Tetragon213
Member
I find it weird that they are so heavily subsidised from taxes, and yet still charge so much!
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Caledonian Sleeper
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The same could be said about the entirety of the UK railway network!
godfreycomplex
Established Member
- Joined
- 23 Jun 2016
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Not that I'm trying to excuse that or anything, but even absolutely full a 16 car sleeper has not much more than 200 people on. And 60 of them are in the seats. That'd be less than a third full on an 11 car Pendolino. Add to that all the various ancillary costs and it's not a cheap operation.
Well, sleepers are very expensive to operate. Special rolling stock, with low capacity, that needs lots of crew (working night shifts) and servicing, used for one trip a day.
Class15
Established Member
How are the seating maths working there? Just over 12 people a coach seems a little pessimistic to me, particularly considering that some are seating coaches.
godfreycomplex
Established Member
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31 max in each seating coach. No passengers in each lounge car. 10 compartments in each sleeping coach, with 6 in PRM coaches. And not all of them are going to be double occupancy.
Typical formation has 9 sleepers with 10 cabins and 3 with 6 cabins, plus 2 seated coaches with 62 people between them (and 2 x bar cars). So the absolute maximum number of passengers is 216 in the beds and 62 seated, ie 278.
However, obviously, not all the cabins are taken by two people. And not all the cabins or seats (especially) are taken. And sometimes the trains don’t run at full length, whether that be because of planned engineering works (as is happening this weekend) or shortage of coaches (as has been happening for months).
Tetragon213
Member
Quite! It's always "demand outstrips supply", and yet the TOCs ask for ever larger subsidies while upcharging and downservicing...
The Night Riviera runs on Diesel for the whole journey with the same limitations, and yet I paid about 2/3rds of Cally's fare for a room on the Riviera! GWR's offering included lounge access, free hot drinks, and breakfast in the fare, as opposed to a £10 fee for "continental breakfast" (which in my experience is code for "no-name pastry with no-name yoghurt and no-name jam").
I've heard you can pay another fee of £5 for shower access at Euston on the Cally? Iirc it was mentioned elsewhere on the forums, but I can't find any note of it on Cally's promotional material.
During Your Trip
Read our Help and Support pages for everything you need to know while travelling with Caledonian Sleeper, including our hints and tips and all information about our accommodation.
> Guests arriving at Fort William, Inverness and London Euston can purchase a shower token for £10 from our on-board teams and showers are available on arrival.
or, full Scottish included for passengers in a "club" room
Tetragon213
Member
During Your Trip
Read our Help and Support pages for everything you need to know while travelling with Caledonian Sleeper, including our hints and tips and all information about our accommodation.www.sleeper.scot
> Guests arriving at Fort William, Inverness and London Euston can purchase a shower token for £10 from our on-board teams and showers are available on arrival.
or, full Scottish included for passengers in a "club" room
£10? Jeez...
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
The Night Riviera, however, does not split into portions / join up portions en route each requiring a separate locomotive and driver plus and additional staff to handle or supervise the shunting movements caused by splitting does it? The Caledonian is a rather more complex operation.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Depends whether you are referring to the original failure (in the middle of nowhere) or the possibility of running the late ex Fort William service as an extra all the way to London.
125Spotter
Member
I am adding little to that already debated, other than to note the subject of costs and how staggered I was when investigating the cost of a trip on the CS recently. I knew sleepers were expensive, but I was taken aback quite how much – looking at leisure travel and the somewhat romantic appeal of a trip to Scotland overnight by rail.
It was cost prohibitive for me. I wonder who is the majority actually booking and relying upon these spaces – and indeed who is paying for the journey, if not the same person? (i.e. are many of these bookings made by either people holding industry discounted travel authorities, or by employers sending staff to/from Scotland and funding that travel?).
On work travel, my employer has a generous travel policy and a number of staff north of the border who will travel to London on a regular basis, but even our budget would not stretch to the CS when compared to the option of having staff fly down in the early morning to London City, or take an early train getting them into the office in the late morning (as, indeed, generally happens).
Perhaps some employers are less flexible and require staff to attend at their usual hours, but ours will take the pragmatic view that a few hours later in the office to save some considerable spend on sleeper or an overnight hotel is overall better value to the business. Even travelling the previous day during the off-peak and funding a hotel may be cheaper at times, and not be particularly disruptive provided staff are able to check email and messages periodically etc.
It was cost prohibitive for me. I wonder who is the majority actually booking and relying upon these spaces – and indeed who is paying for the journey, if not the same person? (i.e. are many of these bookings made by either people holding industry discounted travel authorities, or by employers sending staff to/from Scotland and funding that travel?).
On work travel, my employer has a generous travel policy and a number of staff north of the border who will travel to London on a regular basis, but even our budget would not stretch to the CS when compared to the option of having staff fly down in the early morning to London City, or take an early train getting them into the office in the late morning (as, indeed, generally happens).
Perhaps some employers are less flexible and require staff to attend at their usual hours, but ours will take the pragmatic view that a few hours later in the office to save some considerable spend on sleeper or an overnight hotel is overall better value to the business. Even travelling the previous day during the off-peak and funding a hotel may be cheaper at times, and not be particularly disruptive provided staff are able to check email and messages periodically etc.
On a point of pedantry... splitting and joining is historically chosen as an operational efficiency, saving running multiple trains (with multiple locos and crews) all the way to/from London. If the splits are more expensive today, do you not think they would have been abandoned?
Of course, there is the complication of needing diesel haulage north of Glasgow/Edinburgh, which is unavoidable. One might ask whether the diesel portions should run to Carstairs direct, avoiding some of the shunting...
Anyway, the point that railways are expensive still stand, even if initially obvious solutions are not as simple as they look.
an increasing number of organisations - including the one I work for - (both commercial and public sector) are banning the use of internal flights except in very limited circumstances because of the emissions issue.
For me, we have a (nominal) max cost for hotels in London, and for travel (although we're allowed to travel 1st class for journeys over a given journey time) - the cost of Cal Sleeper doesn't exceed the sum of travel + hotel, so use is permitted
norbitonflyer
Established Member
The same FW seated coach and lounge car is used for both southbound and northbound. It can't both go on to London and back to Fort William
125Spotter
Member
A good point – and one I wholeheartedly endorse. My employer hasn't got around to doing this yet, it seems, although I do believe we buy a block carbon offset each year for all internal travel. The efficacies and variations in carbon offsets are well known to me, such that I'd prefer to reduce my emissions to begin with, and the carbon cost isn't something broadly factored into our travel policy as far as I recall. If I were north of the border I'd almost certainly be prioritising travel by rail if only for my disdain for (short haul) airport experiences and the asinine luggage restrictions on most such flights.
Employers are key to encouraging/nudging staff to think in more environmentally friendly ways and to then take those options, but I often find it regrettable that this doesn't extend to the societal shift that would be required to apply such choices to our leisure travel, too. For example, I'd love to follow suggestions to travel long distance by sea rather than air if I could, but this is (a) typically seen as the "luxury" option and priced accordingly, and of course (b) my annual leave entitlement would be eaten by that one trip, possibly without even the opportunity to spend time at the destination! This goes back to my earlier point that I find the CS regrettably cost prohibitive.
The cynic in me wonders whether the prohibition on internal flights is made largely in the employer's interest if they are obliged to report their carbon emissions/environmental impact assessment in their annual report. At least it still achieves the desired (carbon reducing) outcome.