Why sleeper trains are being revived across Europe:
[...] Living in the Swedish capital Stockholm, the 33-year-old regularly travels by rail, not only to visit her family in Luxembourg, but also to her holiday destinations.
She favours train travel over flying mainly for environmental reasons. Yet she adds that trains are simply more enjoyable, especially sleeper services.
[...] The carbon footprint is just a fraction of a flight. Flying from Stockholm to Hamburg results in around 250kg of carbon dioxide emissions per passenger, according to calculation website EcoPassenger. By contrast, the C02 released by travelling via electric-powered train is just 26kg.
The SJ night train has nine coaches, and capacity to carry 400 passengers. Dan Olofsson, head of tendered services at SJ, says the new service was proposed by the Swedish government, "as they wanted to move more people towards climate-friendly travelling, and one of the solutions was the night train between Sweden and Germany".
The service is powered by renewable energy, and Mr Olofsson says it is typically being used by Swedes to connect them to other rail services from Hamburg.
"Hamburg isn't the main destination for most travellers, but is an important hub for people to reach more destinations in Germany and France and so on," he says.
[...] However, depending on the location, and especially if starting from the UK, travelling by train can often be more expensive than flying. Trains fares in the UK can in fact be 50% more costly than flights, according to a 2021 study by consumer choice magazine Which?.
"Like flying, you do need to book ahead to find a cheaper price," says Mark Smith, founder of train guide website Seat61. "But you need to remember airlines pay no duty on fuel.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday March 21, @12:46PM (10 children)
Though not for environmental reasons, simply for practical ones. Let's say you have an appointment with a client at 9am in a town about 1000 miles away. Let's take a look at your options.
You could take an early flight, get up at around 4 so you can be on time for your 6am flight, get stuffed into a cabin with about 100 other sardines, get out at about 8am, hurry to get a cab so you arrive at your customer. You're not really well rested, you're not exactly presentable after an hour in a cramped position and you certainly didn't have any time to change your clothing.
Or you could take a night train. You arrive at some point before 8pm at the station, take your time to get into your cabin, spend the rest of the evening surfing the web or working (wifi included in the ticket price), then take a good night's rest, wake up at about 6am (if you're so inclined to have breakfast, else just keep sleeping til about 7), maybe read the morning paper if you wish, get cleaned and dressed and you'll be ready, with plenty of time to spare, for the appoinment.
And if you time it just right when moving between clients, you can actually save a lot of money because that train ticket doubles as a hotel room.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday March 21, @04:59PM (1 child)
It sounds interesting. After a while though, the scenery may become repetitive and then boring. Then how do you spend the long hours on the ride. It might become necessary to do unthinkable things like, oh, reading a book or something.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday March 21, @09:19PM
I have to admit, I rarely look out the window. I do the same I do at home: Stare at a laptop screen. Only that there, I can also travel in style at the same time.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday March 21, @05:55PM (3 children)
I prefer* flying in the night before, trying to arrive just after dinner time. That usually leaves enough wiggle room to catch a later flight if mine gets delayed. It's an extra night in a hotel, but it's safer for me.
* To clarify, I haven't traveled for work since the start of the pandemic. Business travel seems to not be a thing anymore. I'm not complaining, but I do miss it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21, @06:33PM (2 children)
> Business travel seems to not be a thing anymore. I'm not complaining, but I do miss it.
Business flying used to be fun for me and I did enough to get frequent 1st class upgrades, I miss those days. Then 9/11 happened and the security theater got out of hand, so I am complaining. To repeat a common phrase from ~20 years ago, those terrorists did win--they managed to ruin a nice part of life in the USA.
After that business travel tapered off and now I go out of my way to not travel, even at the customer's expense, it's just too annoying.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday March 21, @09:22PM (1 child)
The complete apeshit security theater is another reason why I prefer trains. No security theater. You get on board, you get treated like a welcome guest rather than a wannabe terrorist, you take your time to put your luggage away (or don't, nobody complains if it's still on the floor when the train starts moving, hey, it's your cabin, do whatever you like), occasionally you get asked politely if there's something you need and whether and when you want to have a wake up...
It's the difference between being treated like scum and being treated like a treasured guest.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 22, @03:50AM
What's cheaper? Build a bunch of expensive and poorly utilized train routes or merely stop doing the theater? I guess I gave away what I think of that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 21, @07:58PM (3 children)
Well, I used to work for an office 1000 miles away. Interview day, I got up for the early plane (7am takeoff, leaving my home around 5:20 to make the airport on time), then took the late plane back home, arriving home at about 1am due to a flight delay, should have been 11:30pm. Advantages: zero luggage, no hotel to contend with, etc.
Over the ensuing year I commuted there roughly once every 6 weeks. For those trips, I would take a reasonable afternoon flight out from home, get a rental car, go to a nice hotel, have dinner out - maybe do a little shopping (hotels tended to be in the Galleria neighborhood of Houston), then rest for the evening, breakfast in the hotel, and arrive at the office just before 9. Meet for the morning, maybe go out to lunch with the crew, wrap up any details after lunch and then leave for the airport around 3:30 or 4pm and have a decent flight back (when not delayed) getting me home around 8pm - much less stress and an overall more productive day there, in exchange for the whole car rental hotel checkin game.
As a starving student touring Europe on a month-pass, I made $10 "sleeper reservations" a couple of times. The ride from Paris to Rome went really well for me, 2 people in a 6 person sleeper compartment. Other times: not so great - it's hard to sleep when five other people are in the same tiny room on a moving train... Sleeping in "regular seats" without reservations went about the same, to be honest. Some night trips were really peaceful and restful, others were basically impossible to sleep at all - Rome to Monaco being one of those, Monaco to Geneva the next night I slept like a log across 3 seats (which was not an unusual thing to do on some routes, at some times) there was a football game letting out as I was dozing off, several people opened the compartment door: saw my (clean in socks) feet up as I lay on the seats and shrieked "Pieds, Pieds!" and slammed the compartment door back shut, but after a bit I drifted off and awoke the next morning to three morning commuters sitting quietly (and a little awkwardly) across from me. All in all, I recommend getting a room, even a cheap youth hostel room, as compared to trying to sleep on a train, unless it's a predictably restful route, or you can afford one of those big first class suites like in the end of "From Russia With Love" and all the other movies. IDK European rates for those but I believe most Amtrak sleeper suites run well north of $1000 per night.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22, @12:41AM
Every time I try that I can never get any rest after fighting off assassins.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday March 22, @02:22PM (1 child)
Can confirm the Amtrak price. I want to take the Amtrak from Portland to LA and there is a route with sleeper cars, but the price is over a grand. Airfare is 2~300, so even if you splurge on a hotel and dinner you are still coming out ahead.
My questions is: who takes Amtrak sleepers? The fact that they exist implies there is a market, but I'm about as green as they come and even I'm priced out of the Amtrak option.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday March 22, @05:53PM
> My questions is: who takes Amtrak sleepers? The fact that they exist implies there is a market, but I'm about as green as they come and even I'm priced out of the Amtrak option.
People that are afraid of flying? Think it's to much of a hassle to play the security theater game? Or the once that doesn't pay for their tickets themselves so it doesn't matter to them however much it costs. Also it's very convenient to get on the train in the evening somewhere and then wake up and usually be in the middle of the city at your destination when you wake up instead of being out at an airport far outside the city?
I guess that is one of the things about airport travel that rarely gets included in the time -- the airports tend to be outside the cities while train stations are in the city. So from most cities if I come by train I can just walk to where ever I was going but if I come by air there is the luggage thing, then I have to get a cab or I have to get on some train to get to the city.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Tuesday March 21, @01:37PM (3 children)
The problem with travelling by (high-speed) train in Europe is that both infrastructure, planning and pricing are completely illogical.
While in theory I can book an international train trip through my national rail travel provider, in practice they do require me to go to a train station, and do the booking there, in-person. This is kinda funny, as it is getting ever more difficult, if not impossible, to get a train ticket at regional train stations without using an app.
The cheapest ticket to get to Milan from Paris (9 hours trip) is currently €39. If I want to book from Brussels [thetrainline.com] the cheapest one is currently €166.74. Brussels is an hour away from Paris.
Fat chance, by the way, of getting these cheapest tickets. The base rule seems to be that once a month the price drops. In practice, for a ticket that will cost you €100 when reserving 3 months in advance, you'll have to put down €300 when you try to reserve it a couple of weeks before departure.
Somehow the realisation hasn't dawned on the (public) train travel companies that a seat unfilled is a seat wasted, despite last minute pricing being standard with airlines since what, the 60s?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ingar on Tuesday March 21, @03:42PM
This has nothing to do with the public train companies, but everything with governments divesting railroads. Taking my own country as an example (hint: Brussels is our capital),
for decades they've been doing their absolute best to make sure railroads can't properly operate. The end goal of course is to privatize the whole lot. Then we get UK railroad situations and we all know how that went.
I used to take the train to work. Now I take the bicycle. It's faster.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 21, @08:02PM (1 child)
If you're under 26 years of age, I believe the 30 day inter-rail pass is still the way to go. There are many routes where the pass is cheaper than the round trip fare for a single trip, and by the time you get to two or three round trips in the month, it's a definite steal.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 22, @05:53PM
It used to be a 30-day pass, where you could just hop on any train you wanted during a month. Now you have different "30 day" passes, where you have to chose 4 (€258, adult, €194 old skool Interrail pass, you'll have to plunk down €528 (Interrail linky).
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday March 21, @03:05PM (8 children)
there was an option to bring my car. I drive a nicer car than I can rent for a decent price, and I hate flying somewhere, then renting a car I'll be using for a week. I'd much rather pay $100 extra on a train ticket, go 1000 miles, then enjoy my vacation.
Difficulty: I live in the US, where passenger train travel usually sucks.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday March 21, @04:11PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21, @06:49PM
> ... travel usually sucks.
But not always--
Just did an out and back trip to hear a lecture, about 120 mile drive each way in my small car. Mostly state roads, with some small local roads at the destination end. Ate my sandwich in the car parked on a small dirt road in the woods (no passing traffic at all). Had a great time, saw some friends that I hadn't seen since the shutdown.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday March 21, @09:57PM
It's rather nice in the US as well, depending on where you are. The problem is that it takes days for a train to manage what a plane can manage in a few hours. There's also many more regional airports with only a handful of gates that can potentially get you close you where you're going. Whereas much of the US doesn't have partner rail service within a hundred miles.
I'd take the train every time if it didn't take so long to get anywhere. And thanks to a lack of funding routine winterization might cause problems on some routes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22, @01:15AM
I think something that Europeans don't really appreciate is how big the US is. The distance between London and Paris is like the distance between San Antonio and Dallas. London to Berlin is only like New York to Chicago. And a long distance like London to Rome is like New York to Miami or San Diego to Seattle. LA to New York is like the UK to Baghdad or Sierra Leone and quite a bit greater than the distance from London to Moscow.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday March 21, @05:26PM (2 children)
$100 extra? It'd be nice to have, no doubt. I'm not sure it's realistic though.
An auto (to avoid confusion with multiple meanings of "car") has a weight and volume easily comparable with that needed for 6-8 people plus amenities (chairs, aisles, etc) - almost twice that if you assume a single-level flatbed compared to a double-decker passenger car.
Which means the fuel and rail space spent to move your auto is likely well over 10x what it takes to move you. The passenger car is probably more expensive to build and operate, but over its operational lifetime I'm not sure that's enough of the total ticket price to expect your car to be able to travel as cheaply as you.
Rail space especially shouldn't be under-estimated - the length of a passenger train is often limited by the length of the shortest siding on its route, where it may have to pull over and allow a much longer cargo train to pass. Whether that's because scheduling rail use by cargo trains is easier (I believe they're typically operated by track owners, possible corporate shell games aside), or because Amtrak can't stay on schedule to save its life, I don't know.
I think there would be far greater return on investment in encouraging busses and railways to embrace bicycles and other personal mobility devices, which can gracefully handle the last-mile problem, and are enjoying an electrified revival in popularity. Especially on commuter lines, but even for a holiday to bike-friendly destinations. Mass transit + "micro transit" could complement each other beautifully.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 21, @08:06PM (1 child)
"Out West" Amtrak is 2nd (or lower) priority on the tracks behind cargo, and the delays due to letting priority cargo trains past are unpredictable and usually quite long.
It's better in the NorthEast, but once you try to come down past D.C. it gets comical again. We rode the "Silver Meteor" from Charleston to D.C., and other than a 90 minute delay getting the last 10 miles to Union Station, it was an O.K. trip, but... there are large sections of that track that run through swampy land, you can feel the rails aren't straight due to settlement and the train (thankfully) only moves about 25-35 mph through there, for several hours...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday March 21, @10:03PM
Forcing the passenger rail companies into bankruptcy by funding the airports was one of the dumbest ideas ever. There are plenty of parts of the US where train service takes about as long as a plane does, especially with the ridiculous security theater at the airport.
Much of the regional flights could just add easily be replaced with trains and there wouldn't be any real trouble. It would take about the same amount of time and would be far more fuel efficient.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday March 21, @05:51PM
Amtrak's "Autotrain" provides this functionality in the US to a very limited number of east-coast destinations. It's significantly more expensive than you project, though. The cheap fares from end to end are $100 per person plus $500-600 for the vehicle.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday March 21, @07:43PM (7 children)
I have family in Scandinavia.
There used to be an excellent direct overnight train between Oslo and Copenhagen. Get on the train in Oslo at 11pm, arrive at the Copenhagen main station at 9am. This included the carriages being shunted onto a ferry to cross the Øresund strait between Sweden and Denmark.
Then they built a bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö. No ferry needed. The bridge could only be an improvement, right?
It turns out that the Swedish and Danish railway systems are different. Norway and Sweden use 15 kilovolt electrification at 16.7 Hz, Denmark uses 25 kV at 50Hz. (The chaos of European railway electrification [wikimedia.org])
So you can't simply run a locomotive straight through, unless it is capable of operating with both electrification systems. The obvious answer is to swap locomotives at some point. Or have a somewhat more expensive locomotive that can cope with both systems. Such things do exist.
The same is true for the signalling. The Danish and Swedish signalling systems are not the same. The bridge uses Danish electrification but Swedish signalling. It is possible for locomotives to be able to work with both. (The European Union is trying to get countries to move, exceedingly slowly, to a common signalling system [wikipedia.org]).
The problem is, the traditional idea of a passenger train being a locomotive pulling a variable number and type of carriages is no longer common practice. You have, instead, trains as a single 'multiple unit', with driving wheels scattered throughout the length of the train. So locomotives for passenger trains formed of carriages are rare. And correspondingly expensive.
So what was once a very convenient overnight train now does not exist. You can cobble together a journey on 'multiple unit' trains with multiple changes and long waits on empty stations incidentally passing through the Copenhagen airport station as you go.
Great.
And, the Norwegian and Swedish governments got together to upgrade...the motorway between the countries, so long-distance coaches provide a faster, more frequent, and cheaper service between the two capitals (Oslo and Copenhagen). You could not make it up.
Despite the fact that the Norwegian government is swimming in money, and paying huge amounts to build bridges to remove car-ferries on the western coastline to serve tiny communities, it can't get its act together to upgrade the railway - in fact, it has just cancelled and/or reduced the size of a project to upgrade the national railway between major cities. They are actively promoting road traffic. For a long way across the border between Oslo (Norway) and Gothenburg (Sweden) the railway is single track! Meanwhile the lorries thunder up and down the motorway, completely obliterating any green credentials.
Sigh.
(If you read Norwegian, or have access to a good translator, this article [energiogklima.no] gives somewhat depressing details about the possibility of reinstating a night-train. It's probably at least partly based on this Norwegian Railway Directorate report (also in Norwegian):Evaluation of an Oslo-Copenhagen Night Train (2021-11-01) (PDF) [kommunikasjon.ntb.no] )
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 21, @08:13PM
Reminds me a bit of the metro-rail to the airport situation in Miami. Stalled for decades due to successful lobbying by the taxi drivers who apparently enjoy standing in line for long periods of time, breathing jet fumes and car exhaust waiting for fares at the airport. Maybe it was the taxi company owners who were really behind the opposition and the drivers just played along. Anyway, I think they finally let it be built, some 30 years after the original plans called for it.
Then we can talk about Miami's first mayor who promised to run light rail transit from downtown to the beach, got elected, then asked Miami Beach how they wanted to proceed? Answer: Miami Beach doesn't want light rail from downtown, thank you, and will be blocking all efforts at constructing it any way possible. I believe that block is still successful.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday March 21, @08:21PM (5 children)
That is weird cause there are trains going from Sweden to Denmark every single day without a hitch, or the normal amount of issues for any train travel. It goes from the south eastern corner in Sweden all across southern Sweden, over the bridge, to the airport, to Copenhagen and then a few more stations before it turns around. That said it's not an overnight train but more of a commuter train for daily travel. It's a constant stream of trains as one leaves about every hour or so from early in the morning to late at night to do the trip that is about 5-6h long from one end to the other.
https://www.oresundstag.se/en [oresundstag.se]
Considering the amount of trains that pass thru Denmark from Sweden and Norway on their way down to the rest of the continent it seems to be doing fine.
That said I have never taken the sleeper-trains down to the continent. I have taken them internally in Sweden going from the south up all the way to the arctic north. It was nice. They have nice cars there where you have large windows on the side for the view and such. I opted for sleeper-chairs instead tho, big lazy-boy style chairs. You sort of half sit/recline and sleep in them.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday March 21, @10:28PM (4 children)
The trains that cross are the 'multiple unit' types, which are specially built to cope with the changes in electrification and signalling (and the loading gauge, but that's another story). I think there is but one cross-border sleeper service, from Stockholm to Hamburg, that started recently...no, actually there are two: Stockholm-Hamburg and Stockholm-Berlin [showmethejourney.com].
Reading the report, it looks like the projected load between Oslo and Copenhagen is not big enough to be profitable, so any service would require a government subsidy. The Swedes are certainly showing it can be done.
Meanwhile the Norwegians are building the world's longest and deepest undersea tunnel on the west coast, at an estimated cost of 2.55 billion Euro [wikipedia.org]. It's a road tunnel.
The international ferry connections from Norway have also been steadily cut back over the years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Tuesday March 21, @10:53PM (3 children)
That could very well be. I'm not that into how the trains, signals and electrification actually works. I just know there are a lot of daily trains going around southern Sweden and Denmark. I have been on them a few times even tho I usually don't go very often to Denmark.
The Norway Denmark connection is probably a bit problematic as it transitions across the west coast of Sweden. As far as I know it's not really a heavy traffic route, even tho they built a big tunnel to accommodate it but it turned into a bit of an eco nightmare during it's construction. But I guess they fixed it sort of eventually by sinking a few more billions into it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallands%C3%A5s_Tunnel [wikipedia.org]
There are a few more night trains to the continent but the one to Hamburg is currently the main one as far as a I know and then there are some seasonal once that connect further down to the alps and over to Berlin and beyond. From the images it doesn't exactly look very luxurious. Those train carts in the pictures are of a very old style. I guess they have been refurbished. Or it could be that they use those due to the various technical aspects you mention.
https://www.sj.se/en/travel-info/sj-euronight.html [www.sj.se]
https://jarnvagar.nu/antligen-sovvagn-till-hamburg/ [jarnvagar.nu]
That said I think the reason that night trains even became a thing again, if it's a thing considering the fairly minor amount, is due to the Green Party fighting for it as a green alternative to driving and taking airplanes down to the continent. Still comparing the two I would assume that night trains a still a very small thing, at least for passengers -- for cargo it's another thing tho.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday March 22, @08:06AM (2 children)
This Railway Forum thread goes into detail about the Stockholm-Hamburg night train
RailUK Forums:Sweden: SJ, DSB and RDC to operate Stockholm-Hamburg EuroNight from August 2022
It gets going into the technical details after the first page. The service is pretty heavily subsidised by the Swedish state.
Part of the issues surrounding the rolling stock is the Danish authorities being strict about fire regulation requirements for trains going over the Øresund bridge, which, as you point out, is heavily trafficked by rail as well as road (there's a lack of slots for new rail services, so Denmark and Sweden are looking at ways of improving matters - you can increase the speeds of trains, you can upgrade the signalling system to an in-cab dynamic one, so that trains run with the minimum stopping distance between them (which is longer as they get faster), you can lengthen the trains (until they don't fit the length of platforms), you can use double-decker rolling stock (if it fits within the loading gauge - and it doesn't give a huge increase in capacity), and finally, and very expensively, you can add parallel tracks.
As for the fire regulations, burning passengers alive in sleeping wagons is bad PR, but of probably more economic importance, they really don't want the rail connection infrastructure to be damaged, as demonstrated by what happened to the Kerch Strait bridge.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday March 22, @08:07AM
Sorry, hit submit instead of preview - link should be
RailUK Forums:Sweden: SJ, DSB and RDC to operate Stockholm-Hamburg EuroNight from August 2022 [railforums.co.uk]
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Wednesday March 22, @05:49PM
They are already doing the longer train thing, they almost double the length or number of cars on the train a few stations before they hit the bridge on the swedish side, I think it's in Kristianstad. I had previously assumed it was mostly cause it then became more of a commuter train between a few larger cities (Lund, Malmö and Köpenhamn) but I guess it could also be a bridge thing then.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday March 22, @02:42PM
Not all train tickets have the same environmental impact. A single train car is going to have roughly the same size and mass, and thus environmental impact, regardless of whether it's filled with seats or sleeper cabins.
The big difference is that you can fit a lot more seats in a car than cabins. Which means the per-cabin carbon impact is going to be equal to that of as many seats as could have fit in the same space.
Which for most single or double cabins is quite a few. Probably enough to bump that carbon footprint up into the same range as an economy seat on a plane.
Of course it doesn't *have* to be that way - I've seen Japanese economy sleeper cars that basically take the space of a set of seats and split it up vertically instead of horizontally, so you each get a short cubby you can lie in with a window at your head and feet facing the aisle, which is probably about the most efficient way to pack sleeping people in, and a lot more classy arrangement than most Western-style economy sleepers I've seen, which don't pack people in nearly as tightly.
Of course... that might not work as well with taller Europeans - there's a standard width of train car to work with after all, and you need room for people to get down the aisle. Still, as in a parking lot you could do the same thing diagonally instead of perpendicularly