Pod hotel trains would be nice. No need to travel with a partner.

@@placeholdername0000 That's what the new OBB nightjet trains have. They're very interesting

@@placeholdername0000 average plane ticket prices are not that cheap. Only ehen you book 3 months in advance ) . Amsterdam Berlin (a shared 4 cabin bed) for coming friday is actually lower than the cheapest easyjet flight . On top you save a night in a hotel.

@@lws7394 But pod hotels would make it even cheaper.

@@placeholdername0000 Pod hotels are so versatile . You even can get buried with them !! Pod hotels , aren't that hostel bed experiences at hotel prizes ?! btw, i thought i reacted to another message ...🧐🥸😬

Wien ist wunderbar und so schön ich liebe diese Stadt

@@phillipbanes5484 how... uncomfortable

I took the train from Mestre (Venezia) to München. The fact that it went through Austria with a snail's speed didn't bother me, because - as it often happens - there was a spontaneous party with slivovica.

shhhh you'll scare the capitalists

Not if it's triple the price and you still have to sleep upright in a seat next to strangers.

@@mstrmrenMy sleeper train from Graz to Warsaw was actually 60€ less than a Wizz Air flight to Warsaw. The cost is actually nof that bad

What you failed to say is that a sleeper train travels much slower than a normal train, and you can always take a normal everyday train between those cities, without the need for a sleeper train.

Those new nightjet trains are very sexy. With the solo pod concept as a brilliant addition.

Cann't agree more! And with those cheaper prices, you get a very decent and free breakfast. In sic weeks I'll have my first experience from Amsterdam to Innsbruck!

@@wouterpaap9343 Cool, I wish my country (Norway) had any form of night trains towards Europe. But no, our government prefers to build highways and airports. Rail never gets first priority.

@@rowaystarco That is because of the bad connection from Oslo to Denmark. Did you know that the fastest way to travel from Oslo to Malmo? Via Stockholm! And yea, I hear stories about Norway wanting to build floating car tunnels through the fjords. A direct train from Oslo to Hamburg would need at least 19 hours at this moment. Helas, not likely to happen in this day and age.

Do you know when are they releasing the new coaches and when are they aviablee? I want to travel in one of the mini capsules, I've seen the new sleeping car made by Siemens in Wien

Plus I hate flying somewhere the night before and having to pay for a hotel so I can be somewhere in the morning. The night flight plus hotel usually gets me to the price where I decide to just skip sleep, skip the trip or miss whatever is happening in the morning.

...and then you take to the airport because the meeting takes place in a business hotel there....

​@@JO-nh6mowho tf does in person meetings in the year 2023, and in an airport hotel?

Wow! That is one more reason I plan to visit Finland soon!

They have offered shower facilities+breakfast for a fee in Oslo/Bergen before. I think it's still possible to buy shower+breakfast in Bergen, and possibly only breakfast in Oslo.

Yeah its interesting, in Norway couchettes (shared 4-6 person compartments with lie flat bunks) don't really exist. VY recently bought some used ones that Deutsche Bahn formerly used, and renovated them with better insulation, but these can only be booked for groups. The new lie flat seat option costs about the same as a typical couchette bunk, and there's less room for people onboard that carriage, but it seems to be able to work during the day too as a first class option which is interesting.

What's SAF?

@@Desmaad Sustainable Aviation Fuel

and the removal of stress and mental load of getting to places on time when you're already inside the terminal!! Plane rides are absolutely inefficient

You never need to go to a check-in counter if you don't have checked bags, and bag drop takes 5min max. Security could take anything between 5 and 30 minutes, and you usually wait around and hour or two, which I would gladly spend in an airport terminal instead of sleeping in a room with five other strangers for triple the price-

@@mstrmren yeah because going on a long trip without checked bags is very practical. You have an option to rent a cabin for yourself too if you're willing to pay the premium. Either way it's the same argument if you want to take the plane. I'll ride the plane if I want a shorter ride but if taking the train is cheaper and more relaxing then I can take that too.

@@JohnM-ch4to Taking the train is not cheaper.

A lot of the time, the train is available for boarding for an hour or so before departure, so if you want to board early and get your head down, you can do that. If you want to board at the last minute, you can do that.

I take the EuroCity from Venice or any city to Innsbruck every year and the ride is very scenic. I recommend.

Yes, I would calculate a minimum of 4 hours. most likely about 5 hours for a trip like that. Can cut down on city center to aiport if using a fast airport express train. Once again trains to the rescue. The most important part is that more or less all of this time is wasted. You might get a bit of time to do some work while waiting for the plane at the airpot. Maybe on an airport express train. And maybe a little bit of cramped work on the plane itself. Still a lot of low quality time to get work done, and relaxing/sleeping is pretty much out of the equation. Business class on European planes are rubbish, so an upgrade makes little sense for most flights too.

and imagine for a 2 or 3 hour flight

Not true: book higher class, have s status or another form of priority travel and the waiting time in the airport is no longer than 30 minutes. Some people live near airports, so 1 hour from house to airport lounge before flight boarding is doable. And rather than coming up with unrealistic lead times for air travel, how about you include the delays on the railway and ad some hours. Especially since state railways and railways companies are prioritising domestic rail over international rail. Leading to a lot inefficiencies and (recently) to cancelled (sleeper) trains.

Same here. When I was a child we went on vacation to Italy. I would go to sleep in (for example) the Netherlands, and wake up in the Swiss Alps. As a child it felt as if i was on a huge adventure.

This. Sleeper trains are also great for tourists and other travelers who are going between two cities they don't live in. These people don't have the option of sleeping at home for free no matter how many flight options they have. What I'm saying is... sleeper train operators need to advertise more to tourists lol.

@@TheRealE.B. Completely agree. Although on the other hand, most routes are completely sold out on many days, so the question is whether they really need to advertise that much at all haha. :p

In fact , for the day after tomorrow you can buy a sleeper bed in a (shared) 4 person cabin for Amsterdam Berlin at €119 , whereas the cheapest fly ticket on Skyscanner goes for €154 (easyjet in the evening ) . That is not bad ..

Not really. You pay way more for a sleeper train than for a flight plus hotel. Of course that if you consider that you gain one day in the city you can even save one night in the hotel at the end.... but you do your stupid math as you want.

Four hours? Maybe you should leave your nunchucks and knives at home in future. It usually takes me 10 minutes to get through security.

@@-_James_- 4 hours security is unlikely of course. But I would say you can probably end up spending 4-5 hours for entire plane trip, when you factor in getting to and from the airports, checking in luggage, going through security and worst case going through passport control. After security you'll wait for boarding to to open and then for everyone to board. At some airports you can end up taxiing for 10-20 minutes. When you land you'll have to walk to baggage pick up, wait for the baggage to come, possibly through a passport control again (luckily not regularly required in Schengen countries) and then as mentioned get from the airport to the city.

I need 2 hours on each end to get to the main train station to catch the overnight train, no different than a flight

Total nonsense. 10 - 15 minutes maximum. Even with kids.

For me, it takes about 2h to get to the airport, then I must be 2 hours before takeoff, so a ~2 hours flight to Berlin is actually 6 hours. And you need to add the time from Berlin Airport to Berlin, for example. Which makes the ~8 hours of day-train or 12 hours of night train (door to door) very competitive. The price is even competitive if you consider the one or two avoided hotel nights (usually the cheapest flights are very early in the morning -> need to book a hotel).

For one person, the price of a bed in a shared couchette (with simple beds) is often between 60-150 Euros, for sleeper compartments it is indeed more, usually about 150-300 euros. Personally, I am fine with a couchette style bed but if possible, I prefer privacy. Booking a whole compartment for yourself is often very expensive (understandably). The new Nightjet coaches have 'pods', where a 4 bed-couchette is basicly split up in four private mini-compartments. These can be sold for the price of a bed in a shared compartment. This means that booking early can get you tickets on a route such as Amsterdam-Vienna for about 60 Euros, while still assuring privacy and being relatively comfortable. Having some of these pods on every train, as well as keeping the 4 or even 6 bed-couchettes for larger groups can definitely work, I think. Capacity is indeed another issue. This will not be solved quickly, but every year, new routes are added and you already see competition on certain routes. Berlin-Stockholm sees 2 operators (SJ and Snalltaget), Brussels-Berlin will soon have 2 operators (European Sleeper and from December, Nightjet) and Amsterdam-Prague will also have two (the weekly GreenCityTrip and from the start of next year, European Sleeper will expand to Prague) and Prague-Zürich also has two (Nightjet and EuroNight) trains. I see a bright future. High-speed night trains will be the next level, that can really be an alternative to cross-continental flights on the long run.

Yeah but remember it's replacing an intercity train ticket (say £50) and a hotel (say £150) so really, it's not too bad

I travel a lot, I never in my life had a flight for 50 Euros. That is a budget flight on a Wednesday morning or something, but in real life you usually want to travel same time as everyone else - Thursday or Friday and Sunday or Monday. A Flight, even a cheap one, is 100 to 150 Euros one way (and often you actually have to book both ways to get that price) if you book in a realistic timewindow of one or two or three weeks ahead. Yes sleeper trains are more expensive, especially if you want a singe compartement and so on (I dont like them anyway) but those really cheap flights are only rare cases.

@@arnoldhau1 I have absolutely had flights for 50 euros. Domestic and within Europe. But it's rarely including any decent amount of luggage and it's very rare these days. The "golden" age of dirt cheap flights was about 10 years ago. It wasn't very sustainable in my opinion.

@@rowaystarco I just checked for a journey I need to do and even though it is almost a month to the journey and I can take a ticket without refund and rebooking (something usually not possbible in business as meetings get rescheduled all the time, it is a power game) and it is not a typcial Monday-Friday journey the cheapest offer is more than 200 Francs. Maybe sometimes when you can choose the time and place, but wo can?

How does travelling to the airport costs more money than a train station? In Germany you can get to the airport by public transport.

In most German cities the airport is on the outer edge of the SBahn network, requiring you to buy a ticket that is way more expensive than just to get to the city center. In Munich for example it’s more than 10€ one way to the airport but if you are in the city already it will only cost you about 3,50€ to get to the central station.

@@klamentyne5991 As an example: where I live in the Netherlands, it would cost me 20-30 EUR one-way to travel to either Schiphol or Zaventem airport (which is where most nearby flights depart from). Travel to the nearest train station with international service, however, costs me less than 5 EUR, because those are far more densely available - after all, international trains have relatively many stops along the way, compared to an airplane.

@@crytocc €20 one way to the airport? Than you don;t live in the Randstad as these prices or not realistic. or you do not have a discount card for the railways which is strange because you are making a point on railways. I live in the Netherlands too and could walk to the station in 5 minutes, take the train for 30 minutes and pay less than €6 with 40% discount. Full pric would be less than €10.

@@Dan-eg8qf Not everybody lives in the Randstad, no.

Still the oldest dinosaurs are the sleeper cars on that train. Those are still CIWL type P, build in 1955 out of stainless steel to literally last forever and they clearly do.

Well you should be proud of your country and ÖBB more frequently, they do a lot of things right

same

As someone who has started to use ÖBB more often, I'm pretty happy with them. Yesterday they used older type waggons because the normal ones were being serviced and to make up for it they went through the train and gave us all free bottled water and little chocolates (from Zotter, no less!).

Yes. Going by night train to Finnish Lapland for Hiking, one wakes up in Rovaniemi. Can start refreshed into the first vacation day.

Yo it's the legend JohnnyFD! Hello JohnnyFD 🙋🏻‍♂🙋🏻‍♂

Of course almost all those trains use electric locomotives? Only passenger traffic on small rural lines use Diesel, typcially. And Railways in the south-east of Europe where the state of Railways is partly really bad.

@arnoldhau1 thank you for telling me about some cases they have to run sleeper trains through the diesel territory. The one that I have watched where this happens is HZ Croatian Railways SZ Slovenian Railways ÖBB Wien Hbf to Split in the Adriatic Sea.

New trains were beginning to be constructed in the 1990s for this service, that combined the narrow width needed for across UK travel and safety standards necessary for the channel tunnel. The project was halted long before finished, and the cars eventually sold very cheap for service in eastern Canada.

@@haweater1555 Yes, I remember that debacle, if memory serves correctly, the rolling stock in question was ordered as a counter response to the massive wave of public outrage that erupted circa the HS1 construction period (so you can tell how long ago it was). The concept espoused by ministers of the day was; "look how the UK Govt. has responded to public criticism of HS1 - the new rail infrastructure construction is not simply about serving London and the South East - these new sleeper carriages will enable the rest of the UK to participate in the High Speed Rail revolution". During that period the UK appeared to be rapidly falling behind the rest of Europe as new "High Speed Rail" services expanded just across the other side of La Manche - think TGV mania at the time? Of course the UK Govt's initiative was nothing but a sham (the UK remains the most overtly centralised Nation State across the entire Western Liberal Democratic firmament, bar none!) as the final fate of said new rolling stock demonstrated!

For high speed train rides under 2 hours, the flight really doesnt make much sense

@@ZRHTrainspotter It’s more to do with reducing the carbon foot print I believe. Aircraft produce higher CO2 levels than trains. BTW I’m a fan of train travel, especially in Europe.

@@VLC8792 yea but an airplane using sustainable aviation fuel also wont produce CO2. And im also a fan of train travel, as long as the journey isnt longer than 5 hours 👍

I’ll bet that would not happen.

@@lexus3983 if you mean stopping short haul flights over trains then you clearly don’t know the French.

You also need time to get from your destination to the train station - depending on where you live can be up to 2 hours or more depending on how many buses trains trams you have to take

​@@frankfurtrob866it's usually much quicker to go to the main train station than to the airport if you live in the city. Train stations are typically in the middle of cities, airports typically are way outside. Sure, if you happen to live in the village next to the airport it might be different for you, but that's not true for the majority of the people. Most people live in cities now. And in Europe, if your city has a metro, your main train station will definitely be connected to the metro network. Your airport? Mostly not, with a few exceptions (eg. Barcelona, or Lisbon). Mostly you'll have to go by taxi or by overpriced express airport train. If you're lucky, there's a cheap S-Bahn going all the way to the airport, but those typically only run once per hour or so.

Maybe they're afraid of people who don't speak English?

I took the overnight Capitol Limited train from Washington DC to Chicago late last year, and while I had an affordable, very comfortable coach seat with lots of leg room, on which I still got a decent amount of sleep, the train also has private rooms that convert from seating to sleeping berths for the night leg!

Politics has made a mess of trying to build a "proper passenger network in the U.S." Efforts to create rail routes where they make the most sense, such as on the East Coast, run afoul of politicians who want the lines to also run through their district, so lightly populated that rail makes no sense.

It's nice if the tickets are affordable

Even Dr. King be like: wow, I didn't dream that big haha...

And that is exactly what the wef and the deep state want to turn the world into

Unless those former soviet republics willingly destroyed their railroad services (see Moldova, Romania and the baltic "states")

@@one_step_sideways they didn't destroy anything. Because of a sudden rise in wealth per capita in these countries, everyone's option is for a personal car for now and another 10-15 years from now. The same exact thing that happened in the US after the war. Railroads were down, personal cars were a boom

​@@one_step_sidewaysyou mean Baltic countries? And why would they not destroy obsote horrible tech that is useless since the countries are small? Russian trains is what you use if you want to feel the worst existence on this planet, the poor Russian.

@@CalinFR Not an excuse for those countries which discovered cars yet were foolish enough not to improve anything else (i.e. discover the likes of the Shinkansen). Their trains are destroyed.

Running EMUs seems to be much cheaper than DMUs, especially since the events of last year.

@@ianhomerpura8937 I didn’t say anything about diesel, just multiple unit vs loco hauled. Obviously, electric is cheaper and better, diesel is completely out of question especially when most of the routes are electrified.

China have EMU HST in sleeping configuration.

Idk what you’re talking about. EMU’s can fit sleeping configurations and apart from the UK and the Netherlands loco-hauled trains are still prevalent in Europe and in a lot of other countries

I don't think that's necessarily true - I believe that most of the EMUs in the Netherlands could tow additional cars if needed.

What if im one of those ppl who cant sleep outside of a room.

That and diner cars. Airplane food is horrible. And you are packed like sardines in a tin can while flying.

Well no, the regiojet's train to Przemysl isnt a night train

@@dragoner3211 today at 22:00 from Prague, arriving to Przemysl at 8:17 tomorrow, 9 sleeper cars and 2 coach class...

Yesterday all Nightjets from Rome and Germany to Vienna were 2-3 hours late. And that’s after 8h journey and double the price of a plane ticket. No, thanks.

The problem is that Eurostar trains run on a different signalling system, the UK has AWS, but HS1 is ran on the TVM system, so you would be looking at having to build new rolling stock. You could perhaps though look at buying some of Eurostar's older rolling stock (which some are actually in storage btw), which does have the ability to work on the normal British mainline routes.

I was shocked too. I only ever heard of seat61 until I decided to do a bit of solo travelling in Europe last month. His website helped me with everything and I will continue to use it in the future. How does he make money??

The flight might take an hour, but what is the total travel time? Getting to the airport, having to be there X hours before the flight to check in and stressing at security, then sitting around bored. Then waiting for your luggage and getting to the actual city at your destination. Train stations are usually right in the middle of the city, connected to the metro network, much easier to reach than any airport. A 1hr flight is at least 4hrs of travel time unless you just happen to live in the one village next to the airport and stay in an airport hotel at the other end.

the Scottish sleeper is owned and run by the Scottish Government now, but I cannot see the prices coming down any time soon.

@@adlam97531 Being privatized in 1997, Scotrail was renationalized only a year ago. Hopefully the price will come down once they get everything sorted.

it was clearly noticed.

There's a whole section of the video on NightJet!

In India it is 1/3rd

In high-wage countries it's hard for rail to compete with air. Flying only requires infrastructure at the start and end of the flight. For rail, a 500-mile trip requires maintenance on 500 miles of rail. Also rail scales poorly. Dozens of planes can be flying from NYC to DC at the same time. You can't do that as easily with trains, particularly when freight and rail must mix on the same tracks.

@@Inkling777 there should be no big competition. If trains would receive the same political support as airports and airlines got in the last 30 years, they could be affordable

@@Inkling777 In many cases, the railway lines already exist and money is being spent on their maintenance anyways. Scaling is not so difficult either, you can have trains running every ~7 minutes in one direction on a conventional double-track railway. Can be even every 3 minutes or so, with dedicated equipment. Every train can carry hundreds or even thousands of passengers, even in a couchette configuration. Adding carriages is easy. Especially with American loading gauge and length/weights limits.

Wishful thinking. Just because you want it it does not make so. Get in the line to be packed on Economy Class and stop whining.

Exactly. Air fuel has no taxes.

I think there's one or two that run seasonally, but only to specific destinations.

It's efficient for me because I can sleep, then ready to explore my destination. I can bring my sandwich, snacks etc, there's always a bar on trains 🚂 My bucket list is the orient Express but it's expensive! The 2 longest train journey I took were Paris - Venice, 12 hours, had a great time sharing a cabin with 4 beds. Great conversation. I slept, woke up, Venice was there The second long train journey was Alexandria Egypt, 3 hours?switch train in Cairo, 14 or 16 hours on economy seat😭😭😭 because the sleepover cabin were sold out 😭, I can't wait for the next day. It must be 106F in September 2021, I was too exhausted from jet lack sleep deprivation, and slept the entire journey. The slow train was delayed in between cities before arriving to Aswan, very close to Sudan. I travel solo on a budget, sleeper train save time and money 😊

True, and every year, less emission rights are being allowed. However, so far, the flight companies receive almost all of their emission rights from national governments, for free. This will be phased out next year and especially 2025. After that year, no rights can be given to flight companies, they will have to pay for all. Based on the current CO2 prices, a single flight on a popular route, such as Amsterdam-Barcelona, will cost about 10-25 Euros more than it would cost with the free rights today. The high variable is because I am not sure whether only the pure CO2-emissions will be calculated, or also the CO2-emissions with the extra climate effects (planes are extra polluting because CO2 emitted at high attitude is far worse for the climate than polluting at ground level). My guess is that it would be the first one, meaning that a flight emits about 115 kilograms of CO2 per passenger, so about 1/8 of a tonne. One tonne currently costs 97 Euros, which means that the extra CO2-costs would be 12/12,50 Euros. The EU wants to push up that price by allowing less and less rights every year. My guess is that we need at least a x4 until we will really see a big effect on the competitiveness of trains on such distances. On the other hand, planes have become far more expensive already over the past few years. Electricity prices will go down the coming years (positive for trains), but fuel prices will likely not (negative for planes), so that is another factor which, in my opinion, is often forgotten about. When plane fuel will possibly be taxed, which the EU is considering as well, we will see another push in plane prices. And, last but not least, some airports, like Schiphol in Amsterdam, are at their max and possibly even have to scale down. That could be another push.

Most sleeper trains were canceled the past 10-20 years. But now they are coming back again. That's the point Although London to Plymouth, Corneall takes only 3 hrs, so you really wouldn' need a sleeper for that journey !

We are heading to seating only fast trains. Sleeper, although affordable, aren't suited for regular people to travel anymore, it's being packed to brim and passengers are subjected to inhumane conditions.

@@bhatkrishnakishor You basicly turned everything around. Sleepers are usually not very affordable and we are actually heading towards more sleeper trains. It us true that the current trains are outdated, but new trains are being ordered and soon, a new fleet of night trains enters the European Rail network. These trains are very humane and comfortable.

@@Marchanthof my comment was in response to the above comment, which is regarding Indian Railways. It is in fact the sleeper trains that are the cheapest option in India 🙂

@@bhatkrishnakishor Yeah ok, I get what you mean then! Funny how here, the opposite is the case :p