Night Trains – They’re not dead yet

1. “by entrusting their passports to the train’s staff, passengers could sleep through border crossings”

   That brought a wry smile and memories of a more recent and more suspicious world, when the iron curtain still divided Europe. Liverpool Street to Warsaw involved the day ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, where a decidedly mixed rake of carriages would be waiting – a couple of shiny West German coaches, one or two rather less shiny East German and Polish one and the through coach to Moscow, complete with samovar in the end lobby. Leaving in the evening, the train passed from Holland into West Germany, West Germany into East Germany, East Germany into West Berlin, West Berlin into East Germany and finally East Germany into Poland, all during the course of a long night, with passports thoroughly checked at every crossing and the level of baggage searches increasing the further east we went (and the obviousness of the bribes to overlook a little personal smuggling increasing in parallel). It was quite an experience, but not one which involved much sleep.

2. For some additional context, I’d love to know where Japan fits into the global trends. The story seems similar: once-plentiful sleeper trains have faltered in the face of competition from Shinkansen, leaving only a couple of services to areas otherwise un-covered by the high-speed railways (the Seto coast, Shikoku, and Gifu). Countering the trend is a growing number of super-luxury services promoting a land-cruise approach to travel, including the Seven Stars in Kyushu and the new Twilight Express Mikukaze.

   One area the Japanese industry does seem to have Europe beaten, however, is the rolling stock. A number of Japanese sleepers use purpose-built trains, featuring transparent roofs, wide-angle windows, and even – for the lucky occupants of Deluxe Suite A on the Seven Stars train – a full-width window at the back of the train.

   Look at this beauties:

   https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/twilight-express-mizukaze-800×504.jpg
   https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/seven-stars-kyushu-768×448.jpg
   https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/train-suite-shikishima-inside-e1492765931872.jpg

3. Some of us remember internal-to-Scotland (only) overnighters.
   The main problem, now, is ( I think ) accommodation in “normal” coaches is not comfortably possible with the upright single seats of current saloon stock types.
   Old-fashioned compartments were much more suitable …. which would men recofiguring the internal layout of any coaches used in such services … which then £_costs.
   The huge advantage, even in a conutry as “small” as GB is the ability to get to your destination REALLY EARLY. (Note)
   So, the sleeper ( or even “Couchette” or sitting on thcushions ) price-extra can be deducted from any hotel bill that you will not then be paying.

   (Note: You want to get to Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds for (say) 07.45 hrs?
   Current earliest times are ….08.04, 08.27 & 08.22 & even then, you are probably going to have to usea a cab/taxi to get to the departure station …. )

4. The problem I have with night trains, is that while they are exciting to use on holiday , I often don’t sleep very well on them so I’m not sure I’d want to regularly use them (especially when I need to be active the following day).

   The reality is that high speed rail has taken a massive chunk of the market, many of those services on the sleeper map are serving routes where high speed services don’t exist. The Nordic countries for example still have many domestic sleeper routes as away from the big southern cities, rail services are still pretty slow. The Swedish plan sounds nice, but realistically needs the fixed rail link to be open between Denmark and Germany first before it becomes a viable alternative to flying.

5. I just love these images from Japan. Would that we could do the same. Alas.

6. There is no sleeper train between St Petersburg and Helsinki – the two are connected by modern ‘Allegro’ trains (variant of Pendolino) with a journey time of around 3h.

   There is a night train between Helsinki and Moscow, however.

   Given Finland’s rail gauge is a whopping 4mm wider than Russian ( 1524mm vs 1520mm railways in Finland were built when it was part of the Russian empire) there is no need for any dedicated gauge-changing facilities.

7. “saving the traveller an expensive hotel stay in London”
   Have you seen the prices on the new Caledonian Sleeper (on the odd occasion when they can make it run)? It is no longer competing in this market, having decided it is offering a 4 or 5 star service of its own – not that any reviewer would agree as yet.

8. As the national high-speed networks of Europe start to get connected together over the next decade or two – there are high-speed connections under construction or at the late planning stages between Denmark and Germany, between France and Italy, between Italy and Germany (two, one via Switzerland and one via Austria); the Spanish network already crosses the French border but doesn’t yet connect to the main French network; the connection is under construction – then it will become possible to travel much longer distances at high speed than it is at present.

   I’m hopeful that one of the railways (perhaps ÖBB given their interest in NightJet) will fit out some high-speed trains as sleepers and start running some of the really long routes that will become possible as a single overnight as a result. Vienna to Stockholm is an obvious one for ÖBB. Something like Köln-Malaga or Frankfurt-Malaga would be really popular for holiday-makers, for instance.

9. I recall that I took a sleeper from London to Manchester during the 1960s. I needed to reach Manchester in good time for a friend’s wedding. However, I have forgotten the route. I think we ended up in Manchester Central but did we leave from Marylebone? These days the journey seems bizarre!

10. JJ
    The “usual” sleeper London-M/cr was IIRC Euston-Piccadilly (London Road)
    But there was an ovenight Marylebone-to Central – effectgively a newspaper train, with a couple of ordinary carriages attached – I too have used that one ….

11. There is already a fixed rail link between Copenhagen and Hamburg (via Odense). But further high speed and more direct links will of course be helpful.

12. @Richard Gadsden the problem is finding a single pair of endpoints – or two small clusters – with enough demand to warrant a full train between them. The current sleeper network works on the basis of shunting through coaches between different consists, but that’s not such a practical approach for high-speed trains.

    Frankfurt-Malaga? Maybe, but I struggle to imagine the demand would be there to fill a train a week, even in summer. I hope I’m wrong.

13. On the issue of not being woken up by border guards, we were in a Couchette on the Thello Milan-Paris train at Easter, which goes through Switzerland, and we had our door knocked at 3am by Swiss border guards checking passports. So unfortunately you can be woken up – and Switzerland does not have a frictionless border with Italy, despite them both being in Schengen

14. I think the Swiss border is described as “usually frictionless” – but checks can be made (anywhere) when required. I suspect your experience was an unlucky one-off. Unless someone knows differently?

15. as far as I know Italy still has a fairly extensive Trenitalia night network, including trains to Sicily (little chance of that fixed link actually ever being built- still train ferries), and they own the open-access operator Thello which runs Paris-Venice

16. @Jim Jordan

    During electrification of the West Coast Main line there were many long term alternatives – recall that neither the Manchester nor Birmingham versions of the “Blue Pullmans” ran from Euston.

    @Richard gadsden

    Or even revive the idea of through services from, say, Manchester to Paris or London to Germany?

17. Chinese high speed trains are already providing sleeper cars for very long trips.

    Despite Schengen, I’ve been passport checked on train journeys from France to Spain and from Luxembourg and Switzerland to France.

18. Schengen requires the termination of passport checks at borders and the removal of border posts. I know of border posts that have disappeared in the last year.
    Schengen member states can reinstate passport checks within their borders (but not at the border) for a limited time in response to a national emergency. France did so following terrorist attacks. I think this what commenters have experienced.
    Passport checks during train journeys are, by definition, within a country’s borders.

19. @Michael
    @Malcolm

    Passport checks on the Thello Paris-Venice service on the Swiss border have been in place for a few years now. They were put in place in response to the migrant crisis.

20. What makes me really angry is how eye-wateringly expensive the Caledonian Sleeper has become. When ScotRail ran the service, there used to be the brilliant ‘Bargain Berth’ fares, where you could get a berth ticket for £20-30.

    Things are very different now. Hundreds of pounds for a berth, even the seat tickets are pretty expensive. It feels like Serco have deliberately implemented a strategy of aiming the service purely at wealthy tourists, leaving people on low/middle incomes with no option but to take a daytime train or fly. GWR also seem to have cottoned on to this, as the Night Riviera fares structure seems to be heading in a similar direction.

21. I am really excited about a future high-speed sleeper network in Europe. I have travelled on the Eurostar overnight ski train to the French Alps, which was absolutely brilliant and provides a taste of what could be possible. It would be even better with dedicated sleeper coaching stock.

    No fuss of flying, no long bus transfer from a far away airport like Geneva or Chambery. The Eurostar gets you within an hour or less of the resorts and you get an extra day of skiing compared to all your friends/family that have taken the plane!

22. Nearly two extra days skiing, as the train goes out on friday night and returns on saturday night, so you could get eight days of skiing (saturday to saturday) though you’d probably need to stop early on the last day.

23. With regard to high-speed sleepers: the high speed networks need to be maintained at some point – usually this is at night. Given the speeds achieved, they are maintained to tighter tolerances than conventional routes, which is why the engineering slots at night really DO get used a lot.

    This is why I strongly doubt night sleepers are a feasible concept – that’s before we get to the question about whether they can wash their face financially.

24. “ÖBB is expecting to operate a sleeper train service to France later this year, a Belgian connection in the near future” – do you have a link to more information about this? I’ve tried googling it but can only find information about planned expansions to Amsterdam

25. @ANONYMOUS

    It was a French newspaper site, which I cannot find now. Quite possible that I misplaced Amsterdam in Belgium whilst transcribing. I shall update the article accordingly.

26. Re : Straphan – “With regard to high-speed sleepers: the high speed networks need to be maintained at some point – usually this is at night”.

    Indeed. Another point being that overnight services tend to have various route options to allow for planned overnight engineering work as we see with both sleeper services in GB (with the obvious exceptions west of Exeter and the West Highland Line – but note that even Aberdeen and Inverness can be reached from England by alternative routes).

    High speed lines, however, rarely have alternative routings that are anything like as fast – hence the need for planned overnight (and daytime “periodes blanches”) maintenance periods in the first place, to ensure daytime availability of the infrastructure.

    How the Chinese high-speed sleepers get round this I have no idea.

    (Not quite sure why London Reconnections seems to like talking about sleepers so much, but I guess it’s fun.)

27. While resident in Munich in the 90’s I frequently saw articulated sleeper trains with the same body profile as the original Eurostar stock, so had high hopes that they would make it through to UK destinations one day (otherwise, why bother with that unusual profile if confined to the mainland?). Little hope now, of course. I did once do a sleeper-plus-Eurostar trip from there. It wasn’t bad, but the twisty-turny Rhein Valley route made for less than solid night’s sleep, with the added thought that I was missing what would be spectacular views during daytime. At the same time, there was something deeply satisfying about getting up and alighting straight into the familiar bustle of the early-bird commuters arriving for work.

28. Re: NickBXN – I think those must have been the Talgo sleepers (which didn’t last long with DB). Much as they may have appeared to suit the British loading gauge, they would not hace been compatible with British platforms and other fixed objects in the “lower sector”.

    The only other rolling stock derived from the original Eurostars is the other UK international train – the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise coaches. No sleeper stock has ever been derived from the TGV architecture.

    As far as I am aware, the only examples of sleeper stock built to British loading gauge and operated in continental Europe have been the Night Ferry, the Mk 3 sleepers used in Denmark for a while when BR found they’d ordered far too many, and trial running of the Channel Tunnel Nightstock (now in Canada and looking even more undersized compared to the surrounding infrastructure!).

29. Putting on my customary Mr Grumpy hat, the problem with this article (and many of the comments above) is that doesn’t attempt to understand the reasons why the last generation of sleeper services disappeared, beyond a brief nod at cheap flights. To understand why that was, would goo far to understanding what had to be done to correct it – and the cost of doing so.

    – Firstly, there’s the problem of the hotelkeeping customer facing aspect. The idea of shared cabins, and plumbing at the end of the corridor may have been acceptable a century ago but are hardly so today, except for student hostels, for a whole variety of reasons.

    – Secondly, The demographic who perforce stay today in hostel accommodation do not, by and large, have very deep pockets

    -Thirdly, the concept of a through service of sleepers from multiple O/Ds, with the train being assembled and pulled apart as it went on its way, requires the existence of station pilots, as well as seriously compromising reliability. Sleeper operators have therefore found themselves driven to un block trains in rakes that require little marshalling. Other factors such as diverging standards have tended to reinforce that. The demise of Wagons Lit has been a major factor here

    -Fourthly, the increasing difficulty of buying multileg international tickets (plus the effect of different computerised booking systems speaking to each other – SNCF and DB, we are looking at you.

    -Fifthly, the introduction of track access charges. In the UK, where it costs several thousands to move a train between London and Edinburgh, spreading that cost over, at best a couple of hundred punters, adds a straight flat rate charge to the normal hotellerie costs.

    Operators have responded to these problems by moving up market to provide selfcontained cabins, block trains, and services entirely under their commercial control. These trends inevitably shrink the market somewhat. VSOE was a good indicator of the future, even if the current offers are not quite as “high touch”. You will notice that Nightjet will run these through services themselves. (Although these developments also allow a second tier, seat only, market to appear – if the volumes justify).

    Forget the idea of cheap sleeping car travel with the constant remarshalling at Basel or Chiasso the swaying excursion through aging Belgian compartment stock to find a poorly stocked buffet, and the deposition on the platform at Chur or Lausanne at some ungodly hour. * Fun when a child not so later in life.
    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________

    * Lord Dawlish writes: I stopped using sleepers when Wagons Lits ceased to provide a special cushioned place on the compartment wall for your fob watch.

30. Good points from Graham H.

    On the track access charges, this is because of the end of “what the traffic will bear”. Railway managements were historically prepared to make a small operating profit on various niche kinds of traffic, of which sleepers were one, and use other traffics to pay for the track. No longer.

    And the eye-watering capital costs of any kind of passenger coach make it difficult to justify one which carries only a small number of passengers and achieves one journey per 24 hours.

31. I could add that “what the traffic will bear” was exemplified by the enormous differences in price per ton-mile between stone and coal, when the intrinsic costs of carrying them are essentially equal. Might still apply, to the extent that there is any coal being carried.

32. @Greg
    “But there was an ovenight Marylebone-to Central – effectgively a newspaper train, with a couple of ordinary carriages attached ”

    @Malcolm”Railway managements were historically prepared to make a small operating profit on various niche kinds of traffic, of which sleepers were one, and use other traffics to pay for the track. No longer.”

    A significant number of useful overnight services disappeared as an unintended consequence of sectorisation, in the BR era. It used to be no trouble at all to include a passenger carriage in an overnight train that primarily existed to carry mail or newspapers – why use a Full Brake (BG) when a BSK (corridor brake second) was available and had enough luggage space? I recall using such services from London to Leeds – Manchester to Lincoln – Leeds to Shrewsbury – Inverness to Glasgow. Some – e.g London to Manchester, London to Leeds – Scottish domestic services – even included a sleeping car or two, although the passenger compartments were used as unofficial 2-berth couchettes by the more impecunious and/or spontaneous traveller (3-berth if someone was prepared to use the floor).

    However, with sectorisation every line and every train had a designated “prime user”, (Inter City, Network South East, Other Passenger, Parcels, Freight) which paid for its upkeep. The other sectors using the line paid for any additional costs associated with their own specific requirements (such as electrification, stations, or higher weight limits or speeds). Likewise for a train. The flaw in this was that if a train (or line) carried passengers, the relevant passenger sector was automatically designated as the “prime user”. Hence that sector could improve its bottom line by withdrawing passenger facilities, thereby putting the running costs on the parcel sector, and with the pressure on Inter City in particular to turn a profit that is what they did. The saving to BR as a whole was minimal (indeed the lost revenue may well have outweighed the marginal cost of providing passenger facilities, especially as the BSKs continued to be used and, for the guard’s benefit, still had to be heated).

    The loss of newspaper traffic and the on/off relationship with Royal Mail eventually did for many of the overnight services anyway. And as the parcels service was now expected to pay for its own dedicated trains, and rent space in stations and on daytime passenger trains, (despite the cost to the passenger sector of providing that space being essentially zero, as most trains still had guards vans and most stations had fewer staff than they were built to accommodate so had plenty of spare space for a parcels office) it rapidly became uneconomic on paper, even though the true marginal costs of running it were indeed, truly marginal.

33. Re: Graham H – And you didn’t even mention the occupation of valuable city centre platform space during the morning peak!

34. @Balthazar – Indeed, not to mention the cost of the paths used by a very long train with non-standard traction accessing the said platform and then running ecs (extra costs for specialised stabling). Just for amusement (?), A BOFP calculation suggests that the two extra platforms needed for sleepers at the rebuilt Euston will add around £200m to the project cost – yet another hidden subsidy.

    More generally, on the subject of night time non-sleeper trains, as mentioned by Timbeau, much the same arguments apply as with the night time tube – there are, these days, increasing pressures on white time to do basic repairs. This probably true throughout much of western Europe now. Besides the collapse of the newspaper trade, the somewhat earlier demise of the milk traffic led to a fairly extensive cull of overnight mixed trains . By the time of sectorisation, the numbers of mixed trains was getting very small.

35. “Dover Ferry station was the only timetabled British Rail passenger point with no platform”

    I can’t find a station called Dover Ferry. Dover Marine? http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/d/dover_western_docks/

    It had platforms though, according to that article anyway.

36. What about Dartmouth station? The nearest platform (and railway track) was across the river at Kingswear.

37. Presumably the same would have applied then to Hull Corporation Pier too – although in its case there were at least rails elsewhere on the same side of the river!

38. @SL – Dover Marine certainly had platforms. Possibly some of the stations on the former Kelvedon and Tollesbury Light railway or the Grimsby and Immingham Tramway might qualify, not to mention the intermediate stations on the Corris..

39. @Ronnie MB – my favourite railway station with no “train” service is/was Glenorchy on Lake Wakatipu in NZ. The station comprised a station and a pier for the NZR steamer service, albeit with a very short rollbahn along the pier (~30m) and a small wooden trolley as its only rolling stock.

40. @Ronnie MB

    Indeed, although as its name implies, Hull Corporation Pier was not owned by the railway – Dartmouth station was.

41. @Timbeau: the demise of newspaper traffic would also have to do with the huge changes in the newspaper industry in the 1980s – the shift from printing newspapers in city centre locations (Fleet Street etc) a short way from passenger terminals, to Docklands and out-of-town locations (or just sending the page layouts electronically to a printer nearer the desired market). It’s hard to see that newspaper traffic would have survived even if the old-style regions had remained.

42. I assume that “Dover Ferry” was a kind of notional “station” used for timetabling purposes, that was in fact a literal ferry – in the same way that BR classified their train ferries as “locomotives” that “hauled” the rolling stock on them.

    @Malcolm: Railway managements were historically prepared to make a small operating profit on various niche kinds of traffic, of which sleepers were one, and use other traffics to pay for the track. No longer.

    Up to a point, but Open Access operators in most countries are only charged marginal costs, not the full cost of providing infrastructure, which probably explains why ÖBB can make money running sleeper trains in Germany when DB couldn’t – as well as the fact that Austrian wages are lower and their healthcare costs fall entirely on the government (unlike in Germany where employers have to pay for health insurance).

43. A correction to the item: the Golden Arrow was a day train (as the posters reproduced show), not a night one.

    GH: there’s no longer any railway connection with Glenorchy, but the railway goods shed still exists, painted in traditional style, together with a solitary wagon – see http://www.glenorchycommunity.nz/assets/VINCE/Glenorchy-Wharf.pdf.

    Night trains still run in both the USA and Canada, the latter (as already mentioned) including CTRL night stock sleepers (now branded Renaissance) between Montreal and Halifax.

    Dover Ferry (which I suspect was just accounting usage) made not have had platforms, but the Dover train ferries did, so that sleeper passengers could use the ship’s facilities whilst en voyage. The sleepers had to be carefully lined up so that the discharges from the splatter loos were over the ferry’s relevant receptacles…

44. @Timbeau
    ‘although the passenger compartments were used as unofficial 2-berth couchettes by the more impecunious and/or spontaneous traveller (3-berth if someone was prepared to use the floor). ‘
    For children: 5-berth couchettes, including the string-hammock luggage racks.
    Not sure how safe that was.

45. @Betterbee – there was never a rail connexion with Glenorchy – merely, as I said, a rollbahn about 30m long down the pier (a small portion of the track was still there when I visited it a few years ago) and yes, the building was an NZR station with the building serving as a passenger shelter until the NZR steamer service was withdrawn, A little poking around on the internet would reveal pictures of the steamer service calling there. The museum now in the former station building also has photos showing this. I very much doubt if there was ever more than one trolley – there wouldn’t have been any room and the track certainly had no sign of any points.

46. GH: the railway connection I was referring to was indeed the NZR steamer service from Queenstown and Kingston, privatised long before such actions became fashionable. The ex-railway TSS Earnslaw still performs sterling service on the lake, though (but not normally to Glenorchy).

    Now, back to sleepers (which ceased in NZ in 1987, though ex NZR Silver Star sleepers still run in the Eastern & Oriental Express through Malaysia and Thailand).

47. @Betterbee – I’m not sure the Earnslaw could berth at Glenorchy pier now as the shoreline is heavily silted these days. Definitely a mixed traffic operation in NZR days, with passengers in the saloon and sheep on the lower deck, but probably not a night time service…..

48. Given I’m on an overnight service in the USA in a week and a half and the last I did was in Myanmar a few years back, this article looks a little geographically blind. How is the night train market working in the rest of the world?

49. I highly recommended Underground, Overground by Andrew Martin as well. It was that book, which prompted me to purchase his other two.

    The Briancon – Paris journey is quite beautiful and I am glad they are keeping it. The Night Riveria train was a little noisy to it’s constant stopping-starting. Caledonian at the moment is an exercise in dice rolling.

50. @Ian J – the ships appeared in TOPS as – as I recall – class 96. I haven’t been able to track down a station code for “Dover Ferry” yet. [As I also recall, not only could the punters get out and roam the ship, but the ship passengers could visit the train deck, which I did.]

    To revert to night train services, in the London area, practice seemed to vary widely from company to company – and the tradition carried forward into BR. For example, the GE provided a reasonable level of service 24/7 on its suburban network, and even the LNW route offered a handful of inner and longer distance departures after midnight, but the SW shut down the whole of their suburban network after midnight with just a small handful of departures .

51. I assume Dover Ferry was completely different to Western Docks?

    I used the latter in late 1993 to catch the connecting train from the Hyrdofoil from Oostende…

52. @TIMBEAU, 4 July 2019 at 20:55
    What about Dartmouth station? The nearest platform (and railway track) was across the river at Kingswear.

    The passenger ferry was always operated by the railway company, and still is (it could be argued the railway is run by the boat company now!) Dartmouth station was really the GWR’s centrally located main terminal building, linked to the actual rail facilities by a watery people mover shuttle. A neat solution avoiding an expensive and difficult bridge.

    There’s no truth in the oft repeated story that the ‘station’ building on the quayside was constructed early and intended to eventually host attached rail facilities if the promotors’ original notion of tracks crossing the river had ever been realised. The station location in that case would likely have been further upstream, near the upper ferry. No longer in rail use, but still standing on the quayside as a restaurant, Dartmouth station was assembled from standard wooden prefab parts at around the same time as the railway reached Kingswear.

53. @Graham H is right that people generally no longer pay for hotels which don’t have en-suites, so trains marketing themselves as hotels on wheels are going to suffer. But given hostels do stay in business, and people do take flights and sleep on them, is there a market for improved shared accommodation on trains that has the bonus of not needing accommodation in the destination?

    I took the family on a sleeper Paris-South of France last summer and the train was overcrowded to the extent that it left an hour late, as the crew were coming to all the cabins, checking how many occupants they had, and yelling loudly to try to make people accept a stranger in their cabin. Despite having booked extra fictional children to guarantee privacy (it’s the same price as a privacy supplement and the only way to buy it online!) we still got an earful (for once, a screaming autistic child was handy…)
    Demand was clearly there – though sleep was scarce as it was very bumpy at various points, and the service made the old Caledonian sleeper look luxurious!

    In comparison, slept wonderfully on the Caledonian sleeper, unexpected coffee in the morning, comfortable beds (I admit my opinion was influenced by being an hour late, thus getting more sleep, arriving in Inverness as breakfast places opened, and getting a full refund).

    Looked up prices for the new sleeper and it appears you can no longer pay half the twin fare if willing to share, so unless you can travel in even-numbered groups it’s incredibly expensive. I wonder if his means almost no-one indicated willingness to share with strangers in the last few years, given I understand most sleeper users are on expenses?

    Anyone able to give an opinion on how comfortable the seats on the new Caledonian sleeper are?

54. “almost no-one indicated willingness to share with strangers ”

    Many years ago, when such people were still a rarity, a female civil servant friend of mine was always chosen as bag-carrier for official visits to Scotland by her male senior staff, because Civil Service rules did not allow people with official documents to share a cabin with strangers and nor did they allow staff of opposite genders to share, so the both got to go first class. As my friend had family in Scotland she was more than willing to take the expenses paid trips.

    Classificatoin of train ferries.
    As far as I am aware Class 96 has never been used. Class 97 is for departmental locomotives, Class 98 for steam locomotives, and Class 99 was the train ferries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_99

55. @timbeau – yes, it was 99, in fact.

    @Hessie – what a shocking story. Guaranteed to stop anyone ever travelling by sleeper again. But then SNCF are notorious for being wholly disinterested in customer service. My own most recent sleeper sleeper experience – the privatised operation between Gallivare and Stockholm – was OK in terms of quality of presentation, and as a family of three, we were able to book an entire compartment; our collective complaint was the overtight timings which led the Jehu of a driver to take the curves as if the train tilted (it didn’t, it was the old Rheingold stock), tipping us out of bed quite frequently.

    More generally, these, the many critical articles circulating in the press about the refreshed Scottish sleeper operation, and a steady stream of complaints in the Swiss technical press about the horrendous accumulation of delay, diversions, and short working in both Germany and Italy, suggest that operators still have much to learn about the hotelkeeping and operational aspects of night trains if they wish to move upmarket. Maybe, the task is too difficult and overnight seat only services are the only viable way to go (or a move to VSOE levels of customer service, with all the implications for pricing and volumes).

56. Graham H
    Your point about timekeeping is interesting, as the “old” sleepers & other overnight trains ( like the aforementioned Marylebone – Manchester ) always seemed to have considerable amounts of “slack” or leeway in their timings, so as to make allowances for these problems.
    my 1961 timetable says … ( translated to 24-hr clock )
    Marylebone, dep 21.55
    Leicester C: 00.48
    Nottingham Vic: 01.35
    Sheffield Vic : 02.48
    Manchester ( Picc ) 04.04

    Which certainly is not rushing.

    From the same timetable book, a “normal” Kings Cross – Waverley express took 7hrs approx, whereas the sleeper took 8hrs 15 mins … and there were at least eight sleeper/overnight trains, just from KGX!

57. @Greg T – presumably in part that was due to the need to pull the train apart at the intermediate stations. I don’t have a GC Carriage Circuit Diagram book, but looking at the CCDs for, say,the GW or the LNW, a fair amount of time was taken up adding portions at various places, with the train arriving at its final destination looking very different to what had set off initially.. Not a recipe for flexibility!

58. @Greg T – the most extreme example of overnight multiportion working that I’ve been able to track down so far is the Windermere (!), with sleepers to Whitehaven, which left Euston at 23.05, shedding portions at Carnforth, Lancaster, and Crewe and gaining portions at Wigan and Preston, complicated by the Crewe elements being sandwiched between two Lancaster portions. With at least an hour spent pulling the train apart en route , the Whitehaven arrival at 0718+ seems quite respectable. Whether anyone got any sleep must be speculative.

    + The sleepers arrived there over an hour later having been detached at Carnforth rather than Lancaster, presumably to give a bit more sleeping time.

59. @Greg Tingey: the other reason to go slowly would be to make the journey long enough so that passengers could actually get a full night’s sleep – anything less than eight hours would make for an unappealing journey for passengers. The “railway races” in the nineteenth century made for great news copy but must have been terrible for the passengers, finding themselves dumped at Aberdeen in the small hours of the morning…

    Incidentally it is not surprising that Serco would opt for the upmarket land-cruise approach as that is what they did in Australia. With some apparent success, since Great Southern Rail receives no subsidy for its overnight trains, but Serco were able to sell out to private equity when the group hit financial strife.

60. @SILENT LURKER
    Sleepers still survive where distances are vast and/or the trains are slow. I’m not sure what the threshold time is, but once a journey takes more than say 8 hours then going overnight becomes an appealing option.

    AMTRAK services can take 2 days to cross the US, clearly such distances require sleeper accommodation.

    Asia still has many sleeper trains, but as people get richer then flying becomes a more appealing option, especially with the growth of new airlines like Air Asia across SE Asia and IndiGo in India.

61. One thing none of this mentions is the outright basket-case economics of overnight trains, certainly in this country.

    The Caledonian sleeper needs a subsidy north of £80 per passenger on average – and that average includes those in the seats and/or using it as a day service north of Edinburgh / Kingussie. That figure also excludes the effective subsidy Serco are providing through the losses they are making on the contract, and the hidden subsidies in infrastructure provision etc.

    Having said all that, the new Caledonian Sleeper is a remarkable improvement on the old, and appears to be very popular with tourists from across the pond, who don’t seem daunted by the ‘new improved’ prices.

62. Not only from across the pond. About a month ago I used the sleeper to Edinburgh and a good proportion of passengers were Chinese.

63. The market for sleeper trains is people who are rich enough to use all their holiday. For them the advantage of the extra holiday time is worth it. But the experience needs to be good.

    A good hotel can cost the better part of £100/night. So if the sleeper is cost competitive that works.

64. @Matthew Hutton

    i.e those who are money-rich and time-poor. Not necessarily for holidays, though. A business trip to (or indeed from) Scotland only needs one day away from your base if you take the Sleeper both ways, essentially because you are travelling in your own time (albeit whilst asleep) .

65. @timbeau – a lesson not lost on my past employers who discovered that they needn’t cost in hotels if I did a day’s work in Joburg using overnight flights (and cattle class at that). Recounting this to a neighbour, he complained that he had been sent to Singapore for the day….

66. As mentioned earlier, night trains thrive in countries where distances to be covered are vast; and where the political powers-that-be consider them to be a cheap alternative to flying that provides basic mobility to those less well-off.

    To my knowledge, only three countries in the world operate a large (>100 daily) number of sleeper trains: Russia, China, and India; albeit as I understand it, the number of sleeper trains in China is fast dwindling with the growth of their high speed network.

67. There is an interesting account of InterCity’s approach to overnight trains in ‘Behind the Crumbling Edge’ by Stephen Poole (ISBN 1 85776 610 5), which is an excellent account from a BR manager in the 1980s.

    “Part-seating, part-sleeper trains…were not really a desirable proposition for InterCity’s Anglo-Scottish services in an era of first-class lounge cars and the move upmarket that this encompassed. Invariably there was rowdiness and heavy drinking going on somewhere in the sleeping coaches and this was considered a threat to the security and peace of mind of those who had paid to travel in the sleepers. In an effort to give some respectability to the overnight seating market, InterCity had introduced in May 1982 a fleet of declassified first-class coaches with subdued lighting under the marketing name ‘Nightrider’. But things didn’t improve and the image of InterCity Sleepers was being tarnished by the noise, the drunkenness, the intermediate station stops and the general ambience, which was seen as rather seedy. Under the Managing Directorship of Dr John Prideaux it was decided in 1988 to pull out of the overnight Anglo-Scottish seating market, although for some reason a seating coach lingered on for a few years, on a reservations-only basis, on the Night Caledonian…..”

    There is much more in the book about how sleeper services were staffed and “managed” at the time, as well as many other railway activities.

68. @LiS – the remarks about drunkenness on sleepers reminds me of an incident when the then MD of Regional railways, John Edmonds, (who subsequently went on to become the first chief executive of Railtrack, paid a state visit to Scotland, returning on the Sunday night sleeper. The obsequious staff at Inverness thought that as a gesture of goodwill, they would place a bottle of wine in his compartment. Unfortunately at that time of night on a Sunday, the only available bottle was catering red from the station bar stock. What actually happened next was that Edmonds obviously tried the bottle and abandoned it in disgust, leaving it open beside him, and fell asleep. Somewhere en route, the coach encountered some poor track and the bottle fell over with the obvious result. What, however, the attendants who opened up at Euston in the morning saw was, of course, the senior man asleep with his compartment doused in red wine…

69. I once spent 30 hours in the UAE on a assignment to a ship off Fujairah. Somehow this included a 14-hour working day, 4 hours in taxis back and forth across the peninsula and two “nights” of “sleep” in hotels. All bracketed by two 7hr+ flights in cattle class. I told my overlords I wasn’t doing that again.

    More relevantly, and hopefully more pleasantly, I’ll be on the Malmö – Berlin sleeper (and it’s ferry!) for the first time next week so I’ll report back on how it goes. Anecdotally, I’ve heard Snälltåget run a pretty decent operation, which is increasingly popular as ‘flygskam’ reduces air passenger numbers.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-14/as-flying-shame-grips-sweden-sas-ups-stakes-in-climate-battle

70. Snälltåget: Swedish express trains are kind instead of being fast.

71. @Stewart – please do – am planning another trip on the Inlandsbahn and the easiest/greenest way back from Gallivare is on the sleeper…

72. Given that there are long-enough hauls on High-Speed networks nowadays to make journeys of more than 8 hours, I wonder when high-speed overnight sleeper services start to exist, if they do. The Japanese have noise restrictions on their network preventing it, but the European system seems joined-up enough to justify it somewhere–Paris-Berlin, for instance.

73. @Excalibur – which brings us back to the business aspects of the case. A rake of bespoke stock that you can use once a day is big financial burden and if you have something capable of being transformed into day wear, as it were, the cost in time on the day,and further initial fitting out would be high.

74. @GrahamH
    Absolutely. I went skiing up in Åre in February and the SJ nattåg was great, keeping us nice and cosy even though it was -15C outside. Coming back to Gothenburg on the day train with a 3-day hangover (the Sunday nattåg was fully booked) was less fun.

    On the economics of high speed night trains, is not the cost of providing high speed rail services (in general) is more in the infrastructure than the rolling stock? Given that running overnight trains would increase the utilisation of the infrastructure assets (thereby presumably increasing revenue more than costs), it feels that a simple business case shouldn’t be too hard to add up. After all, it’s not really fair to say the stock is used “once a day” if that journey is 8-15 hours long. That said, I appreciate the way track access charges and maintenance regimes are structured means that real-world costs may be much higher than my BOFP microeconomics allows for.

75. Stewart

    The earning power of the rolling stock is much more important than the length of time it is in service. Daytime trains can make multiple trips in a day, even long-distance ones. As an example, the train that forms the 05:40 Glasgow to London Euston then makes a round trip to Manchester, a round trip to Liverpool and concludes with a single journey to Manchester. Not every set will achieve that level of utilisation, but the earning capacity is considerable. In contrast, Caledonian Sleeper makes one much slower trip from Glasgow to London and then earns no income until the following night.

76. Londoner in Scotland: I used a ‘Nightrider’ service to Edinburgh in 1984 with comfy seat and a film for £19, which I remember being very acceptable – except being turfed out at Waverley at 6am.

    Back in 1979 & 1980 I and then partner used many overnight services around Europe via ‘Interrail’ tickets, so I see that present service map as very empty in comparison. Overnight journeys to and from Paris were often chosen as a way of saving money and time, such as from Copenhagen (on a train ferry) and to Vienna, A Talgo from Madrid and the Tauern Orient Express to Venice. They were not just a means of getting from A to B but an experience in themselves for sightseeing and meeting other people. None of this happens on a flight or an express train.
    As I see it, the need to reduce emissions and stop global heating will eventually move mass distance transport back to rail, and overnight services will have to be a part of that future.

77. Airlines, of course, routinely use the same asset for daytime and night-time flights. Is there any mileage – no pun intended – in having a rake of coaches consisting of one coach Business Class with lie-flat seating, one /two coaches Premium Economy and the rest Economy, which can be used for multiple journeys throughout the day? I don’t actively propose this, I just as the question.

78. @Littlejohn – it will depend very much on the circumstances. Even one business class coach requires a hotelkeeping base to service it (and no doubt there will be economies of scale – I always suspect that the business structure of hotels is quite similar to railways, in terms of the X+Y costs), and using the day part of a train requires a handy shunting loco to pull the overnight train apart – whether such things are around in the right place will be dependent on other services and their marshalling requirements; if not, then the cost of keeping a shunter and crew on standby would be horrendous.

79. As an analogy, Megabus Gold offered bunk beds on overnight services between London and Scotland that converted to seats for the daytime return leg.

    I used the service once and it was acceptable (once I got off the VCS concourse!) but it no longer exists – I know not why but others may do … or may speculate instead!

80. Graham H – I wasn’t thinking of pulling the consist apart, rather of offering the service over 24 hours. If people will pay 4 figures for an enhanced experience on a 5 hour flight to NY, day or night, why not on a longer train journey? Or is the potential market very different?

81. Sleeper trains may have a future again, but not in the short term. It will need to be completely taboo to fly anywhere which doesn’t involve crossing an ocean. At present, they just can’t compete with budget airlines, and it will take some major economic unheavals to change this.

82. @RonnieMB – Hmm.. I persuaded my well travelled and very hardy (then) student daughter to try the “Sleeper” Megabus Gold service on a trip down from Scotland as it sounded like a great, low cost option. She described it as hell on wheels! Incredibly cramped, tiny bunks, noisy and impossible to get to sleep. Like being put into a very loud and constricted coffin.
    I’m 6’5″ and she told me not to even think about trying it. Shame, as I thought the idea had some potential 🙁

83. @Littlejohn – not sure it’s a good plan to lug empty stock around for half the day. If you want some idea of how to make a profit whilst doing so, the private trains across Russia, or the Blue Train give some indication of fares.

84. One aspect I think missed so far was the useful provision of car sleeper trains on the Continent. My parents took me on these examples, in our case sleeping in 3-berth couchette compartments with the car on board the car wagons attached to the sleepers:
    Ostend – Villach in Austria
    Paris – Milan
    These saved the cost of at least one hotel as well as saving the cost of petrol/diesel for the car, whilst giving the driver a possibly well-deserved break from long-distance driving. Thus the additional cost of the point-to-point sleeper train journey was well worthwhile to the travellers.

    I persuaded some of my professional colleagues attending morning Hearings in Munich to use Eurostar from London in the evening to Paris Nord and to walk around the corner for the DB sleeper from Paris Est to Munich, arriving relaxed and in good time. They were satisfied.

    Some comments here still seem to suggest that sleeper services would be better if they were sped up. They completely miss the point that, if that were to be the case, the sleeping passengers would arrive at their destinations in the middle of the night! Of course, that is sometimes unavoidable if booked to an intermediate station.

    As for stock utilisation, I cannot see much difference between the long-distance sleepers and the day-to-day rolling stock that’s stored in sidings between peak hours as well as overnight.

85. @B&T – I said acceptable rather luxurious and it may have helped that, not only am I much nearer 5’6” than 6’5”, but I joined the bus 18 half awake hours after 16 sleepless hours on the South Atlantic Airbridge – my mileage may well have varied.

86. @Graham Feakins – and the marginal peak unit is an expensive little item, too*! (Sleepers, however intensively used, have, of course, the added complication that they require specialised servicing facilities and – usually – a dedicated peakhour path to get rid of them for the day).

    * I recall one Piccadilly timetable which showed that the marginal train was used once a day in one direction only. And then there was the boast of the former Southdown commercial manager that they never refused a hire, even if it meant that the marginal coach moved no more than 8 miles per year. Financial ruin on a plate.

87. Modern business and 1st class seats on aircraft manage to simply convert between day and night use, with fold flat seats – could something similar be done on a train? Obviously this is very much the premium end of the market and you are talking about something which is more than just a seat with a bit more room (as 1st class train travel is in most cases). Whilst trains and planes are different, it seems a little odd that no-one has tried to adopt the airline solution.

88. Sleeping cars in mainland Europe have been convertible between day and night mode for years, because they often run on trips which are longer than a night. The overnight train from Torino to Reggio di Calabria departs at 13:35!

89. @Londoner in Scotland
    You’d have to really want a bed for the night to take that Torino to Reggio di Calabria night train! Take a normal high-speed train an hour earlier and you can be in Reggio almost 10 hours before the night train (though admittedly with changes in Milan & Rome).

90. Jimbo – yes, that is what I had in mind. I did not mean to imply that carriages would be running around empty (unless the market just isn’t there!). As you say, First Class in trains is really comparable to Premium Economy in aircraft.

91. @Graham Feakins
    The point of speeding up night trains is that they would be able to travel further in one night. Popular Spanish resorts from Western Eur ope is a good example. Paris/Munich/Vienna to Malaga or Athens could be done in a night with high speed portions.
    Also going North to Scandinavia – Stockholm-Copenhagen-Hamburg-Brussels-Paris maybe in one night if high speed sections were incorporated?
    Routes like London-Warsaw would also have a market I believe if there weren’t other barriers to them.

92. I feel that I must speak up for Great Western’s Night Riviera. Having used it on frequent occasions to travel up from Cornwall for following day meetings in the East Midlands, it is most agreeable, with friendly attendants and VERY smooth driving. The crews are clearly instructed to arrive and depart at intermediate stations in a calm manner. Many’s the time when I have been unable to tell whether the train was in motion or standing at a station, such was the quietness.

    The Class 57s do a good job and the coaching stock is perfectly acceptable and affordable, even though I was travelling on expenses.

93. I completely understand the points being made about the economics behind sleeper services currently not stacking up.

    As soon as airlines are forced to set fares that reflect the true cost of flying (i.e. destroying the planet), the economics surrounding land based transport, especially rail, will change dramatically. The sooner this is done the better!

    Remember the pretty comprehensive Nightstar sleeper service that Eurostar was going to run before airline de-regulation came along and blew a hole in its business case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_(train)). If greater regulation returns to the airline industry, I think new life will be breathed into proposals such as these, especially as there are loads more railways to play with across Europe than there were in the 1990s!

94. @Anonymous

    “As soon as airlines are forced to set fares that reflect the true cost of flying (i.e. destroying the planet), the economics surrounding land based transport, especially rail, will change dramatically.”

    Indeed, France plans to hike air fares to fight climate change, in the form of a new ‘eco tax’ that will raise money for less polluting modes of transportation.

95. The French proposal is very modest (1.50 euro for flights within the EU), and would need to be ramped hugely to match our own taxes, which have hardly made train travel competitive. Battery powered aircraft may be practical for 500-1000 mile journeys within a decade, so will continue to suppress the sleeper market.

    South America has an extensive network of overnight coaches, and I’ve found their low density and high reclining rake quite acceptable.

    Cheap car hire has stopped the car transporting trains. Unlike the US where coast-to-coast relocation has created an unaccompanied car market, I don’t think Europe is big enough.

96. There are still some car-carrying trains in Europe, though far fewer than was once the case.

    Meantime, HITRANS (the regional transport partnership for the Scottish Highlands) is seeking to introduce sleeper trains between Edinburgh and Thurso via Glasgow, probably with a portion detached/attached at Inverness. It was reported to a HITRANS meeting in April that “in the best case scenario, it is estimated that the service would generate revenues of up to £2.54m but would require a subsidy of around £3.14m per annum”. Rolling stock options are refurbished Mk 3 sleepers or new build Mk 5.

97. The loss of Nightstar was a huge wasted opportunity. I thought the cause was more to do with U.K. governments disinclination to facilitate the various immigration checks particularly for provincial services but it was probably a combination of both that and changing economics. I have many sleeper train memories and my family (three including me) have used them in both Europe and the U.K. and doing so means we have been able to take only one flight in 4 years.

98. The Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis has researched 8 promising routes for night trains from Amsterdam. Together, services to Copenhagen, Warsaw, Prague, Munich, Vienna, Zurich, Milan and Turin could attract 1 million passengers a year.
    Interstingly, they ruled out routes to Lyon and the UK. Copenhagen at 789kms would be the shortest.

    https://www.kimnet.nl/binaries/kimnet/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/20/slapend-onderweg-potentieel-van-de-internationale-nachttrein-van-en-naar-nederland/KiM+rapport+Slapend+onderweg+-def.pdf

99. Whilst the Kimnet.nl link that ap has posted is in Dutch, it does contain some charts and maps that are somewhat understandable.

    However there is an English summary of the key points starting on page 26.

100. “As soon as airlines are forced to set fares that reflect the true cost of flying (i.e. destroying the planet), the economics surrounding land based transport, especially rail, will change dramatically.”

     However flying say London to Glasgow only uses infrastructure which has been there longer than most people’s lives. Meanwhile HS2 is ripping up and destroying far more of the country and the planet than aviation ever will.

     Of course, the trains on the route are electric powered – except the last two times I was on a Euston-Birmingham-Edinburgh train it was a diesel, under the wires all the way. Apparently Virgin find this cheaper.

101. @Mr Beckton
     The cost of Heathrow expansion is far from insignificant, and is all new infrastructure. The cost may even be comparable with tunnelling all the way from London to Glasgow for a new HS route (not that I’m suggesting it should all be tunnelled)

102. Mr Beckton
     Re diesels all the way to Edinburgh under the wires…… I doubt Virgin find it cheaper. Its just that they don’t have enough electric trains and haven’t (permission from DfT etc) been able to obtain more. They weren’t even allowed to extend all their electric trains to 11 cars. They have more diesels than are needed for their sole excursion off the wires (to Chester).

     Having come to Virgin’s defence, I hate the Voyagers too.

103. There is mention above of the new French flight tax plans. I read that another proposal being discusssed in the National Assembly is to ban all flights where the land based alternative takes 2h30 or less. Imagine that in the UK.

104. @AP I am imaging that in the UK such a ban would have zero effect. It is already prohibited by economics. The overhead time of flying is 2h30m in any case.
     From London 2:30 covers an arc from Worcester, Wolverhampton, to Boston.
     https://www.theaa.com/route-planner/route?from=Stratford,%20London,%20UK&to=Worcester,%20UK
     https://www.buytickets.eastmidlandstrains.co.uk/buytickets/combinedmatrix.aspx?Command=TimeTable
     UK domestic flights have not operated such options since the 1960s or earlier.

105. @Mr Beckton /130

     The diesel Voyagers used on the Euston-Birmingham – Edinburgh route are shorter than the electric Pendolinos, and this is what makes them cheaper to run. Certain LNER services are also run by diesels despite running under the wires end-to-end, but this is usually part of a longer roster which does include some off-wire running – e,g Kings Cross – Leeds – Kings Cross- Hull – Kings Cross.

106. @130
     Virgin also use Voyagers to reach Shrewbury, don’t they?
     @Timbeau
     Given how busy the West Mids-Edinburgh route usually is whenever I’ve used it, I expect it was two coupled sets of Voyagers, so 10 coaches in total. A quick check of Real Time Trains shows that the 1243 Euston-Edinburgh is part of a diagram whose previous journey started from Chester.

107. @100ANDTHIRTY

     Virgin Super Voyagers are okay, it’s the CrossCountry Voyagers that are really awful…

108. Re Timbeau,

     The LNER King Cross – York stoppers are virtually always diesel operated as they have the least timetabling performance requirement.

     Re Traveller, 130, Chris Mitch and Mr Beckton.

     The amount of diesel under the wire running on the WCML is likely to dramatically reduce as a number of the franchise bidders have been thinking about procuring bimode units with 110/115mph performance (and no tilt) to remove some /all Voyagers.

109. NGH…. I note your comment and raise you “when the franchise is let and there’s a decent* interval for placement and delivery.

     I do hope that bi-modes doesn’t mean those trains with a choice of windowless seats

     * where ‘decent’ is a longer timescale than the franchise commitment

110. @NGH

     Although East Coast told me, when they scrapped the Eureka timetable in 2011 after taking over from National Express, that they couldn’t run to Lincoln as they would be rostered for electric trains, the KX-Newark stoppers which operate on alternate hours from the York ones are in fact also diesels.

111. I don’t think that you can generalise that the stopping services to Newark will be diesel hauled. For most of the time since last autumn, Class 90s have been hauling Mk4 stock. They are only capable of 110 mph, but can accelerate faster than Class 91, making up on a stopping pattern for not having a 125 mph top speed. According to a page on RailUK forums, they came off that duty on 14 Jun 2019.

112. Further to my earlier post (and we’re getting long way from night trains!), see this on the 125 Group, showing HST diagrams up to 18 May 19: https://www.125group.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/HST-Diags-LNER.pdf. Note also what they write about substitution with Azumas. In all, quite a fluid situation. RailUK has other forums on Class 91 / Mk4 diagrams, but it seems that thse could be obsolete as soon as they are written.

113. There’s an article in the Swedish press today saying that demand for the Malmö-Berlin night train has doubled since last year and it is sold out 5-6 weeks in advance despite Snälltåget doubling the frequency (6 times a week each way instead of 3) over the summer months.
     https://www.expressen.se/dinapengar/konsument/explosionsartad-efterfragan-pa-tag-till-kontinenten/

114. @AP (14th July)

     How is that 2h30 calculated though? Airport to airport or between the city centres served; a specific mode of transport or simply the fastest?

115. That map of Scandinavia is bonkers. What is it supposed to show?

     At least for Sweden there is a bunch of lines whcih absolutely has no night train services, but has regular day-time services. However a whole bunch of day-time-service lines are missing. The green lines seems to not have anything to do with night trains in particular.

     The lines shown in Sweden on the Europe map seems more correct though.

116. “RegioJet has bought 18 couchette cars from Deutsche Bahn, which it intends to use to lengthen its night trains on the Praha – Košice route to up to 18 vehicles with a capacity of up to 1 000 passengers per train. The fleet expansion follows a successful bond issue in June which raised €40m.

     “The open access operator said the 200 km/h air-conditioned vehicles with retention toilets would require ‘minimal adjustments’ before being put into service. Some are already adapted for wheelchair-using passengers, with wide doors and an accessible compartment and toilet.

     “RegioJet has also acquired another Siemens Vectron locomotive to haul the heavy trains through the High Tatra region of Slovakia.

     “In the first half of the year RegioJet carried 3·1 million passengers on its long-distance trains in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria, a 12% increase compared to the same period in 2018.

     “‘Occupancy of our trains has been growing, and our trains have become the first choice for customers also on the lines from Praha to Brno, Bratislava and Wien’, said Kohoutek. ‘Therefore, we are currently preparing the acquisition of up to 100 more cars, so that we can further increase our capacities. Thanks to the increase in the number of passengers, we also expect to increase of our profit this year by millions of euros.’”

117. @Leo (20th July)

     I don’t know the answer to the 2h30 question but felt it was a valid point so went searching again. I still can’t find the answer. However, I did find another proposal and for all I know it’s a rehash of the first one I mentioned.

     The suggestion is that flights from France should only be allowed if the time saving is more than two and a half hours over taking a train. Again, it doesn’t say if that’s city centre – city centre or airport v station. The whole article ( in French ) is here…

     https://www.challenges.fr/economie/fiscalite/la-taxe-sur-le-transport-aerien-ne-regle-pas-le-probleme-ecologique-selon-lfi-et-pcf_663359

118. AP
     IF city-centre to city-centre, then the train is going to win “bigtime” … but it’s a big “if”….

119. On topic but not really on theme, here is a brief summary of the Malmö-Berlin night train I took last Friday. I hope it is of interest.

     The Malmö-Berlin night train is very much a traditional European night train, entirely composed of 2nd class 6-berth cabins. They’re looking a bit tired but the beds were a fairly comfortable. We were surprised there is no restaurant car. Instead passengers are encouraged to use the restaurant on the ferry. This works OK with the times (in this direction) as the train is on the ferry from 18:00 – 22:15. The food options on the ferry weren’t great, however, and – as is often the case with non-overnight ferries – there was a lack of seating. We ended up going back to the train and drinking our duty free wine in our cabin.

     After the train is shunted off the ferry it sits in the yard in Sassnitz for about 4 hours before continuing South. This is a good time to get some decent sleep, not least because the track for the first hour or so after the train leaves Sassnitz is some of the jerkiest I’ve been on in Western Europe. The “seatbelts” to hold you in the upper bunks are definitely required and sleep was hard to come by until we joined a much smoother and faster track (at Rostock?). The rest of the journey was quite pleasant and we stumbled into Berlin Hbf on time feeling like the second bottle of wine was maybe unnecessary but otherwise good.

     Overall, the train was fine, but it’s nothing fancy and a refurb of the rolling stock and some track smoothing south of Sassnitz would improve things considerably. It would be nice if the ferry was scheduled a little later too so that the train could depart Malmö later than 17:00. 14 hours is a long time for what is a relatively short journey. Pricing is very competitive at 749 SEK (£65ish) for a standard ticket, rising to 999 SEK on some, presumably popular, trains. Unsold beds appear to be sold off for 399 SEK on the day of travel, if you’re seeking a bargain. If you are willing to pay the price of 4 single tickets, you get an entire cabin to yourself. It looked like many were doing this as few cabins were fully occupied.

120. Re: Stewart – are the early departure and lengthy stationary period to do with allowing for all tidal conditions at one or both ends of the crossing? (Obviously the answer will be ‘no’ if the ferry always sails at the same time.)

121. Back in early 80s regularly use to do Swindon to Belfast overnight. Euston to Stranear was not a sleeper service but overnight. Compartment coaches. 2 adults 3 kids, always seem a adventure. 3 trains, 1 tube and 1 boat. Never slept Which use to annoy my parents.

122. @Balthazar I doubt it since they don’t appear to change by week and also tides are very small in the Baltic so rarely a concern. I think it’s more to do with the commercial operations of the ferry company and their other customers. Arriving any later than 22:15 probably isn’t that appealing for those continuing their journey by road.

     Something I forgot to mention, there was chat above about the economic problems of providing special rolling stock for night trains ops. The conversion from a 6-seat compartment to a 6-bed cabin took all of about 2 minutes so I would say that old-fashioned compartmentalised carriages offer sufficient flexibility to be used for both day and night services, even if they don’t make as optimal a use of space as modern open carriages.

123. @Stewart – it’s noticeable that all those who speak of the ease of transforming day coaches into night ones and vv, describe sleeping accommodation that appeals only to one quite small segment of the overnight market and a cash strapped one at that. BTW, if it takes one man 2 minutes to swap a compartment over, how many men does an entire train take (or how long) ….

124. @Graham H

     On the sleepers I’ve been on the attendant did it – there is one for every one or two cars. As people want breakfast at different times the individual two minute jobs are spread over an hour or two

125. @timbeau – very much to my point in terms of staffing numbers and availability of sleeper stock at key (ie peak) times during the day. The disappearance of compartment stock generally and the steady decline on loco-hauled stock will reinforce the trend.

126. Some interior design concepts for the new ÖBB Nightjet sleepers may be found here:

     https://www.nightjet.com/en/ausstattung/nightjetzukunft.html

     The page includes 360° VR panorama photos of each type of accomodation to explore. These were captured during a public exhibition of the mockups at Wien Hauptbahnhof in late 2016.

     I particularly like the modern couchette concept, a double stack affair which ditches the conventional compartment concept and substitutes a sliding shutter for each bunk that forms a secure lockable individual pod with very well thought out facilities. The four berth family compartment layout is more like a traditional couchette, while the twin berth sleeper cabin has (unusually for Europe) longitudinal beds, and adds a tiny en suite WC and washroom. It would probably also accommodate a small child or infant on the transverse ‘sofa’ extension of the lower bunk.

127. SWISS Federal Railways (SBB) and Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) have announced plans to expand passenger services linking their two countries as well Nightjet services linking Switzerland with Germany:

     “SBB says demand for international rail services has grown significantly during the first half of this year, aided by increasing awareness of sustainability and measures to protect the climate.

     “As ÖBB’s Nightjet service linking Zürich and Basle with Berlin and Hamburg has reached its maximum capacity due to strong growth, the two railways are studying how to meet demand. The overnight service between Zürich, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Prague is currently operated only with sleeping cars, so the two railways together with Czech Railway (CD) are examining whether couchette cars can be added to the train.

     “SBB and ÖBB are also assessing which cities can be added to the Nightjet network to provide more overnight connections to Switzerland – Zürich is already the second biggest hub for overnight services in Europe after Vienna.

     “In addition, the two operators are keen to improve the economic viability of overnight trains through initiatives such as a CO2 levy and reducing track access charges.”

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