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• Full steam ahead for Austria’s night trains (AFP)
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Elon Musk, for such a visionary, has a curious blind spot. He really does not “get” or understand the concelt oif “Public Transport” does he?
Wien Nachtzug …
Why can’t we have these (again) ??
I suspect a quirk of the way the finances are (dis)organised makes them appear “unprofitable” …
It’s not a quirk. Sleeper trains are unprofitable. Absolutely no question.
There are of course excellent non-financial reasons (ecological, national pride, tourism, romance, fun etc) for having them. But the money to support such a service has to be found somehow. It won’t come from the farebox.
@Malcolm – not just unprofitable, alas, but deeply unattractive for most users – it’s only now that sleeper services have crept out of the era of sharing with strangers and loos at the ends of the corridor. These may have been features of hotels in the ’50s but not now. The trouble is that remedying them reduces the capacity of the coach dramatically and therefore jacks up the cost/price. Not remedying them leaves you with the lowpaying “student” end of the market. There is no obvious way out of this bind.
Specifically in the UK, we seem to find the “hotel keeping” aspects of sleeper services difficult to deal with – although I see from the Swiss and German press that matters are little better there (Italy gets a specially bad press…)
The economics of the sleepers are appalling. According to the ORR, the Caledonian Sleeper (CS) operation costs £53m pa to run, and has passenger income of £24m pa. That £30m loss pa is being paid for partly by subsidy from Transport Scotland, and partly by Serco shareholders. These figures do not include the CS share of the grant that Transport Scotland / DfT make directly to Network Rail.
With approx 300,000 passengers a year, the subsidy works out at roughly £100 per single journey. Note that many of these journeys are in seated accommodation, some wholly within Scotland, which could be much more easily (and cheaply) provided by other rail based means.
I offer no opinion as to whether this is a sensible use of subsidy or not!
I see that “late check out” was offered this morning as a facility to guests on the Hotel Caledonia: you can check out any time you want but you can’t leave quite yet!
@SFD – it would be interesting to compare that cost with, say the cost of providing late night flights to the main destinations such as Inverness. I suspect that the stumbling block (ie the main reason for retaining the sleepers at all) is the non-air accessible destinations – Pitlochry, Oban… In which case, the subsidy bill for such places is horrendous.
… and the fact that sleepers are used by the Scottish élite (and that’s not meant to be a pejorative term).
It’s possible for a Scottish MP to work in London until Thursday evening and be back in their constituency on Friday morning for a full day of surgeries. And when her children were small Kirsty Wark was said to hurtle from the Newsnight studio to Euston to catch the sleeper to Glasgow ready for the school run.
It has some influential friends, does the Caledonian Sleeper.
Back when I was young I twice InterRailed around Europe, extensively using night trains – either seated, couchettes, and occasionally proper sleeping cars. As I see it we’re eventually going to have to return to the (electric) rails in a big way for long distance travel as flying is just too polluting to continue for much longer, especially where an alternative can be provided.
There is also that flying schedules seem to require early starts or late finishes, arguably fine for people working but unnecessary for leisure / family travel. Another case of gender-biased travel?
@ALANBG Getting people with influence to use the railway, & view them it favourably might be worth the cost ?
I could easily be convinced that the value of worldwide publicity + the published views of a few opinion makers (were they to use the service!) about what a great place Scotland is to visit would also justify the cost
Not sure what Serco shareholders get from the deal though …
Surely the accounting allocation of cost is a factor for the Caledonian. The sleeper utilises the network when there is little other traffic or zero opportunity cost.
Likewise usage of stabling and cleaning services when the rest of the fleet is out on operations.
With the new service life of 40 years the future of this operation is as a tourist attraction rather than a transport link.
After the morning checkout the set could be back in revenue service for dinner cruises with an afternoon scenic stop if profitability was desired.
@ Alan BG – Kirsty Wark still uses the Caledonian Sleeper. She tweeted about it just last week as the last mark 3 sleepers were being used on the Lowland service.
Last time I used the Scottish sleeper was in the late 1980s to Fort William – I think it was the old stock before the Mark 3s that are now being retired. In 1983 I also used the Newcastle – London sleeper. All I remember is being boiling hot, the noise and a not very good night’s sleep.
Couchettes were much more flexible than pure sleepers as they could be used in the daytime as well, albeit not very comfortable for anyone other than a backpacker!
Night trains have been on the decline across Europe, but it’s not just down to budget airlines as High Speed rail has also had a significant effect too. Why spend 9 hours on a sleeper when a day train takes 3 to 4 hours.
@GrahamH. Pedant moment. The sleeper doesn’t serve Oban, except very rarely during engineering diversions. The West Highland section runs to Fort William.
Re political support. Two former MPs, the late Charles Kennedy (former MP for Lochaber – the area around Fort William) and Danny Alexander (former MP for Inverness) were big users of the sleeper service and the latter (when in cabinet) definitely helped their case.
Another political element. The unionist (lower case u) parties were keen to support a service that strengthens links between Scottish cities and London.
@Island dweller – thank you; actually, Fort William rather makes my point – it has no handy scheduled air services.
More generally, sleepers are just another case of politicians trying to run the railways (and bus services) in the face of rational vfm tests, alas.
@Mikey C – I very much agree that faster (and later) train services have been a major factor in killing off domestic sleeper travel. South of the Antonine Wall, most major settlements can be reached from London or vice versa at the end of a business day, and the price of an ordinary train ticket + some chain hotel is almost invariably less than that of a sleeper. For international travel, less so, as late/overnight international train services often seem slow if they exist at all by comparison with their daytime selves.
@Mikey C
“Why spend 9 hours on a sleeper when a day train takes 3 to 4 hours.”
Multitasking. You still have to sleep somewhere. Unless you spend less than six hours in the hotel between checking in and checking out, the sleeper saves time over a hotel plus day train.
I have left St Pancras in the early afternoon and been walking in the Austrian Alps first thing next morning. It is doubtful if I could have done that by air, not least because the nearest airport to my destination was a three hour train journey away.
“Couchettes were much more flexible than pure sleepers as they could be used in the daytime as well”
Some continental sleepers can convert the compartment to daytime seating by folding the beds away. The more limited loading gauge on British trains makes this less practical, mainly because the beds cannot be folded away whilst still made up, hence the provision of a lounge car.
While the operation of night trains can be economically difficult, the Austrian network described in the article is profitable – see here for more on the business aspects – basically OBB seem to have succeeded where DB couldn’t by being selective about which routes they took over, combining multiple destinations into one trunk train, paying the staff less, and avoiding political interference over public service considerations. Notably the network avoids high-operating-cost countries like France (and the UK).
@IanJ. Also notably, it looks like the cost of the rolling stock is not accounted to the operation. Makes one hell of a difference when you are only using it once a day.
Re SFD and Ian J,
Notably the rolling stock mix is very different to the UK.
74 Counchette cars
63+ day seating cars
52 sleeper cars (fewer than Serco have just procured for the Caledonian services)
Very different to the Caledonian mix. On the nightjet services the majority of the passengers aren’t actually in sleeper cars and a significant amount of stranger sharing in couchettes.
Serco have headed in very different direction.