‘It’s not our aim to become rich’: Inside European Sleeper’s turbulent first season of night trains

by euronews-english

12 comments

  1. Love sleeper trains. Hopefully the network continues to get built out. I’d choose going to St Pancras and waking up in my destination over a 6.30am flight from Stansted.

  3. Taxing short haul flights is essential to making this work. It’s absolutely ridiculous you can fly from Netherlands to Poland for 30 euro while a train would be 200+, take twenty hours, and require three to six connections (not to mention most of it will be through DB, the most unreliable train company in Europe imo). Polluting industries need to decarbonize or pay for their pollution, and these funds should be earmarked specifically for emission free alternatives like night trains

  4. >France said in September it would seek support for a minimum price on flights in the European Union to try to reduce airlines’ contribution to climate change, which could also help.

    Simultaneously fucking its own territory, like Corsica, and other countries that might have similar territorial necessities for flights, like Italy. Classic France.

  5. Used night trains for a few years in Eastern Europe. The amount of crazy adventures… Hookers, drug addicts, thieves, sick people sneezing all over you, families with kids bawling all night long, clogged, flooded toilets, party groups blasting techno music, border control taking a nice-seeming guy, knowing you’ll never see or hear of him again or know why he had to go.

    Good memories.

  6. Night trains are simply an inferior product. More expensive and way slower than flights. And don’t see how this can be fixed. It’s like trying to make a horse carriage compete with a car. Sure there will be some that would prefer the former, but it’s simply not viable on a large scale.

    Also this mentality of “not our aim to become rich” is counterproductive.

  7. Is there a single website where you can see all the nightrains available in Europe?

  8. These still seem like those old carriages. IMO one of the best ways to make sleeper trains sexy again would be using those sleeping pods from Japan: they give people individual privacy, modern comforts like screens and charging ports, and they might actually increase the number of passengers, which would improve the economics.

    And yes, you vill sleep in ze pod, but it’s only for one night and you’re teleporting in the process.

  9. I love the idea of a sleeper train. The idea of using “wasted” time sleeping to travel is fantastic. If done right, it could be magical, waking up after a good night’s sleep with a nice view of nature passing by outside your window.

    However, the current state of night trains is just not good. They’re not a comfortable means of transportation. They often seem to attract a less desirable audience, equipment is old and cleanliness is poor. That kind of ruins the whole thing. I don’t really feel at ease sleeping on one.

  10. I’m sure the Americans travelling to Europe to “find themselves” will make this popular.

  11. Traveled Wien to Hamburg on a night train, awful, a terrible night.

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