It's not my sleeper train. But assuming an average of 180 seats per flight, that is 2880 seats available between Vienna and London tomorrow. And probably the same amount in the other direction. So there might be enough for a night train.
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Inside European Sleeper’s turbulent first season of night trains
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D6130
Established Member
It would appear so. Again, I haven't been there since Covid and it would appear that it has changed hands and changed into a restaurant, which is good news for prospective sleeper passengers. The reviews are very good....but you would have to drag your luggage up and down a fairly steep staircase, or take a longer route through several streets in a square configuration.
paul1609
Established Member
I'd suggest that the market is far too small for a sleeper to be viable especially when you consider the likely average fare needed to cover the costs
Bartsimho
Member
I'd ask what are the number of flights for Linz, Salzburg and Munich as well as I doubt they would ever want it to be a point to point with no intermediates. Even if it required a Shuffle style arrangement for one direction
As I said above, London-Vienna is too long for a through sleeper these days. Sleepers can be commercially viable up to around 12 hrs, beyond which they only tend to exist when national governments are willing to pay extra to secure a through service (the Amsterdam sleepers fall into this category, the Dutch government paid OBB to extend them from Düsseldorf; the various sleepers from European cities to Moscow are another example).
The main benefit of sleepers compared with conventional or high speed trains is that you can sleep through the night on a through train, you don't have to get up at 3am to change trains. Before 20:00 and after 09:00 passengers will be up anyway so they may as well change trains for high speed ones.
London to Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Zurich are in the right sort of range. Remember that sleeper trains often involve an element of portion working in order to serve more origin/destination pairs without the passenger needing to be woken so you need to account for an hour or two of shunting during the journey.
DanielB
Member
The one from Vienna/Innsbruck is sort of, as it has been added to NS's franchise, though NS is actually paying the government for the franchise instead of the other way around. Running it within the franchise did however improve the profitability.
Amsterdam - Zürich is open access however and thus not subsidised. As of the new franchise in 2025 this will be the case for most international services.
Bartsimho
Member
I would ask why 12 hours especially for a journey so long.
In the day it takes 9 hours and while the 8pm-8am is the perfect times to go for it an 8pm-10am missing the morning peak should also work due to it also functioning as the hotel for a night.
That's to 14 hours and seems doable. St Pancras-Vienna in the day is 12 hours so having it be 14 hours with stops in Munich, Salzburg and Linz seems like it would have the demand there
It’s 12 hours (more than that, actually) in the day with significant stretches at 300km/h.
Sleepers aren’t going to be doing that. I reckon it would be 16h plus.
StephenHunter
Established Member
They're using NS-branded locomotives for the service, albeit hired in from ELL. It's also moderately amusing that the Innsbruck to Amsterdam train is numbered 420, considering the reputation Amsterdam is trying to shake off.
AlbertBeale
Established Member
In fact, I welcome not having to change. I'd rather spend a few hours extra end-to-end than have to be booted out at breakfast time and then change trains, even if that second train does the remainder of the journey more quickly.
Having your own (continuous) space in which to work, snooze, chat, read, whatever - if you're in a sleeper berth - with breakfast while you're on the move, is convenient, and less faff.
In the days before the Baltic states joined the EU, and they still had a rail network connecting the 3 countries, I did a Tallinn-Warsaw journey on a very-much-not-high-speed through sleeper train which was a bit "clunky", with at one point a long stop to wait for another service to meet up with it and be tagged on (in Vilnius, awaiting the St Petersburg portion), and it was certainly a literally round-the-clock trip. But reasonably comfortable, relaxed, time to get on with my reading and writing, fascinating places to look at en route, interesting people to talk to (if I wanted to). There were chances to stretch my legs at a couple of places en route if I wanted to; all in all perfectly acceptable, and I doubt I'd have been bothered with arriving in Warsaw a bit sooner the next morning by changing for the last stretch, even if it had been an option.
(The only down side was the still-old-fashioned way of changing the bogies at a Belarusian border station [the through route traversed a little corner of Belarus]. Not that I minded a bit of clattering and jolting in the night in itself, but the Belarusian border guards took the opportunity of the train being stuck there for ages to go through the train trying to get money for technically unnecessary "transit visas". I got hauled off the train when I stood my ground, and ended up arguing with a bunch of them in a shed by the side of the track for most of the duration of the - slow - bogie changing procedure.)
I'm not going to argue with that, though if you left London at 19:00 you would be in Munich around 09:00 (plus an hour for the time difference, subtract an hour on the way back) so you're not going to be interrupted in the middle of breakfast.
What I am going to say is that there aren't enough London-Vienna through passengers to
Most sleepers in Europe are pick-up only for the first few stops and set-down only for the last few, they never resell a berth that has been used for only part of a journey even to ride on the seats like the Highland Sleeper does on the WHL. So by the time that you get past Munich you've got more staff than passengers. The stewards would have been on for an insanely long time.
As I said before, sleepers of more than 12 hours or so have only run when a government specifically opts to fund them. I can't see any British or Austrian government doing that for London to Vienna, the best you could ever expect would be London - Munich, and that’s a stretch itself.
Of course things were rather different in the days when a sleeper coach could just be bunged onto a loco hauled day train rather than running as an entirely separate service.
StephenHunter
Established Member
That's actually happening with the Zurich-Prague service now; it's a EuroCity after Leipzig.
nwales58
Member
So that your first Dresden-Prague of the day can be randomly late.
In this case it is even worse, if late likely terminated at Dresden due to the daytime engineering blockade between Bad Schandau and Decin.
There aren't many EuroCities left in Western Europe, most have been replaced with high speed units.
AlbertBeale
Established Member
I presume you're referring to the "clockwise" Zurich-Prague, via Basel and Germany. The other one, via Austria (part of one of the multi-destination eastbound sleepers from Zurich each night), already uses an early morning Linz-Prague daytime train for the last leg of the Zurich-Prague coach.
mike57
Established Member
An interesting CNN report here: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/night-train-revolution-alternative-to-planes/index.html
Most of the issues discussed on here are covered, and it seems well written and reasonably accurate and sums up how things are progressing.
Simply Railway has released a YouTube video featuring the new OBB sleeper cars:
I particularly like the 'pod' idea as a lower cost alternative to a full size sleeper berth.
Most of the issues discussed on here are covered, and it seems well written and reasonably accurate and sums up how things are progressing.
Simply Railway has released a YouTube video featuring the new OBB sleeper cars:
Bartsimho
Member
I did see that video before posting about this. I had done some extra research for those pods. He states the length is 190cm or 6 foot 3 inches and I looked up the current Night Riviera bed lengths and they are the same length. That leads me to believe that they could be fitted in the UK loading gauge as the Night Riviera also has Bunk Beds. It would still have the narrow corridor but that is accepted as well.
mike57
Established Member
Unfortunately in this country the standard response seems to be "we cant do that", and reel off a load of excuses, instead of saying "lets do that" and then overcome the problems. It seems to pervade all industries in the UK, not just railways. Mini rant over.
Rest assured that this is the standard railway attitude almost anywhere.
farci
Member
Vlogger account of a NightJet journeyHamburg-Innsbruck. He is impressed by the design of the pod but makes some trenchant remarks about operations
Everything wrong with Europe's new CAPSULE sleeper train
Everything wrong with Europe's new CAPSULE sleeper train
I just tried out Austria's new, controversially priced night trains that have private sleeper pod. It's a slightly surreal experience being in a private capsule on a train: very cool that somebody invented it, but far from perfect right now. By reviewing ÖBB's new Minicabin on this 14-hour journey between Hamburg and Austria, I'm covering what the new private version of the couchette is like, what food and facilities are included, and what I did and didn't like about the experience, as well as talking about the ticket prices. Nightjet have landed themselves in hot water with their new dynamic pricing algorithm for these sleeper trains, so hold on to your hats
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doc7austin
Member
One thing about the European Sleeper train:
Now these are unconfirmed rumours!
Well, European Sleeper will extend the Brussels-Amsterdam-Berlin night train to Prague vom March 25, 2024.
There appears to be problems with the sleeping car.
Does anyone have more info on that. Are these sleeping cars certified to run into the Czech Republic ?
Now these are unconfirmed rumours!
Well, European Sleeper will extend the Brussels-Amsterdam-Berlin night train to Prague vom March 25, 2024.
There appears to be problems with the sleeping car.
Does anyone have more info on that. Are these sleeping cars certified to run into the Czech Republic ?
duesselmartin
Established Member
There are a number of sleeping cars certified for CD. DB City Night Line and many non Czech operators used to go there. I assume the problem is the lack of availability of extra sleeping cars. The market seems to be empty.
doc7austin
Member
The CIWL Type P sleeping cars are really certified to run in Czech Republic?
CNL operated these cars into Prague before? Really?
CNL operated these cars into Prague before? Really?
Gag Halfrunt
Member
- Joined
- 23 Jul 2019
- Messages
- 596
Here's a photo of a Type P in Prague in 2006.
StephenHunter
Established Member
They're AB30s - the original 20x1 two-level compartments were replaced with 10x3 conventional compartments.
As you don’t know what the make-up of the others is in advance (5 random individuals or a group of 5 in cahoots with each other) any such thought is as irrational as the fear of being in a compartment with a single individual. The real danger ;if there is one at all) is probably as you travel on your connecting local train late at night or walk from your car in the car
Park.
StephenHunter
Established Member
Yes, murders on trains full stop are pretty rare, let alone sleeper trains.
I did see a documentary about one murder on a sleeper where it turned out the whole train were in cahoots. They'd have gotten away with it too but there was a famous detective on there with them