Today. The ÖBB Nightjets are currently completely sold out for months on most services. So are the snälltagets between Berlin and Malmö, looked for a departure next month, even just a Seat was unavaible. There is a huge demand for sleeper trains in europe, and in the last years TOCs started to recognize it after companys like DB abandoned their night trains, claiming they were unprofitable. Now the ÖBB orders completely new stock for their overnight services and are making a huge profit.
SJ Statens Järnvägar the main operator in Sweden will be starting to run Night trains from stockholm to Hamburg on the 1st of September also So i guess Snälltåget will have an competitor soon also
Can confirm that the natåg from Malmö to Stockholm is alive and well as I arrived in Stockholm on it yesterday morning
The night riviera (GWE Paddington to Penzance) runs every night, fully booked. (Except this week due to strikes). The Caladonion sleeper (King's X to Edinburgh) is more the same
Caledonian sleeper are currently looking at starting a third train from London to Scotland as the demand is so high. GWR are looking at reinstating the Penzance to Edinburgh sleeper via the west coast with their new rolling stock. They currently have a tender out for new locomotives and coaches to replace the mk3’s and class 57’s but that won’t be until at least 2025. I suspect they’ll get mk5’s just like Caledonian sleeper. The railways are growing again with new lines, stations and services. How long until we see motorail coming back with electric wagons? - drive your electric car on in London, charge it overnight to Cornwall then drive off in Penzance with a full battery. With some proper investment we could have a system that starts to look more like our european friends.
Too bad Amtrak management will refuse to take any of this into account. (The fact that sleeper trains can make money.) We can't even get them to serve anything beyond sub-par domestic coach airline food to their sleeper passengers, who pay far more than first class airline passengers. Instead, they do everything they can to further cut long-distance trains. Too bad there's no competition the way there seems to be in the UK/Europe.
You mean reactivating the Penzance Motorail Dock to load the electric car onto a special waggon and then unload in Scotland using a reactivated British Railways Motorail dock. These need to be the covered type, not the Sekqrs Laaers 560s upper deck open used by OBB Motorail. See if there is a manufacturer that can make Hccrrs fit for UK Loading Gauge. Remember Hccrrs runs Villach ÖBB Edirne Turkey route.
I certainly would be a good business move for Amtrak- and they might figure that out, IF Amtrak's dunderheaded management ever comprehend that they aren't in the transportation business, they are in the tourism business. Intercity rail in the US is a sector comparable to the cruise ship industry: the target market is people who want the experience of riding a train, not people whose primary interest is simply getting somewhere (for which there are better, cheaper options).
Case in point being the Rocky Mountaineer trains in Canada, which now has the Rockies to the Red Rocks train in the US (Which uses the SAME tracks as Amtraks California Zephyr between Denver Colorado and Crescent Junction Utah)
Used to be overnight trains everywhere in the UK until the mid 1980’s, conveying both sleeping cars and plenty of seated accommodation. A combination of faster daytime travel, falling demand and cost management led to many being curtailed or withdrawn in the latter days of BR. It also didn’t help that in the early 80’s the seating accommodation on many of these trains was “upgraded” from elderly Mark One coaches with relatively subdued lighting to Mark 2 rolling stock with hideous fluorescent lighting that had no means of being dimmed to facilitate a bit of a nap. But the trains were always busy, even those that were early candidates for withdrawal like the Bristol to Glasgow/Edinburgh or Glasgow/Edinburgh to Inverness and vv runs.
Actually, I have always taken VIA's Canadian as the standard-barer for what Amtrak could and should do with its long-distance trains. Despite being a public company which was, surprisingly, modeled after Amtrak, it provides world-class service and high-quality accommodations. If you want the experience of re-living North America's golden age of passenger trains, you need look no further than the Canadian. One thing that pleasantly shocked me was how a lowly VIA corridor train from Toronto to Montreal was washed enroute by hand while stopped at Ottawa. I compared that with the dirty windows on Amtrak's "premier" trains like Auto Train.
VIA I think understand that they are part of the tourism sector, not the transport sector. Amtrak needs that road-to-Damascus moment when they realize their competition is cruise ships, not airlines.
