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Since Covid-19 started, I have stopped flying and instead I’ve started taking trains, in sleeping cars.
You have a private room with walls, a door and a bed.
You leave late in the day and arrive in the morning.
You can work on the train and make phone calls.
You can take a shower on the train.
You don’t have to spend the day traveling; instead, you spend the day at home or at your destination.
Question: why aren’t there more overnight trains? They are a lot more efficient than flying or driving. The few overnight trains that Amtrak has are usually sold out in advance, so the ones we have do well. But why isn’t there a significant shift towards the concept of overnight trains?
Thanks.
What routes have this kind of schedule, essentially a redeye?
What routes have this kind of schedule, essentially a redeye?
Routes radiating out of NY (to the south and to Chicago) and Chicago (to the West Coast). The "leave in the evening and arrive at dawn" schedules only are for certain parts of the routes, though, such as Washington-Atlanta.
I like traveling by train, I don’t know if I’d like it at night. One of the biggest problems is the amount of saved time on an airplane. London to Paris via their high speed train was a great experience as well the train in Norway from Bergen to Oslo. It wasn’t fast but it was a very nice ride and enjoyable.
A revival of sleeper services as well as new routes has been evident in Europe in recent times, due to factors such as enviromental concerns as well as better conecvtivity. Whilst new environmentally LNG powered ferries may also see a similar ferry revival.
It's such a civilized way to travel. In my misspent youth, the summer vacation would be spent riding Europe's rail systems, and it always opened with a night train from Hamburg (Northern Germany) to Paris. You can read or enjoy the scenery, have a drink in the bar car, then sleep, lying flat - and at 8 AM or so (no one is rushing you) you grab your luggage and hunt down a spot for espresso and croissants.
Then make the big decision of the trip - west towards Provence/Spain/Portugal, or east towards Savoi/Italy or even Greece? Man, those were good days.
Later, we'd do the car train - although on motorcycle. Strap the motorcycles to a flatcar, grab a sleeper compartment, save yourself 800 miles of boring Autobahn riding and wake up in the foothills of the Alps.
Good points but it kind of depends on the distance.
In my case, my trips are 600-700 miles. I have to take 2 flights, with a connection. The total time, door to door, is about 5 to 6 hours. Very little of that time is productive time, even if I spend time in the airport lounge's work center and am flying first class. I can get at most about 2 hours of work done during that. So flying takes 6 hours out of my day and 4 of those hours are not productive.
On the train, I am fully productive. Maybe half an hour of the trip time is not productive. But on an overnight train, the total number of daytime hours used can be less than flying anyway. So less of my day is spent traveling and even less of the day is not productive, by taking the train.
If I were doing NY to California, sure, trains just can't compete on that. But, say, Washington to Atlanta, leaving at 6:30pm and arriving at 8ish am? Trains certainly can.
I've been doing a ton of LA to Vegas trips and looking at total time spent traveling, a reasonable train service would be my preference by far. Plane trips are broken up into mostly-useless intervals. I even looked into the coach service, but they're "not authorized by the travel department", yada yada.
They can also be expensive, anytime I have priced train to plane, the plane is cheaper. Of course this was a while back, so things may have changed. Much will depend on locations.
Precisely. Why pay almost as much to take overnight to get somewhere, when I can fly in a couple hours?
Overnight passenger trains with sleeping compartments are common in India. The AC ones are relatively comfortable.
Bonus = they have a reserved allocation for tourists.
Often if you're trying to book a sleeper train in India a few days before departure you find there are no more tickets available, but you can go to the station master's office with your passports and unless the other foreigner slots have already been taken you can get a sleeper compartment in what seemed like a fully booked train.
Also = agreed, they are fairly comfortable. Bring small bills, the boy who handles the seat/bed conversion expects a tip.
I've been doing a ton of LA to Vegas trips and looking at total time spent traveling, a reasonable train service would be my preference by far. Plane trips are broken up into mostly-useless intervals. I even looked into the coach service, but they're "not authorized by the travel department", yada yada.
Yes there is a company called Brightline that is building that line. It’s a wonderful company; I took two of its trains in Florida and they were amazing.
I did 1000 miles on Amtrak once (about 2007). I bought the biggest cabin available.
Here was what I recall:
1. Slower and more expensive than driving(especially when factoring the loading/unloading time)
2. Dirty- after a night on the train I just wanted to take a shower. It was like being on an airplane for 15 hours.
3. Food was fair, ride was fair and view was terrible. Train tracks usually run through the worst neighborhoods.
4. Woke up thinking it was almost over only to find out the train was delayed in the middle of the night for 2 hours so we arrived 2 hours late.
For long distance, trains can’t compete with airlines...
Trains in Europe work well because there are many heavy corridors such as Madrid -Barcelona that are less than 3 hours by train and can support very high frequency and bring in all the business traffic.
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