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Think about the costs of maintaining the infrastructure. As a rule of thumb one can expect rail to have a life of some 20 years before it needs replacing. On the pair of fast line tracks (Down and Up) between Kings Cross and Edinburgh there are roughly 1,500 miles of rail. This means that some 75 miles needs to be replaced every year — that's over 7,000 tonnes.
Sleepers, fittings and ballast also need cleaning or replacing and all 400 miles of route has to be maintained to millimetre accuracy.
As 'carbon footprint' has replaced 'pounds sterling' as the unit of comparison, how much carbon does all that take?
This is the trap into which railway enthusiasts always fall. Not everybody lives or works close to a central railway station, in fact most people don't.
In answer to your initial question: physics. The energy required to maintain lift is far greater than required for propulsion along rails, is that correct?
That rails need changing every 2 decades doesn’t offset this I imagine. Planes require more maintenance than trains as well, so I would be surprised if the underlying reality changes that trains have far less carbon footprint.
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The government already knows exactly which plane you've ever crossed the border on, which is nearly all of them for all of us. The carriers and data brokers could also do this.
Just a matter of time before flying is tracked then. It is unfair that some may fly 10 times a year and others just once. Credits to fly might be a thing in the future?
l should have wrote innovation for long distance train travel. Until recently air travel has held all the aces. Few other than some nation states invest into trains. It wasn’t like that initially when trains were a new thing. Private capital and excitement around trains was huge and created barons and industry titans. But for recently billionaires have been made from air travel and not rails.
The investment and innovation from companies like RR and airbus is not even remotely comparable to contemporary train research and innovation, I would guess._
Run an advertising campaign pointing out how many sleepers leave from Paris/Brussels, and promise an overnight hotel and first class ticket in the day if the Eurostar fails to meet the sleeper. In the fine print point out the St P departure times.
Hydrogen by itself won't go anywhere for most aeroplane operations ( specifically aeroplane rather than aircraft, some nut might make airships viable again ). What's happening right now - if rather slowly - is sustainable fuels for aircraft, which have the side-effect of much reducing contrails by being less ( or even not ) sooty which alone eliminates something like 50% of global warming effects from aircraft in one go. You can mix SAF in with fossil kerosene in varying amounts ( given it's synthetic kerosene anyway ) so it's a solution available now that can ramp up. As with all sustainable fuels, CO2 emissions is a non-issue given it was captured from the atmosphere at the start.
One of the sources for the process is hydrogen ( optionally ) - unfortunately producing green hydrogen by electrolysis uses an absolutely absurd amount of electricity.
Sleeper or not makes no difference to me, not living in reasonable range of London - if I want a train abroad it's just accepted it's going to be a lengthy journey. There's never going to be any demand for one from my area ( tbh anyone here going somewhere that distance is just going to fly no matter what ).
I think we should not try to run sleepers through the Tunnel as there are too many origin/destination pairs. Instead, promote the idea of taking an evening Eurostar to Paris or Brussels, which have many frequent sleepers. An earlier post on this thread pointed out that the late night departures from St Pancras to Paris are too late to connect to the sleepers. We know people are concerned about missing connections, and this must be especially bad when the second train is daily, or even less than that. I suggest that the consumer protection is bumped up a bit as an introductory offer, to win over more people. The total of all this is: run adverts telling people that they can take the Eurostar they may be familiar with, to Paris/Brussels, where they can connect to sleepers to these destinations ... and if they leave St Pancras by 6pm they will be on the sleeper or put up in a nice hotel.
In answer to your initial question: physics. The energy required to maintain lift is far greater than required for propulsion along rails, is that correct?
For equal masses, normally yes.
But we are not dealing with equal masses.
An A321neo has a weight of a few hundred kilos per passenger.
A sleeper train has a weight of several tonnes per passenger. The train also has to force it's way through much thicker air than the airliner that can climb to escape air resistance.
That rails need changing every 2 decades doesn’t offset this I imagine. Planes require more maintenance than trains as well, so I would be surprised if the underlying reality changes that trains have far less carbon footprint.
In answer to your initial question: physics. The energy required to maintain lift is far greater than required for propulsion along rails, is that correct?
That rails need changing every 2 decades doesn’t offset this I imagine. Planes require more maintenance than trains as well, so I would be surprised if the underlying reality changes that trains have far less carbon footprint.
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Just a matter of time before flying is tracked then. It is unfair that some may fly 10 times a year and others just once. Credits to fly might be a thing in the future?
l should have wrote innovation for long distance train travel. Until recently air travel has held all the aces. Few other than some nation states invest into trains. It wasn’t like that initially when trains were a new thing. Private capital and excitement around trains was huge and created barons and industry titans. But for recently billionaires have been made from air travel and not rails.
The investment and innovation from companies like RR and airbus is not even remotely comparable to contemporary train research and innovation, I would guess._
Lost me here.
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E-fuels are probably going to play a part. Possibly to allow combustion engine car enthusiasts to keep using screaming engines.
But for use in planes it is a long way off. Sleepers could run tomorrow if there was political backing.
I see that HSTed has already responded to your post, but I would like to add a slightly different aspect concerning total energy consumption. At two separate phases in my life I worked in southern Germany and as a result I tried many different ways and routings to travel between Reading and Ulm or Munich. The only one I didn’t try was the waterway…
It is simply not the case that air travel is only ever ‘bad’, and that rail is always ‘good’. I present three approximate calculations to show orders of magnitude in fuel consumption between trains, air and cars.
The aim is to be approximately right rather than precisely wrong.
A 12 coach sleeper train has a mass of some 500 tonnes or more - the electricity needed to heat it and move it at 100mph or so for 12 hours is considerable. Assume that the locomotive has a power output of 6.5MW (Siemens ‘Vectron’) this would ‘consume’ a total of 78MWh for the journey. However full power would not be needed all the time so probably about 40% of this total energy would be used allowing for coasting, regenerative braking, slow running and station stops making a total energy consumption of just over 30MWh. In addition some 50kW per coach is used practically continuously for heating, lighting, ventilation and other stuff for 7.2MWh making a journey total of 37MWh. To make the maths easy lets say 40MWh or 1.44x10^7 joules. In terms of energy this is the equivalent of just over 3 tonnes of kerosine.
There is also the matter of the track. Reading to Munich by rail is something over 1,000km, in other words for a twin track railway there are some 4,000km of rail. Rail has a life of some 20 to 30 years, possibly slightly less for high speed and intensively used lines. Being generous let’s assume a 30 year life which means that 1/30th has to be replaced every year and at 60kg/m this comes to 8,000 tonnes of steel. Every year. Steel production produces some 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide for every tonne of steel produced averaged over production from ores and re-cycled material. That makes something over 14,000 tonnes of CO2 per year in rail alone.
Figures for aircraft and airline fuel consumption are publicly available. Ryanair is a low-cost airline serving mainly European destinations; it seats 189 people in its Boeing 737-800s. Using typical values for sector lengths, fuel consumption and seat occupancy it can be seen that the fuel consumption is marginally greater than 3 litres/100 km/seat - based on typical sector consumption of something over 5 tonnes and a typical sector being something over an hour which covers London to Munich. This figure will obviously vary depending on sector lengths, routing, cruising altitude, load, winds and air temperature but will remain close to 3 litres/100 km/seat - it will be neither 1.5 litres/100 km/seat nor 6 litres/100 km/seat.
As a comparison my 16 year old 2.0l Golf diesel does about 50mpg on a long run which converts to 5.7l/100km, or 1.4 litres/100 km/seat. Not so different to the 737.
More significantly for this discussion the hypothetical electrically hauled sleeper to Munich uses the energy equivalent of 3 tonnes of kerosine which is not million miles from Ryanair’s average consumption of 5 tonnes for an equivalent sector. Obviously I have ignored the different efficiencies but the effects of any changes will be less than an order of magnitude.
One can argue that renewable energy can supply the electricity needed for surface transport. But it can’t - at least not in the foreseeable future. The UK has the bounty of wind energy in the North Sea, but on the continent this rather fades out away from the coast. Belgium is closing its two old nuclear plants (maybe it already has done so) and those in Germany have closed with no replacement. Although Germany is dotted with countless thousands of wind turbines they are not sufficient to supply the baseload with the result that the country is burning huge quantities of lignite quarried in the Köln, Eschweiler, Jüchen triangle and from areas around Cottbus. Look at a satellite view of these areas and tell me that that is ‘green’ even though it drives an electric railway - villages have vanished.
One other point about aircraft maintenance. Modern aircraft are amazingly reliable and require little maintenance. Many parts are classified as ‘LRU’ — Line Replaceable Units — and can be exchanged either while the aircraft is being turned round between flights or at worst, overnight. Even engine parts, inlet fan blades on one occasion when I was at Paris, were replaced following a bird strike while I looked out of the departure lounge windows. The parts are supplied fully balanced and the fitter took much less than an hour including running the engine up before passengers were allowed on board. On the other hand commercial aircraft go through a heavy general overhaul every six years or so where it is completely stripped out and parts repaired, replaced or updated as necessary. This takes three weeks or so and is repeated three times so when the aircraft comes up for its 4th overhaul it is 24 years old. At this age they are retired as improvements in aerodynamics, electronics, flight control systems and engines in new aircraft make it uneconomic to keep the old plane in service.
And running airlines has not created any billionaires, at least in the last 100 years - it is a very marginal business. The billionaires have come from the high tech sector, Gates, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Page, Brin and so on or property.
Do not misunderstand my argument. I am as fond of trains and train travel as anyone on this forum - I enjoy the sights, sounds, history and drama of them. But they are not, and cannot be, the answer to every type of journey and to proclaim their perceived environmental advantages - and the perceived environmental disadvantages of air travel - without any analysis to support the argument is not helpful.
For equal masses, normally yes.
But we are not dealing with equal masses.
An A321neo has a weight of a few hundred kilos per passenger.
A sleeper train has a weight of several tonnes per passenger. The train also has to force it's way through much thicker air than the airliner that can climb to escape air resistance.
The innovation to make the Neo efficient using composites materials could be developed for trains too? Why not? As efficiency becomes more and more vital to transportation we will see all manner of lighter materials and components. In EVs for example. This will filter down to trains too. But I guess lightness is less critical to trains than cars or planes because there is less friction (?) and power on tap.
It would be rather odd to run a sleeper service in the day time! So yes one long journey a day. Essentially two trains per route. However, that does mean there is no backup train. Returning from Cornwall last month GWR cancelled the sleeper on us 2 hours before, for this very reason. You lose your transport and bed for the night.
A lot of the problems and inefficiencies start to solve themselves with critical mass. If you have enough services and demand (which might be driven by future legislation on flying eg credits). However, there are clearly also bottlenecks and constraints to how many sleepers could depart each night too.
But there should be a commercial case for such services. Even 250 passengers paying £500 a ticket would allow profitable services. And I think people would happily pay it for what is essentially a Biz Class experience. Especially if some care is taken with the trains and facilities. Some kind of pan-European strategy and commitment would help, as well as regulating polluting flights.
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@coppercapped appreciate the post with some detailed calculations. Will check it out.
Suffice to say, while trains aren’t perfect, all told they should be less polluting. At the very least not dumping harmful fumes into the atmosphere. They should also have less carbon impact especially if there is greater investment and innovation.
Of course trains are not the only form of transportation we will need. But they can provide a vital travel network that is more or less ready now. To take away traffic from skies onto rail, services like sleeper trains can be a big pull. Effectively giving consumers an extra day, business class levels of comfort, and the romance of train travel.
But if the train boffins themselves are hesitant, it will take time to get people onside. The technology is there. We just need political buy in with investment and determination to see it happen. Personally I love the idea of hopping on a sleeper train at 9pm, having some food on the train, being rocked to sleep as you cut through Europe. Then to wake up in a city like Zurich or Marseille, with the whole day ahead. What could be better? There isn’t a better way to travel.
It would be madness not to invest in such services imo. Build it and they will come.
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I see that HSTed has already responded to your post, but I would like to add a slightly different aspect concerning total energy consumption. At two separate phases in my life I worked in southern Germany and as a result I tried many different ways and routings to travel between Reading and Ulm or Munich. The only one I didn’t try was the waterway…
It is simply not the case that air travel is only ever ‘bad’, and that rail is always ‘good’. I present three approximate calculations to show orders of magnitude in fuel consumption between trains, air and cars.
The aim is to be approximately right rather than precisely wrong.
A 12 coach sleeper train has a mass of some 500 tonnes or more - the electricity needed to heat it and move it at 100mph or so for 12 hours is considerable. Assume that the locomotive has a power output of 6.5MW (Siemens ‘Vectron’) this would ‘consume’ a total of 78MWh for the journey. However full power would not be needed all the time so probably about 40% of this total energy would be used allowing for coasting, regenerative braking, slow running and station stops making a total energy consumption of just over 30MWh. In addition some 50kW per coach is used practically continuously for heating, lighting, ventilation and other stuff for 7.2MWh making a journey total of 37MWh. To make the maths easy lets say 40MWh or 1.44x10^7 joules. In terms of energy this is the equivalent of just over 3 tonnes of kerosine.
There is also the matter of the track. Reading to Munich by rail is something over 1,000km, in other words for a twin track railway there are some 4,000km of rail. Rail has a life of some 20 to 30 years, possibly slightly less for high speed and intensively used lines. Being generous let’s assume a 30 year life which means that 1/30th has to be replaced every year and at 60kg/m this comes to 8,000 tonnes of steel. Every year. Steel production produces some 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide for every tonne of steel produced averaged over production from ores and re-cycled material. That makes something over 14,000 tonnes of CO2 per year in rail alone.
Figures for aircraft and airline fuel consumption are publicly available. Ryanair is a low-cost airline serving mainly European destinations; it seats 189 people in its Boeing 737-800s. Using typical values for sector lengths, fuel consumption and seat occupancy it can be seen that the fuel consumption is marginally greater than 3 litres/100 km/seat - based on typical sector consumption of something over 5 tonnes and a typical sector being something over an hour which covers London to Munich. This figure will obviously vary depending on sector lengths, routing, cruising altitude, load, winds and air temperature but will remain close to 3 litres/100 km/seat - it will be neither 1.5 litres/100 km/seat nor 6 litres/100 km/seat.
As a comparison my 16 year old 2.0l Golf diesel does about 50mpg on a long run which converts to 5.7l/100km, or 1.4 litres/100 km/seat. Not so different to the 737.
More significantly for this discussion the hypothetical electrically hauled sleeper to Munich uses the energy equivalent of 3 tonnes of kerosine which is not million miles from Ryanair’s average consumption of 5 tonnes for an equivalent sector. Obviously I have ignored the different efficiencies but the effects of any changes will be less than an order of magnitude.
One can argue that renewable energy can supply the electricity needed for surface transport. But it can’t - at least not in the foreseeable future. The UK has the bounty of wind energy in the North Sea, but on the continent this rather fades out away from the coast. Belgium is closing its two old nuclear plants (maybe it already has done so) and those in Germany have closed with no replacement. Although Germany is dotted with countless thousands of wind turbines they are not sufficient to supply the baseload with the result that the country is burning huge quantities of lignite quarried in the Köln, Eschweiler, Jüchen triangle and from areas around Cottbus. Look at a satellite view of these areas and tell me that that is ‘green’ even though it drives an electric railway - villages have vanished.
One other point about aircraft maintenance. Modern aircraft are amazingly reliable and require little maintenance. Many parts are classified as ‘LRU’ — Line Replaceable Units — and can be exchanged either while the aircraft is being turned round between flights or at worst, overnight. Even engine parts, inlet fan blades on one occasion when I was at Paris, were replaced following a bird strike while I looked out of the departure lounge windows. The parts are supplied fully balanced and the fitter took much less than an hour including running the engine up before passengers were allowed on board. On the other hand commercial aircraft go through a heavy general overhaul every six years or so where it is completely stripped out and parts repaired, replaced or updated as necessary. This takes three weeks or so and is repeated three times so when the aircraft comes up for its 4th overhaul it is 24 years old. At this age they are retired as improvements in aerodynamics, electronics, flight control systems and engines in new aircraft make it uneconomic to keep the old plane in service.
And running airlines has not created any billionaires, at least in the last 100 years - it is a very marginal business. The billionaires have come from the high tech sector, Gates, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Page, Brin and so on or property.
Do not misunderstand my argument. I am as fond of trains and train travel as anyone on this forum - I enjoy the sights, sounds, history and drama of them. But they are not, and cannot be, the answer to every type of journey and to proclaim their perceived environmental advantages - and the perceived environmental disadvantages of air travel - without any analysis to support the argument is not helpful.
Re. pollution, as well as not emitting gases into the upper atmosphere, some train power is green already. How wonderful and flexibile that we can seamlessly run a hybrid train with green energy when available but burn gass too if we have to. No one should be designing a services for today either, only for tomorrow. Where there will be less reliance on Russian gass.
Richard Branson might beg to differ that billionaires are not made from air travel. Virgin Atlantic launched him into the big leagues and no doubt the company is worth billions. As are companies like Ryan Air, Easy Jet etc. Entities that started on a shoe string and one or two old planes. Billionaires are not just in the tech space.
When railways were first invented railways barons were a thing too. But since mass air travel from the 60s or 70s investment into rail must have a ratio of 1:100 to air travel technology. Probably more. The amounts spent on armaments as well as commercial flight innovations are in another stratosphere.
Imagine a scenario - which won’t happen imminently - where the G12, EU etc sign up to a credits system for flying. And the more you fly the greater the expense. Currently aviation is subsidised by no taxation on fuel warping the cost of fares. Even just agreeing to tax aviation fuel would create huge mass interest/demand for long range train travel. I’m not naive enough to believe this is around the next corner. But maybe a few corners away. And to be ready, politicians need to invest in rail; and everyone needs to think a little differently about what the future should entail.
Some do, the Milan to Sicilly sleepers take like 24h to do the trip
One issue I see issue would be the absolute lack of economies of scale.
A sleeper could very well be extremely economical if you have more than a rack (12 coaches) per train, with a adequtely powerful loco, you could transport maybe 2x the amount of passengers on a single traction. Splitting at a common point for multiple destinations.
Once you start scaling the operations, you reduce cost, and by having multiple destinations you augment your services attractiveness.
Some do, the Milan to Sicilly sleepers take like 24h to do the trip
One issue I see issue would be the absolute lack of economies of scale.
A sleeper could very well be extremely economical if you have more than a rack (12 coaches) per train, with a adequtely powerful loco, you could transport maybe 2x the amount of passengers on a single traction. Splitting at a common point for multiple destinations.
Once you start scaling the operations, you reduce cost, and by having multiple destinations you augment your services attractiveness.
Er ... no... Nothing like 24 hours Milan to Sicily. Last time I left Milan on a sleeper for Sicily, the train left some time after 8pm (I remember having had plenty of time for a leisurely meal in Milan, having left London that morning and changed in Paris for a late afternoon arrival in Milan). It reached the Sicily ferry the following morning - maybe 10am? Maybe a bit later. And that was after going "the long way round" down to Genoa and along the Ligurian coast. (But all in all not much more than 24 hours after I'd left London...) Admittedly there was then a very slow process of shunting the carriages on and off the ferry for the short crossing (though I think that will change soon with new rolling stock), and then - depending on destination in Sicily - it could be 2 or 3 hours on the same train on the island. But even end to end, nowhere near 24 hours from Milan.
Er ... no... Nothing like 24 hours Milan to Sicily. Last time I left Milan on a sleeper for Sicily, the train left some time after 8pm (I remember having had plenty of time for a leisurely meal in Milan, having left London that morning and changed in Paris for a late afternoon arrival in Milan). It reached the Sicily ferry the following morning - maybe 10am? Maybe a bit later. And that was after going "the long way round" down to Genoa and along the Ligurian coast. (But all in all not much more than 24 hours after I'd left London...) Admittedly there was then a very slow process of shunting the carriages on and off the ferry for the short crossing (though I think that will change soon with new rolling stock), and then - depending on destination in Sicily - it could be 2 or 3 hours on the same train on the island. But even end to end, nowhere near 24 hours from Milan.
The timings for the train now are 2010 from Milano Centrale, arr Palermo 1655 next day, having arrived on Sicily at Messina Centrale at 1245. Its fair to say the sleepers take around 21h to do ‘the trip’ that they are employed on, which to me is close enough to 24hrs in respect of the point being made, ie sleepers do run in the day time (and it‘s a long time!)
The timings for the train now are 2010 from Milano Centrale, arr Palermo 1655 next day, having arrived on Sicily at Messina Centrale at 1245. Its fair to say the sleepers take around 21h to do ‘the trip’ that they are employed on, which to me is close enough to 24hrs in respect of the point being made, ie sleepers do run in the day time (and it‘s a long time!)
It is the exception to the rule in Western Europe though, as it requires a 3rd set of stock, and survives (thankfully) for political reasons. Torino-Reggio is another.
I did that one recently. Nearly 17h on the same train, and nearly 1300km. Definitely a single train duration record for me, and possibly distance as well. (And I did it in a seat...) Very reasonably priced though
Ironically we can't use it all because it's all in the North Sea & there's not enough grid to take it away - I've yet to see a day we're not paying to turn some of it off.
SAF from whatever source is the only way we're going to sustain 90% of aviation, you can be sure that's where the money is going to go... we could produce enough fuel for enthusiast cars & motorsport already if we wanted. For all the problems - grid & charging are quite the stumbling block - electric cars are the eventual future there, the same as rail.
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I can fly most places a sleeper would take me from various local airports, or I can get the ferry & start in France - it takes me about 7 hrs to get to Paris via Eurostar overall ( it's not really much longer to get the ferry & then a train! ). There won't be a sleeper that's faster or more convenient and this is going to be the same for anywhere outside of major conurbations that might get their own service, so I don't see how this is going to pull passengers outside the south-east or perhaps any major conurbation that gets a direct service away from flying.
Ironically we can't use it all because it's all in the North Sea & there's not enough grid to take it away - I've yet to see a day we're not paying to turn some of it off.
SAF from whatever source is the only way we're going to sustain 90% of aviation, you can be sure that's where the money is going to go... we could produce enough fuel for enthusiast cars & motorsport already if we wanted. For all the problems - grid & charging are quite the stumbling block - electric cars are the eventual future there, the same as rail.
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I can fly most places a sleeper would take me from various local airports, or I can get the ferry & start in France - it takes me about 7 hrs to get to Paris via Eurostar overall ( it's not really much longer to get the ferry & then a train! ). There won't be a sleeper that's faster or more convenient and this is going to be the same for anywhere outside of major conurbations that might get their own service, so I don't see how this is going to pull passengers outside the south-east or perhaps any major conurbation that gets a direct service away from flying.
Presumably you have to travel to an airport? Theoretically that journey could be no different to travelling to pick up a sleeper from a major station. Apart from you’d be taking that journey in the evening on the way out and morning on the return.
If you could travel those 7 hours whilst asleep wouldn’t that be a better use of your time?
And the romance of having a meal and a night cap at the bar (to more southerly destinations), must happen? Baring a huge leap forward in battery technology for planes (lighter denser batteries), we will have to embrace a Victorian-like mode of travel, won't we?
We have the tech and ability now to board a train before bedtime, tuck yourself into bed and be lulled to sleep by the durum durum of the rails, be brought breakfast to your cabin, and to wake up fresh in the heart of your destination city over 1000 miles away.
Personally I love the idea of hopping on a sleeper train at 9pm, having some food on the train, being rocked to sleep as you cut through Europe. Then to wake up in a city like Zurich or Marseille, with the whole day ahead. What could be better? There isn’t a better way to travel.
Can I ask how much overnight train travel you've actually done? You seem to have a pretty romantic idea of what it can be like in reality. (I've travelled on a reasonable number over the years, including some multi-day/night trips).
Sleeper trains have never been more than minority part of the long-distance passenger railway in densely-populated countries, because most people wouldn't consider spending a night on a noisy, vibrating train when they could spend it in a quiet hotel room instead and get a fast, frequent day train either before or after it.
Personally I've got no issues with someone running sleeper trains as a fully commercial operation, but I don't think taxpayers money should be used to subsidise them (other than in a few situations where an overnight train happens to provide a basic transport service in remote areas).
Can I ask how much overnight train travel you've actually done? You seem to have a pretty romantic idea of what it can be like in reality. (I've travelled on a reasonable number over the years, including some multi-day/night trips).
Sleeper trains have never been more than minority part of the long-distance passenger railway in densely-populated countries, because most people wouldn't consider spending a night on a noisy, vibrating train when they could spend it in a quiet hotel room instead and get a fast, frequent day train either before or after it.
Personally I've got no issues with someone running sleeper trains as a fully commercial operation, but I don't think taxpayers money should be used to subsidise them (other than in a few situations where an overnight train happens to provide a basic transport service in remote areas).
Quite. Travelling on workaday sleeper trains (i.e. not the 'Blue Train' in South Africa, or the VSOE or something) , which I have done very many times both on business and for leisure, is most definitely not some romantic 'being rocked to sleep' experience. Waiting late at night at some fairly unpleasant stations, noisy bouncing vibrating journey likely to have relatively little sleep, often with strangers with all sorts of different habits, no shower (or a communal shower and having to wait in turn) and unreliable both in punctuality, and in the service provided (is there any food, is it edible , miserable attendants etc). If I wasn't an enthusiast I would only do it if I had to, and even as an enthusiast I sometimes baulk at booking a repeat of another one of these 'experiences'. Yes, many of these things could be fixed with the application of funds - but I wouldn't want to afford the resulting fares, nor do I think it right that taxpayers should be footing the bill for what is practicably only ever going to be a niche leisure travel experience [except perhaps remote areas etc]
I regularly travel between Cambridge and Karlsruhe, as does my partner. We have the delights of a 90 minute (normally 60 minute) hop to the local airport in Baden-Baden with Rynair from Stansted, often for a return airfare of less than £120.
All up door to door I can do it in less than six hours - I'd already be going by Eurostar then ICE/TGV via Paris if it wasn't for the somewhat crazy Eurostar fares I would have to pay to make a reasonable Paris connection.
I don't understand how OP thinks a sleeper to parts of Europe will compete in the slightest, given that day train travel is expensive enough and any sleeper service would have to charge more in fares due to lower capacity.
Can I ask how much overnight train travel you've actually done? You seem to have a pretty romantic idea of what it can be like in reality. (I've travelled on a reasonable number over the years, including some multi-day/night trips).
Sleeper trains have never been more than minority part of the long-distance passenger railway in densely-populated countries, because most people wouldn't consider spending a night on a noisy, vibrating train when they could spend it in a quiet hotel room instead and get a fast, frequent day train either before or after it.
Personally I've got no issues with someone running sleeper trains as a fully commercial operation, but I don't think taxpayers money should be used to subsidise them (other than in a few situations where an overnight train happens to provide a basic transport service in remote areas).
Just a couple of weeks ago to Cornwall. Sadly the return leg was cancelled but we were refunded and travelled first class for free the next morning. Plus have free tickets to use too.
Absolutely awesome experience. There’s the old first class waiting room at Paddington station at passengers disposal with drinks and seating. The train departs from outside on platform 1.
The staff on the train are terrific. So helpful and awake all night. They run through your cabin equipment and ensure you’re comfortable. And take your order for breakfast. No problem storing a pram with them and they even got it out ready for us to depart. At 6:30 you get a bacon sarni and cuppa!
A pre-booked taxi sweeps you up from the quiet fresh morning station. And you arrive early with the whole day ahead. Saving on accommodation/effectively extending your stay.
No driving stress. No “are we there yet?” I love driving, have a number of cars. But a sleeper train on a long journey trumps it every time.
I’ve travelled from Amsterdam to Barcelona, from Spain to France and in Morocco some 20 years ago. The rhythm and white noise of the train actually lulls me to sleep. They aren’t noisy, and cabins have windows to peek at sunsets, rolling hills or dead of the night platforms…from the cosy comfort of a clean bed.
Can I ask how many you’ve tried?
Can I ask if you think alternatives to polluting air flight are important?
Can I ask if you admire or have any feelings for a Victorian-like train service with dining car etc? Plenty do as there are such services like the orient express and they charge ungodly amounts of money to tourists.
Can I ask if you believe the tax payer should subsidise air travel with untaxed fuel?
Personally, I like sleeper trains. Some of the best nights' sleep I've ever had have been on sleepers (although admittedly that may be because I'm invariably on an intense Interrail trip and have probably not had more than about 4 hours' interrupted sleep in a seat the previous night(s)!).
The problem is, I'm a cheapskate. I'll only ever go as far as a couchette, which will typically be around £20-£40 for the night at Interrail prices. If I was paying normal price, I simply wouldn't be using the train (unless someone else was paying!).
I regularly travel between Cambridge and Karlsruhe, as does my partner. We have the delights of a 90 minute (normally 60 minute) hop to the local airport in Baden-Baden with Rynair from Stansted, often for a return airfare of less than £120.
All up door to door I can do it in less than six hours - I'd already be going by Eurostar then ICE/TGV via Paris if it wasn't for the somewhat crazy Eurostar fares I would have to pay to make a reasonable Paris connection.
I don't understand how OP thinks a sleeper to parts of Europe will compete in the slightest, given that day train travel is expensive enough and any sleeper service would have to charge more in fares due to lower capacity.
I don’t think you have appreciated the premise. Hottest day of the year today wasn’t it. Hottest year on record globally.
No one thinks the current status quo for travel is unworkable in a practical logistical sense. The premise is simply that dumping a load of fuel into the atmosphere which many scientists think accelerates global warming, is likely to come under increasing pressure. You didn’t get that?
Now, air travel is also far from its glory days in the 1970s. Airports are more akin to cattle plants. The travel to and from the airport effectively uses up a whole day. Breathing air with a tiny cubic space and sharing germs. There are disadvantages to air travel as well as positives.
If you reduce air travel and pollution - which we should all do - do you stop people travelling? Of course you don’t. You find alternatives. You design overnight services that people enjoy using. That give people a fresh early start. Compared to cramped air travel, sleepers offer elite biz travel luxury, for a fraction of the price.
I don’t think you have appreciated the premise. Hottest day of the year today wasn’t it. Hottest year on record globally.
No one thinks the current status quo for travel is unworkable in a practical logistical sense. The premise is simply that dumping a load of fuel into the atmosphere which many scientists think accelerates global warming, is likely to come under increasing pressure. You didn’t get that?
Now, air travel is also far from its glory days in the 1970s. Airports are more akin to cattle plants. The travel to and from the airport effectively uses up a whole day. Breathing air with a tiny cubic space and sharing germs. There are disadvantages to air travel as well as positives.
If you reduce air travel and pollution - which we should all do - do you stop people travelling? Of course you don’t. You find alternatives. You design overnight services that people enjoy using. That give people a fresh early start. Compared to cramped air travel, sleepers offer elite biz travel luxury, for a fraction of the price.
I don’t think you have appreciated the premise. Hottest day of the year today wasn’t it. Hottest year on record globally.
No one thinks the current status quo for travel is unworkable in a practical logistical sense. The premise is simply that dumping a load of fuel into the atmosphere which many scientists think accelerates global warming, is likely to come under increasing pressure. You didn’t get that?
Now, air travel is also far from its glory days in the 1970s. Airports are more akin to cattle plants. The travel to and from the airport effectively uses up a whole day. Breathing air with a tiny cubic space and sharing germs. There are disadvantages to air travel as well as positives.
If you reduce air travel and pollution - which we should all do - do you stop people travelling? Of course you don’t. You find alternatives. You design overnight services that people enjoy using. That give people a fresh early start. Compared to cramped air travel, sleepers offer elite biz travel luxury, for a fraction of the price.
Even a sleeper train network of enormous proportions wouldn't have the capacity to take up the numbers that currently use air travel, though.
You missed the other part of my post where I mentioned there are already high speed day train options available, the only reason I don't use them is due to Eurostar pricing people off due to their lack of capacity. increasing frequency and capacity of those services and further expansion of high speed rail networks should be the priority to cut journey times.
Any sleeper would compete with a business class ticket, not with economy tickets. Which, if the stock is done right, goes a long way ahead a row with middle-seat blocked like you see in European Business Class.
Eurostar is a weird situation that is made a lot harder by the political situation. I don't think anything will happen short of competing services.
I don’t think you have appreciated the premise. Hottest day of the year today wasn’t it. Hottest year on record globally.
No one thinks the current status quo for travel is unworkable in a practical logistical sense. The premise is simply that dumping a load of fuel into the atmosphere which many scientists think accelerates global warming, is likely to come under increasing pressure. You didn’t get that?
Now, air travel is also far from its glory days in the 1970s. Airports are more akin to cattle plants. The travel to and from the airport effectively uses up a whole day. Breathing air with a tiny cubic space and sharing germs. There are disadvantages to air travel as well as positives.
Railway stations will be even worse, if those who travel by air started to use them en-masse. There are disadvantages to air travel, but most of them are overwhelmed by the disadvantages of train travel.
If you reduce air travel and pollution - which we should all do - do you stop people travelling? Of course you don’t. You find alternatives. You design overnight services that people enjoy using. That give people a fresh early start. Compared to cramped air travel, sleepers offer elite biz travel luxury, for a fraction of the price.
Crudely, if less polluting aeroplanes can't be developed, the answer to this question is - yes. Or at least travelling as often and as far. In the glory days of Sleeping car trains, by and large only the wealthiest used them with any regularity. Further down the food chain travelled (if they did at all) in the 'luxury' of six berth per compartment couchette type cars (and even then only a comparatively small number). Sleeping car trains cost far too much to operate to give anything like the conditions that ordinary people have grown to demand as a minimum.
Luxury sleeping car trains during 'La Belle Epoch' were only financially possible by cross subsidisation with the railway monopoly on goods traffic (resulting in higher commodity prices for the masses, for the wealthy to have luxury travel). The railways no longer have this goods traffic monopoly, thank goodness.
Can I ask if you admire or have any feelings for a Victorian-like train service with dining car etc? Plenty do as there are such services like the orient express and they charge ungodly amounts of money to tourists.
This is only a very small, elite niche market. There are not lots of these trains operating as a means of travel from A to B, as opposed to a tourist experience. They have little to no relevance to public transport.
No, air travel should not be subsidised with untaxed fuel. (But then should rail travel either?) Perhaps if it was taxed fairly then more people would trade down to couchette cars on the railways. Can't see that being a popular ask in a vote though.
Even a sleeper train network of enormous proportions wouldn't have the capacity to take up the numbers that currently use air travel, though.
You missed the other part of my post where I mentioned there are already high speed day train options available, the only reason I don't use them is due to Eurostar pricing people off due to their lack of capacity. increasing frequency and capacity of those services and further expansion of high speed rail networks should be the priority to cut journey times.
I don’t believe anyone thinks sleeper trains would replace all air travel. Stating the obvious transatlantic travel isn’t possible or any long haul flights. Sleepers can be part of a nuanced solution.
Imagine people got flight credits or for shorter journeys were heavily taxed (didn’t France ban flights within France?). Then alternatives become far more important. Not only are sleepers one alternative for continental travel, they already have some advantages over cramped mass air travel. But it’s clear there isn’t much buy in. If ‘enthusiasts’ seem to question investing into such services, there’s little hope the general public and politicians will have much vision either.
However if the tax setup is changed for flights so they go up in price, or a system of flight credits is introduced, suddenly sleepers will become attractive - provided they are available. Atm there isn’t such a service to the continent, which seems crazy.
And for what it's worth, I've probably done over 50 sleeper trips across Europe in accommodation ranging from basic seats to top level single occupancy en-suites. It's not uncommon to meet with a significant delay, the toilets not to be working or the hot water to run out.
Railway stations will be even worse, if those who travel by air started to use them en-masse. There are disadvantages to air travel, but most of them are overwhelmed by the disadvantages of train travel.
Crudely, if less polluting aeroplanes can't be developed, the answer to this question is - yes. Or at least travelling as often and as far. In the glory days of Sleeping car trains, by and large only the wealthiest used them with any regularity. Further down the food chain travelled (if they did at all) in the 'luxury' of six berth per compartment couchette type cars (and even then only a comparatively small number). Sleeping car trains cost far too much to operate to give anything like the conditions that ordinary people have grown to demand as a minimum.
If charging £400 a ticket with 300 customers the revenue iper service is £120,000. Others have suggested 400 tickets are possible, but I think the biz plan is best to have more space and luxury and change more. You can have Japanese style sleeping ‘tubes’ as well which can pack in punters at a cheaper price. Add in food and drinks and services, run well, could be profitable.
Moreover, sleepers add revenue to the rails. Adding more money when the infrastructure is largely unused.
Luxury sleeping car trains during 'La Belle Epoch' were only financially possible by cross subsidisation with the railway monopoly on goods traffic (resulting in higher commodity prices for the masses, for the wealthy to have luxury travel). The railways no longer have this goods traffic monopoly, thank goodness.
This is only a very small, elite niche market. There are not lots of these trains operating as a means of travel from A to B, as opposed to a tourist experience. They have little to no relevance to public transport.
At the moment but try to envisage a reality where your second flight of the year costs 3 times as much. Then you have an option of driving, coach, a day sitting on a train/s or sleeper to get to southern Europe.
No, air travel should not be subsidised with untaxed fuel. (But then should rail travel either?) Perhaps if it was taxed fairly then more people would trade down to couchette cars on the railways. Can't see that being a popular ask in a vote though.
And for what it's worth, I've probably done over 50 sleeper trips across Europe in accommodation ranging from basic seats to top level single occupancy en-suites. It's not uncommon to meet with a significant delay, the toilets not to be working or the hot water to run out.
If charging £400 a ticket with 300 customers the revenue iper service is £120,000. Others have suggested 400 tickets are possible, but I think the biz plan is best to have more space and luxury and change more. You can have Japanese style sleeping ‘tubes’ as well which can pack in punters at a cheaper price. Add in food and drinks and services, run well, could be profitable.
Unused, but during the time that maintenance is usually scheduled. When can you do that if you're running sleeper trains over the network in that time?
At the moment but try to envisage a reality where your second flight of the year costs 3 times as much. Then you have an option of driving, coach, a day sitting on a train/s or sleeper to get to southern Europe.
Even if that comes to pass, I'd be willing to be a large number of people would count their time more valuable than the taxes and would stick with the flights.
As rail travel is far less polluting, and requires investment I would argue it should have incentives to kick start such operations.
What is the cost of a biz class air fair where you get a private space to recline?
Similar applies to planes, and highlights a need to invest in and professionalise services.
If it's profitable, surely people would be investing in it already? That they're not suggests it's very much not, so we're back to whether subsidising a minority transport method is the best use of public money. More capacity on day trains will have far more of an effect on modal shift.
I don’t believe anyone thinks sleeper trains would replace all air travel. Stating the obvious transatlantic travel isn’t possible or any long haul flights. Sleepers can be part of a nuanced solution.
Imagine people got flight credits or for shorter journeys were heavily taxed (didn’t France ban flights within France?). Then alternatives become far more important. Not only are sleepers one alternative for continental travel, they already have some advantages over cramped mass air travel. But it’s clear there isn’t much buy in. If ‘enthusiasts’ seem to question investing into such services, there’s little hope the general public and politicians will have much vision either.
However if the tax setup is changed for flights so they go up in price, or a system of flight credits is introduced, suddenly sleepers will become attractive - provided they are available. Atm there isn’t such a service to the continent, which seems crazy.
Unused, but during the time that maintenance is usually scheduled. When can you do that if you're running sleeper trains over the network in that time?
Maintenance doesn’t occur on all rails every night does it? With maintenance required in say Kent and a sleeper train travelling from London to southern Europe, the train has left the area by 1am. More or less the time most domestic services cease.
Even if that comes to pass, I'd be willing to be a large number of people would count their time more valuable than the taxes and would stick with the flights.
If it's profitable, surely people would be investing in it already? That they're not suggests it's very much not, so we're back to whether subsidising a minority transport method is the best use of public money. More capacity on day trains will have far more of an effect on modal shift.
I think it is more complex than that. As well as vision you need political buy-in. You need border force cooperation. And you ideally need some financial incentives to help kick-start the services.
That said, I would hazard a guess, that a nightly sleeper service to the south of France would get booked up in no time. Especially if the cars have some charm and there is some romance to the service.
If charging £400 a ticket with 300 customers the revenue iper service is £120,000. Others have suggested 400 tickets are possible, but I think the biz plan is best to have more space and luxury and change more. You can have Japanese style sleeping ‘tubes’ as well which can pack in punters at a cheaper price. Add in food and drinks and services, run well, could be profitable.
At the moment but try to envisage a reality where your second flight of the year costs 3 times as much. Then you have an option of driving, coach, a day sitting on a train/s or sleeper to get to southern Europe.
In this suggestion (which I think an unlikely scenario) I would expect people to travel less often but away for longer periods. It would seem unlikely many will be paying £800 (probably more) return per person for a sleeping car train.
That said, I would hazard a guess, that a nightly sleeper service to the south of France would get booked up in no time. Especially if the cars have some charm and there is some romance to the service.
It would be interesting what are the occupancy figures for the direct Summer Eurostar services.
If the French night trains are anything to go by, the Nice sleeper can be well packed in 2nd class berths in summer times (probably because you can find a 2nd berth for 20-40 bucks).
The south-west region (to Lourdes), being quite poorly connected, has its sleeper have a capacity struggle during most bank holidays.
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The main issues with a through sleeper would be that you would need paths to run on both LGV and classic lines (there is no way to avoid Paris without using the LGV (or you would need to run on RER tracks)) which could be massively expensive to build, especially if ETCS+TVM430 is required. Class 92s don't have KVB (classic line signalling) sadly.
How far could a sleeper service from existing blue-Eurostar destinations reasonably get? What would the issues be with an overnight service from Lille to Ljubljana (~860 miles avoiding high-speed lines) or Brussels to Bordeaux (600 miles)?
There's only so many destinations it would be possible for and from, and there'd be the issue of getting to ports, but maybe restoring some international ferries would help. I think Hull to Hamburg would be ~22 hours, so a 21:00 departure would get to Hamburg at 20:00 the following day, leaving enough time to connect to the sleeper to Stockholm (or Zürich, but that's a long diversion to get there), although leaving earlier might be preferable.
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