #6

It's not. It's expensive, noisy, takes a long time (6h door to door) and is uncomfortable as fuck. I recently had to go to Edinburgh. It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours. Or £80 to get a plane that takes 2h door to door (1h in the air). If I want to go anywhere in Europe it's quicker, easier and almost always cheaper to fly. Even on a bad Lufthansa flight where everything goes wrong :)…

Recently I took a Caledonian Sleeper (Edinburgh->London) and everything was great except the cost. But UK trans are expensive in general for some reason, for commuter trains £/km even higher than for this overnight train.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#62

Post by jpalawaga »

mp05 wrote: post #47

I've heard stories of people taking the Empire Builder from Whitefish, MT to Seattle which leaves at about 10:30pm and gets you to King Street at 11:30am. Pretty niche I realize, but it's an observed phenomenon and I would be interested in trying it when I move back to the Flathead someday.

this is one of the few trains in north america i've actually ridden. the journey was fine. I think it would be better during the day so you can see the dramatic scenery of glacier and the rockies. but as a broke college student, time is of the essence, and so the nighttrain to seattle was perfect.

And you still get a bit of a scenery in the morning as well. The conductor on our train called out various points of interest.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#63

Post by linuxftw »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #50
maweki wrote: post #15

Not a night train, but this summer we went on vacation to Scotland from Germany and took the Amsterdam-Newcastle overnight ferry instead of flying. One major issue is one of headspace, as you sacrifice a day of holiday for a day of travel. You have to feel on holiday right as you enter the train. If you're getting antsy for every hour not spend at your destination, you will never be happy with anything but flying. Bu…

I feel very similar to you. My family took an overnight Amtrak from Albany to Chicago. We got a full sleeper room which ranges from $500-$1000 per person per room, which is certainly more expensive than a flight, and I recognize it's a privilege that we can afford it. That being said, it was far more enjoyable than flying. It left Albany at 7pm and the kids (3 and 5) were beyond thrilled to be on a train. Laying back…

$1k/ticket you can easily fly 1st class for that amount, usually less. I can't imagine making this type of trade off.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#64

Post by davexunit »

More trains, please! Everything about flying sucks and that's even before taking climate into account. I'm not holding my breath but I do hope to see better US train infrastructure in my lifetime. I've never had a better time traveling than when I've taken the Northeast Regional/Acela. Would love to ride the trains in a country that actually has good infrastructure for them.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#65

Post by rkachowski »

DrBazza wrote: post #36
traceroute66 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently had to go to Edinburgh. It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours. UK rail is truly depressing. In Japan you can take a Shinkanzen from Tokyo to Hokkaido, 4.5 hours, 800km (appx 500 miiles) for 20,000 Yen (£108) first class or 11,000 Yen (£60) standard class. And that is walk-up fare for "right now", you can use an app to get advanced fares. And I can assure you those 4.5 hours w…

Unfortunately we have the oldest railway in the world in continuous use, running mostly at capacity, with draconian planning laws, ridiculous land costs, population density, and a stupid general public. You'd be hard pressed to find any capital project that's been built in the UK that anyone regrets, and that includes the Millenium Dome. I'm old enough to remember opposition to HS1 ("No to route 2!"), and opposition…

Writing from BER airport, just took a 1.5 hour train from Berlin to get a 2.5 hour airplane to Edinburgh.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#66

Post by simojo »

The idea of night trains is incredible, but in practice they are brittle to rely on (at least in Europe).

I remember sitting at the Padova rail station until 3AM waiting for the beloved night train to Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna) to arrive; the train was four hours late. Let's not neglect to acknowledge the downsides.

Even after that bad experience, I still support them as a great alternative to air travel, but I hope for more reliability in the future.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#67

Post by euroderf »

Before the advent of teh interwebz, railing in Europe had a train-based accommodations hack.

When trying to visit a number of cities in not many more days, you could take an overnight into City X, arriving in the morning, and leave that same night on another overnight to your next city. This had the distinct advantage that you didn't have to waste most of a morning trying to find a room - not in a hostel, not anywhere. You had one day - but the full day - to explore.

The disadvantage was that you might have to deal with currency exchange (pre-Euro!) when making those same-evening sleeper reservations. In particular, Copenhagen was a PITA. Cash only, Danish crowns only, ripoff currency exchange only.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#68

Post by mapt »

gorgoiler wrote: post #18

You can also hear OBB’s Kurt Bauer on this episode of The Bottom Line from a few weeks ago: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ryt1 Capacity is ultimately much harder to expand on 1D trains compared to 3D airspace. Economic pressure also means the removal of what is, for many people, the most romantic part of the whole experience: the dining car. The economics seem to be this is basically always going to be about f…

The capacity of a fully loaded conventional HSR line is massive.

The Beijing-Shanghai HSR route (a northbound and a southbound track on a right of way 20 meters wide) and every UK airport combined, carried about the same number of passengers every year before COVID, just above 200 million. We can make conscious choices about whether we want comfortable accommodations or cattle cars, and cattle cars are what we ask for when we say "Absolute minimum capex on rolling stock" and "We're going to size passenger station platforms for 6 cars instead of for 20 cars".

If you are running 10 million passengers per year, but still running rolling stock that will fully utilize the capacity of the rairoad, you can afford to use space 20x less efficiently than the Beijing-Shanghai HSR line does.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#69

Post by julian_t »

iagooar wrote: post #39

What I really miss sometimes is a different approach: offer trains that can take me really far (e.g Warsaw - Paris, Berlin - Madrid), but allow me to take my car with me on the train. This way, I can enjoy the comfort of the sleeping wagon, give the kids space to move around, and I do not need to rent a car at the destination, which is very expensive and is not-my-car.

We used to do this, going on holiday to Scotland from London. Drive your car onto the train at Olympia, go to sleep on the train, wake up to breakfast and then get into your car in Stirling and drive off.

It wasn't cheap but I really miss it.

Re: The night train revolution has been hailed as an alternative to airplanes

#70

Post by sidewndr46 »

jmclnx wrote: post #5

>At least that’s the theory – and why the new wave of night trains are being touted as one way to replace short or even medium-haul flights across Europe and the US. I am sure in the US it is and will always be talk. Train service in the US is terrible compared to what is in the EU. It will never happen. Maybe this will work in Boston where the subways run a 3 MPH (~5kph) due to ignored repairs over the past 30/40 ye…

3 mph, isn't that like a brisk walking speed for most adults?
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