Can we have more popup trains and more regular services?
There’s an ever increasing demand for sustainable travel across the world. There’s often launches of new high-speed services in Italy, and Spain these days, and with European Sleeper fulfilling their night train dream of going from Brussels to Prague, many may now hopefully be thinking – lets do it, lets run a night train.
Congratulations again to Elmer and team there – I particularly loved the interview where he basically said “Just Do It.”
Typically, they’ll not be running on high-speed lines in Europe. And you may want to consider just buying a night train – transdev put Snalltaget’s night train from Stockholm to Hamburg up for sail. Possibly related to SJ also running a similar service.
You may also have been excited by the new high speed services that are pencilled in to go through the Channel Tunnel. It has spare capacity. We hope that Evolyn do launch – and are still confused if multiple operators put their names forward to compete with Eurostar.
The biggest limiting factor in – independent of high-speed or regular-speed, is the rolling stock. Before Jon Worth’s many, many #CrossBorderRail journies, he explored having the EU build a central pool of rolling stock. I guess a little like a train version of Airbus? It feels like this aspect would allow more proof of concept, or popup trains for events.
OBB and their collaboration with Siemens Mobility lead to a great new set of NightJet trains, that has now started services out of Vienna. It feels modern and cutting edge, and with an increased degree of privacy, with their Japanese style pod hotels. However, this does not come cheap, and whilst the exact reasons are unknown, there’s certainly a feeling that places on these trains are more costly than hoped – though in these post-COVID times, inflation has been high everywhere, so maybe some element of the cost is within that.
If you do want to launch a night train, perhaps reading the Midnight Trains blog is a good place to start. They’ve been open, and are as descriptive as they can be about the process.
The Purple Train – LyMá
Well, our purple high-speed night train service may not exist. But it would be great for someone to find a way to connect up the cultures of France and Spain in this way.
You could do it with a Michelin chef, but you don’t have to. Most of Europe will find 10pm quite late to eat. But the restaurant area of a normal train can also act as a lounge area, for those wanting to hangout. I loved the bike area on European Sleeper also being used for this. And, of course, it’s possible to open it again for breakfast. It may mean you need a bigger train though, to justify one carriage took up with eating.
However, maybe a quality meal before falling into a comfortable bed does get people away from the air?
The mandates from France and Spain, so far, have been quite limited in how many actual flights are affected. And as we know a flight is up to 20 times more polluting, and puts the CO2 into the upper atmosphere, so it really is worth it for all of us getting people out of the air.
Competition is necessary. Chauffeurs and black cabs to the train station, luggage cariers, and Michelin chefs may well do it for some? And perhaps the existence of Renfe’s “trens de Lujo” luxury tourist trains are evidence of this.
There clearly needs to be more democratisation though. Not everyone has a luxury budget, and we can see this from the STILL growing popularity of the budget airlines; EasyJet, RyanAir, Vueliung etc. So, how would you design a service that would get people from a budget airline and onto a night train? Perhaps people can tell us in the comments?!
Trains also bounced back post-covid. But where will the next growth come from? OBB lead the way in the more typical persons budget, but then increased their prices. EuroSleeper in advance is still reasonable, and they take interrail passes. Perhaps that EU-lead-pool of rolling stock would particularly useful for night trains?
With France upgrading it’s fleet of high-speed trains at the end of 2024. Perhaps there’s a genuine opportunity to refurbish some of the euroduplex trains, and experiment with night train formats over two decks, at high speed? Turns out that China is already running at high speed for night trains – perhaps we in Europe can also try to do this. Maybe not as a single country as Austria did, but as a whole region? France could team up with Spain to do this. Or the EU could take the Nightjet design and build a pool of them for popups and experimental new services.
With great ideas, we can make an impact of those climate goals.
LETS GO.
I’m back to building totravelto.com but myself and the team at totravelto have enjoyed playing around with this Lyon to Málaga night train idea. Maybe someone will make it a reality. In the meantime we’re going to help people plan long journeys quickly, with the aid of conversational AI.
If you’ve not already, this is the perfect time to sign up for our wait list on https://totravelto.com
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