Although for most of today we have been burning coal to generate power to export to France! (Not happens often, admittedly!)
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France wants to expand cross-border and domestic night train services
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Although for most of today we have been burning coal to generate power to export to France! (Not happens often, admittedly!)
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Shrop
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It’s certainly not a bad idea to promote sleeper trains, we in the UK could and probably should do a lot more with the Channel Tunnel. Of course some people prefer flying just because it’s quicker, but the mentality that goes with this can be a bit suspect, when the thinking only goes as far as flight times of 2 hours vs rail times of 8-12 hours.
Your 2 hour flight time usually involves at least an additional 2 hours pre-flight at the airport, a fair while after you’ve landed to collect baggage etc. and then you have your trip to and from the airport to wherever you might be going. This all leads to a huge part of your day being taken up with the journey. Meanwhile you could reach most of Germany or France on an overnight train from London, eating into much less of your daytime either before or after your journey.
Of course sleeper trains aren’t for everyone, but there may well be enough people who do like them to make services worth providing. I wonder if much research has been done into this? If we in the UK don’t investigate this properly just because we listen to our sceptics too much, we may just find that our European cousins come along and capture a lucrative market for themselves.
Your 2 hour flight time usually involves at least an additional 2 hours pre-flight at the airport, a fair while after you’ve landed to collect baggage etc. and then you have your trip to and from the airport to wherever you might be going. This all leads to a huge part of your day being taken up with the journey. Meanwhile you could reach most of Germany or France on an overnight train from London, eating into much less of your daytime either before or after your journey.
Of course sleeper trains aren’t for everyone, but there may well be enough people who do like them to make services worth providing. I wonder if much research has been done into this? If we in the UK don’t investigate this properly just because we listen to our sceptics too much, we may just find that our European cousins come along and capture a lucrative market for themselves.
Yes, lots; several different parties including some independent of the railway. Some credible, some not.
The results of the research is what you see now in terms of the number of overnight services from London to the continent.
There’s quite a few previous threads on the subject.
It is of course possible, but you need to find answers to the border control and subsidy issues.
johnnychips
Established Member
I’m a rail fan and it would take a lot of convincing for me to go from Sheffield to Barcelona and back by rail for a ten day holiday. For a start, I could probably book my flight and train to Manchester in about twenty minutes. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start in booking rail, and that’s before you consider time and price.
philthetube
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Interesting point, me too, am going to start a thread.
Googling train Sheffield Barcelona brings up raileurope and Trainline amongst others. Entering Sheffield Barcelona on Trainline brings up the message that you need to book London to Barcelona and the domestic leg separately. Entering London Barcelona brings up a load of options. Time and price may not be to your liking, but booking takes a couple of minutes. You'd probably spend longer looking at the options for seat and baggage options on a flight.
johnnychips
Established Member
I want to go in July so ‘sorry we haven’t found any tickets’ on Rail Europe and similar in Trainline, whereas I could book my flight now.
StephenHunter
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They don't release tickets that far in advance for rail.
johnnychips
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Quite, so I can’t plan and budget ahead.
Shrop
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When people say they have trouble looking for rail booking info, I'm surprised no one has mentioned www.seat61.com. This is one of the most informative sites in existence about rail travel abroad.
You can tell that the guy who founded the site has genuine rail enthusiast knowledge by the name "Seat 61", this being one of the few seat numbers in Eurostar coaches where you get a window with a view unobstructed by pillars and other things!
I wonder what this research took into account? For example you could argue that no-one in their right mind would transit the Atlantic by ship when this takes at least 6 days, when a flight can do it in 7 hours, yet Cunard (and others) manage to fill their transatlantic ships with literally thousands of passengers.
It makes no sense to take journeys of over 24 hours in the USA by train when they have more flights than anywhere else in the world, yet Amtrak have plenty of sleeper services which fill up nicely.
Why on earth would people want to take a ferry across the Channel taking 90 minutes, when the Eurostar takes just 30, but P&O and DFDS think it's worth carrying passengers. Enough to justify running quite big ships many times every day, and that's before we even start on Stena and Brittany which happily fill their overnight berths all the time despite taking far, far longer than competing flights do. Even though they often rock around a lot more than trains do.
So really, it depends how you look at it. I'd certainly enjoy an overnight rail trip from London to somewhere in Europe over 500 miles away, and ideally from Manchester or Birmingham if that possibility hadn't been scuppered, and I suspect I'm far from alone. The odd thing is, there seems to be more people on the rail forums that are ready to rubbish these ideas than there are in the outside world. Strange!
You can tell that the guy who founded the site has genuine rail enthusiast knowledge by the name "Seat 61", this being one of the few seat numbers in Eurostar coaches where you get a window with a view unobstructed by pillars and other things!
I'd be interested to see the research, although I guess the answer might be that it's confidential for some reason?
I wonder what this research took into account? For example you could argue that no-one in their right mind would transit the Atlantic by ship when this takes at least 6 days, when a flight can do it in 7 hours, yet Cunard (and others) manage to fill their transatlantic ships with literally thousands of passengers.
It makes no sense to take journeys of over 24 hours in the USA by train when they have more flights than anywhere else in the world, yet Amtrak have plenty of sleeper services which fill up nicely.
Why on earth would people want to take a ferry across the Channel taking 90 minutes, when the Eurostar takes just 30, but P&O and DFDS think it's worth carrying passengers. Enough to justify running quite big ships many times every day, and that's before we even start on Stena and Brittany which happily fill their overnight berths all the time despite taking far, far longer than competing flights do. Even though they often rock around a lot more than trains do.
So really, it depends how you look at it. I'd certainly enjoy an overnight rail trip from London to somewhere in Europe over 500 miles away, and ideally from Manchester or Birmingham if that possibility hadn't been scuppered, and I suspect I'm far from alone. The odd thing is, there seems to be more people on the rail forums that are ready to rubbish these ideas than there are in the outside world. Strange!
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The short sea ferries are there for the trucks, then other vehicles, with foot passengers an afterthought at little marginal cost. I don't think people were rubbishing the idea of international travel but the idea of international overnight trains, which have huge marginal costs in part because of the border control issue. Many of us can and do in normal times take the Eurostar then connect into daytime trains or the resurgent night offerings from Paris, Brussels, and the Netherlands
It has been discussed here on a large number of occasions previously. Please feel free to search for the threads.
Have you been asking many people in the outside world?
it’s been done by companies in competition with each other as potential business opportunities. It’s confidential for the same reason airlines don’t publish their research into new routes.
Cunard charges enough to make a profit.
Amtrak charge enough, and get enough subsidy, to break even.
the Ferry companies charge enough to make a profit
I’m not rubbishing it. All I said was that you would have to find an answer to the border control and subsidy issues. How would you solve them? I have no idea, personally.
It's perfectly possible to do a test booking for some months ahead, which will give a pretty good guide to times and costs. Slightly problematic because of a pandemic - but then your airline might "rebook" you - more likely in fact!
johnnychips
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Please tell me how? Sheffield to Barcelona leaving no earlier than 1600 on Friday 15th July and returning no later than Wed 27th July at 2359.
Thanks, John
DanNCL
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I would be happy to travel deep into Europe by rail, and I’m not too fussed about journey times if I can get there within 36 hours of leaving London - that would get me to almost anywhere in Western and Central Europe.
The sole issue that puts me off from heading to Europe by rail is the cost, and SNCF both with TGV and through their subsidiaries Eurostar and Thalys are by far the worst offender for it. I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall that it was SNCF that killed off almost all of the sleepers both domestic and international in France - I know the RZD service to Moscow survived, and I think one or two domestic ones from Paris to the south of France (Toulouse?) survived too, but that was it. It strikes me as bizarre that SNCF are going on about wanting to encourage more international rail travel, especially overnight, when they’re one of the organisations holding it back the most.
The new ÖBB sleeper from Paris to Vienna is welcome, but I fear it may be the only new sleeper in France for a while.
The sole issue that puts me off from heading to Europe by rail is the cost, and SNCF both with TGV and through their subsidiaries Eurostar and Thalys are by far the worst offender for it. I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall that it was SNCF that killed off almost all of the sleepers both domestic and international in France - I know the RZD service to Moscow survived, and I think one or two domestic ones from Paris to the south of France (Toulouse?) survived too, but that was it. It strikes me as bizarre that SNCF are going on about wanting to encourage more international rail travel, especially overnight, when they’re one of the organisations holding it back the most.
The new ÖBB sleeper from Paris to Vienna is welcome, but I fear it may be the only new sleeper in France for a while.
AlbertBeale
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You just do a test booking for a date towards July which is close enough to be bookable already - that'll give you an idea of times and prices; you can guess the July details will be similar in a little while when those July bookings become available. If you want to play around with options/connections and so on, while you're waiting, a combination of The Man in Seat 61's website, plus a copy of the European Rail Timetable, will tell you most of what you need to know.
The essence of the difficulty with overnight services through the Channel Tunnel can be summarised as follows (though see other threads for much more discussion):
1. The powers that be won't accept on-board checking of paperwork for services between the UK and mainland Europe. Therefore you need "border station" facilities at each station where people might want to get on or off the train.
2. Unlike day-time services - which have only a handful of (mostly fairly intensively-used) destinations at each end of the Eurostar journey, often only one at each end of course - overnight services would probably only be viable if they picked up and dropped off people at quite a few places at or near each end. This would mean, for any train, various major stations north/west of London and/or various major stations in countries beyond France and Benelux; but none of these stations is currently set up or staffed to host border facilities, and it's not considered viable to install such at so many places for (in each case) only a very few services per day.
Having on-train formalities (as people in some other places are quite used to) might enable popular services between, say, Scotland and northern England to Brussels/Paris, and between London and various central European capitals. Maybe even between Scotland and places beyond France too. At least the problems to be solved would then be only technical (and surmountable) rather than political (and seemingly insurmountable; no-one seems to think that on-train formalities are other than political fantasy-land).
You also missed the point that unless they were to run exclusively on HS1 in this country, the services would have to be formed of stock that fits U.K. loading gauge, which means not many beds per coach, which makes it hopelessly uneconomic, which means massive subsidy (see Caledonian Sleeper).
And exclusively running on HS1 is by no means simple, given the other traffic.
Shrop
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But there wouldn't be that many trains, and they'd be running at off peak times, which eases capacity issues ...
Austriantrain
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A night train arriving in the morning will probably run right in the peak or at least close to it.
The one way to run attractive and pathable night services from London to useful destinations would be High-Speed night sets that could use HSL in the evenings and mornings (in the middle of the night, they mainly will be closed).
It would also make running these services even more expensive.
StephenHunter
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The Type Fs from the Night Ferry, which ran on Southern metals, had 18 beds in nine two-berth compartments.
As for the RZD services to Moscow from Nice & Paris, those were suspended with the pandemic and with the current difficulties on the Poland-Belarus border, they might not resume any time soon.
Cheshire Scot
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Which is, and always was, a low number compared to mainland sleepers, then typically 11 or 12 compartments with up to 3 berths with coach length being typically 26m. BR got 11 compartments in Mk1, the same length as Type F.
Since Night Ferry days coach length in the UK has increased to 23m for Mk3s and 26m for the IET family although the latter entails a more constrained body shape, not ideal for a sleeper, but a 23m sleeper as per Mk3 would increase the number of compartments - or provide space for en-suites.
The height issue remains a constraint for the BR loading gauge although RENFE overcame this with their Talgo sleepers by making second class compartments 4 berth - fine for a family of 4 (mainly seasonal trade I imagine) so maybe not so many 4 berth required these days or maybe a partition to convert a 4 into two 2s.
This still leaves Channel Tunnel issues to be overcome.
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Fragezeichnen
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It's notable the the new night train services being run commercially by organisations like Snalltaget use mainly, or exclusively couchette cars(6 beds per compartment, no bathroom) rather than more space intensive sleeper coaches with individual bathrooms. The NightJet services also usually have more couchette accomodation than sleepers.
The Caledonian Sleeper seems to me like a service designed to satisfy a Political purpose, rather than to transport as many people as possible at a price they can afford.
On the topic of Channel services, it will never happen, but given unlimited funding and political will, I wonder if you could solve it like this:
Build a special set of coaches - permanently coupled sets in whatever length is desired, with the requisite emergency exits but only one single door, in the middle coach. This would serve as the "security coach", with lugagge scanners and border guards on board. At each stop, the train has to wait until everyone has been processed in the security coach and proceeded to the rest of the train.
The Caledonian Sleeper seems to me like a service designed to satisfy a Political purpose, rather than to transport as many people as possible at a price they can afford.
On the topic of Channel services, it will never happen, but given unlimited funding and political will, I wonder if you could solve it like this:
Build a special set of coaches - permanently coupled sets in whatever length is desired, with the requisite emergency exits but only one single door, in the middle coach. This would serve as the "security coach", with lugagge scanners and border guards on board. At each stop, the train has to wait until everyone has been processed in the security coach and proceeded to the rest of the train.
StephenHunter
Established Member
Caledonian Sleeper Mark 5s are 20 for standard and 12 for accessible. Night Riviera (refurbed Mark 3s) is 16, it seems.
Being lazy, I go straight to
https://www.seat61.com/Spain.htm#london-to-barcelona-by-train
for an overview, and then choose between the options. I imagine Sheffield to London times you know, but options 1 and 2 both work for you!
(On the return, I would consider the option via Lyon and Lille to save crossing Paris (and the Eurostar check in there, though that was much improved when I last used it pre Brexit!). Normally I would suggest going that way with an overnight in Lille, but there's no late enough train from London.)
As to cost - as you are travelling out on a Friday night and/or one of the busiest Saturdays in France, I would reckon to double the headline price for the outward journey.
For budgeting, the most I would expect to pay is this:
4-day Interrail pass at £205, plus Passholder supplements at €128, so about £310 return from Sheffield (about £400 in First).
(Interrail isn't terribly convenient for France or Spain as long-distance trains are all compulsory (paying) reservation, but it's a price you can get without booking 6 months ahead, and won't change much - maybe an extra £20 if you buy the Interrail in May or June, maybe £20 less if they do a special offer after Easter. You get two extra days' travel in Spain for next to nothing.)
Cheshire Scot
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The UK loading gauge precludes 6 berth couchettes due to height issues although 4 berth would be an option - might a low floor between the bogies permit a mix of 4s and 6s. Thus the internal UK overnight market has only ever had sleepers - and in the past far more seats than today.
Is there perhaps an element of the potential market who with the 'reserve' typical of some Brits would prefer the privacy of a sleeper compartment although certainly in pre Tunnel days whilst many destinations had one or more sleeping cars from the Channel ports couchettes appeared to be much more popular.
Caledonian Sleeper has perhaps regressed towards the Political animal over the years having developed downwards from a much wider and popular network the economics of which declined for various reasons.
Whilst there is merit in your 'security coach' idea I fear it would result in lengthy station dwells thus lengthening the journey time - ok potentially overcome by keeping stops to a minimum, but I would suggest the 'emergency exits' become de-alarmed for detraining passengers rather than herding a large number of passengers towards a single door. dred .
StephenHunter
Established Member
Wasn't four berth a thing in the UK during Grouping and early BR?
Cheshire Scot
Established Member
I think you are correct (and still designated as sleepers, not as couchettes). I'm not sure how widespread.
paul1609
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I would go via Paris in both directions. The Gare Du Nord to Lyon is really no big thing the two stations are 2 1/2 miles apart. If you don't want to use the RER take a taxi. If its a nice day and I have time I walk its just over an hour. If you are on point to point tickets it's a lot cheaper via Paris than via Lyon, about £75 each way on my last journey.
Sadly with the withdrawal of Eurostar from Ashford I'll be on Easyjet for longer journeys in future.
Shrop
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Isn't the peak arrival time into London on Eurostar trains later than it is into other stations? I wouldn't have thought commuters into London would have been such a demand on Eurostar pathings ...
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