A trip I've done several times is London to Edinburgh. It's a quick flight and even a quick train during the day but if you want to spend Saturday and Sunday you'd have to get up early on Saturday to catch a plane or train which would get you in by noon.
Instead you take the Caledonian Sleeper on Friday evening and arrive in the morning in Edinburgh, ready to start the day.
Although you won't get the absolute best night's sleep, if you come prepared (sleeping mask + ear plugs) you'll get a very decent night's sleep (better than having to wake up early on Saturday).
It's also fun going to sleep and waking up somewhere different!
If you ever want to go between Britain and The Netherlands this has to be the most relaxing way to travel. Get on the boat around dinner, eat dinner on the boat, have a beer, go to your room and sleep, wake up in your destination.
It's even better than night trains.
For booking, one has to be careful to book the inter-European distances from Brussels with a reduced price a bit in advance (for example from the German bahn.de web site). It's called Eurosparpreis or so. Also, for the British trains there are resellers which sell the seats much more expensive, so one has to watch out not to be short-changed.
By the way, another and often cheaper alternative is to take the ferry from Newcastle to Ijmuiden/NL which is a port of Amsterdam. As well as the Caledonian Sleeper, it leaves in the evening and arrives at breakfast time. And you have a nice two-people cabin which is a good place to sleep. It can be like 120 € per person for a return ticket.
https://www.dfds.com/en/passenger-ferries/ferry-crossings/fe...
Although since you mention using the Internet and also the Eurostar, you probably meant the day train, which is fine but the 6 hours to Berlin take a chunk out of your day. (I once took the one at 5 AM, but that turned out to be too early for me and I can't sleep in a chair.)
It's not quite as seamless as a direct train but still very enjoyable:
You take a train in the evening from London to the ferry terminal in Harwich, then overnight ferry in a private cabin (it's a big ferry with restaurant and bar etc.) to a port in southern Holland. Then a train from there to Amsterdam.
The train tickets are part of the ferry price (rail and sail) and you get into Amsterdam nice and early.
The UK has two sleeper train services- the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Scotland, and the Night Riviera from London to Cornwall.
At one stage, the Caledonian Sleeper stopped selling seats and would only sell sleeper berths (because of coronavirus) while the Night Riviera stopped selling sleeper berths and would only sell seats (for the same reason).
While I understand stopping selling seats, the decision to not sell sleeper berths probably has more to do with cost than protection from the virus. See also Eurostar's short-lived decision to stop offering free Wi-Fi in standard class!
It does not run through Prague. It runs through Poland and then crosses CZ from Ostrava to Břeclav. Then SK (Kúty, Bratislava, Štúrovo) and then HU.
Actually in central Europe the night trains usually join and split at some stations, so in Ostrava two trains join: from Berlin and from Warsaw. Then in Břeclav they split again (two halves from each half), one goes to Vienna, another to Budapest. So at the beginning there are two parts on each train and you have to choose the right one. But since the places have to be reserved, you cannot get on the wrong half.
Why is it suspended?
(I'm surprised, though, that the train would pass through five countries. AFAIK it doesn't pass through the Czech Republic.)
The only thing that changed a few years ago is Prague. Changed for SW Poland.
Restrooms on Amtrak don't make you deaf. No stupid food carts blocking the way to the restroom. Even on parts of the world that have food service on trains, the carts don't block people from walking past them.
You can walk the entire length of the train whenever you feel like for exercise.
Turbulence is not a thing on trains, and there's much more space to get from the window seat to the aisle without needing to crawl over a stranger's lap.
Also, there's scenery almost the whole way.
It's unfortunate you can't seem to make too many stops along the way. The company will allow for one, I believe, but as you try to add more the tickets get more expensive. The timing of arrival and the small-town location of many of them just make the option not very interesting for general tourism. I did have a few hours in Chicago which was pretty cool, though I didn't see much and was very put off by the "if you're being shot at then throw your duffel bag at the attacker" videos at the main station. But it was also the middle of winter and like 7-9am or so, so that definitely coloured my experience. Great diner experience though. No one does breakfast quite like North Americans.
Talking with a nice man from California in the restaurant car when I did go the one time I learned he paid as much as me for one of the private room options, just he'd booked a few weeks in advance. I believe he also had access to a shower, which would have been a game changer for me. I booked the way I did though primarily to test out the "worst" option and compare it to better options as I'd make more trips. This was what I learned so far. I'd like to do more though, because this seems like a great way to travel the country.
(You can get a room with a window, but for an overnight trip it seemed a bit pointless.)
I find it difficult to sleep on sleeper trains, and usually arrive tired at the destination. Where there is the option I will use a night train out of principle (it's still usually more comfortable than a plane) but, if I have time, a daytime rail journey is much nicer.
Eye mask, you want the kind that looks like a bra and puts no pressure on your eyes. "Nidra" is the brand I usually get, they're cheap, I replace mine regularly.
Noise canceling headphones. I go for cheap sets but get what works for you, something wireless. I have found history podcasts and music both work well for me.
I have a neck pillow that basically looks like a cervical collar and is made from memory foam. Works really well for me but was pretty expensive, and it takes up a bunch of space so it's a tradeoff to consider. And wear a zipped sweatshirt on the plane, use it as a blanket - after turning the air vent on max.
My Airpods Pro are great but they only have a battery life of 4-5 hours per charge (20 hours in case, but you have to wake up to charge them).
My Bose QC 15 over ear headphones can stay on much longer (> 20 hours of battery life) and have great noise cancellation, but as soon as I lean my head to either of the side headrests on the seat, the noise cancellation "leaks". I've never been able to sleep on a plane with my Bose QCs.
The best solution I've found so far have been plain-old ear plugs ($5).
Since they're cabled to an external battery box they can easily last through any flight, and you can leave the USB charge cable connected to an in-flight power socket while you use them to keep the battery full.
Any particular you know that in fact do cancel noise and really work?
On the other hand, a $400 set of Sony's will basically put you in audio isolation - to the point that some people genuinely don't like them. A friend had me put his pair on in the middle of a busy restaurant at lunch time and I'm not kidding when I say it felt pin drop quiet.
And Aeroflot are not known for their hospitality and understanding to foreign travelers...
For a quantitative comparison:
https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm
For example:
London to Nice
Plane: 4 hours, 250 Kg CO2
Train: 8 hours by Eurostar+TGV, 36 Kg CO2
85% less
(BTW this site, seat61.com, is a great and very useful web site, if one likes train travel or wants to travel by train in Europe, one should seriously have a look!)
It gets pretty hard to defend the choice when the economics look like that.
The train ticket will never be one bit cheaper. No promo events, nothing; state-owned enterprises seem incapable of such thinking. The price is simply absurd - renting a car and putting enough diesel into it would've been cheaper even if you went alone.
Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California.
¹ Between 14% and 30% of total emissions are from heating in Germany for instance https://www.bmu.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimasch...
How does that work in practical reality so it doesn't just turn into a money making scheme with no real impact akin to Catholic indulgences?
> Also, it's a little bit rich to listen to any sort of climate talk from anyone in cold countries¹. They emit so much carbon just to be warm. Well, I don't, because I live in California.
How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency? [0]
Afaik AC is generally considered way more inefficient, heating can be captured as a side-product from a lot of processes, cooling not so much.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328701132_A_compari...
As a matter of policy? Universal carbon-tax with increasing fee schedules. Everyone pays for their carbon emissions. The sum is then distributed back to everyone evenly as a Green Dividend minus admin costs. Net zero cash to the government, whopping undirected green energy subsidy possible by tuning amounts. It already worked for Sulphur Dioxide.
As a matter of personal preference? Well, I get nothing from this except the right to brag I'm carbon negative so really it could totally be equivalent to indulgences. As it so happens I do care to be doing my part, but you're right in that there's no incentive for that.
> How many emissions in the US come from the use of AC and heating due to basically zero federal building standards for energy efficiency?
Right, but I live in California and have no AC.
You are in denial about the destruction you do. No, you can't offset emissions. A single short flight will release as much as 400kg CO2 to the atmosphere. This amount of carbon was bound by huge forests about millions of years. It is not possible to undo that release by planting a tree. Ask a geologist if you do not believe me.
And I am not saying it is not good to protect forests. Of course it is. But if you have any rational choice between offsetting and not flying, offsetting and flying, not offsetting, not flying -- not flying is always the best option.
Coal is just carbon that is in the ground. Grow a tree, convert most of it back to carbon, and bury it. Roman-era technology.
This is completely tractable, the fact that we aren't doing enough of it is a matter of will, not feasibility.
If any planting even happens; trees for CO2 whitewashing is like the perfect scam opportunity because nobody cares if you deliver.
Of course, you still have to discount but it makes things much more feasible.
That's why you usually don't plant trees. You can do other stuff that wouldn't otherwise get done.
Chemically, it is the same. The difference between CO2 bound in coal or oil to the CO2 bound in a tree is that the former would very probably remain bound for millions of years while the carbon bound in a tree will, with an overwhelming probability, will be released back in the atmosphere when the tree dies and its organic matter decomposes. And this will also happen if you bury the tree in the ground. It might not happen if you make charcoal from the tree and place the coal thousands of meters under the ground, where no oxygen is present. But this process is itself so energy-intensive, and therefore carbon-intensive, that it will not reach a net reduction of carbon.
Yes, in the case of a tree, it is theoretically possible that a vanishingly small fraction of the carbon it contains gets fossilized. But, there are at least two major problems.
Fossilization is very, very, very rare, and it is very, very, very slow. Told plainly, it normally does not happen.
The first is that you would have to plant so many trees that you would retain, as an extremely small fraction of the biomass of the tree, the amount of carbon released by your flight in geological deposits. This would take millions of trees and also millions of years, and is clearly infeasible. Nobody is even promising that, and suggesting that by planting a tree you could bury carbon permamently is just self-deception by people who buy such schemes.
And by that account, carbon-offsetting is just a scam. You pay money to extract the carbon you released by taking the plane from the atmosphere, but you can't permanently extract the carbon you released, at least not at a price that anyone is actually going to pay. It is a scam.
> Coal is just carbon that is in the ground. Grow a tree, convert most of it back to carbon, and bury it.
There is another factor which I find at times even more shocking. You suggested trees as a means to bind carbon. In fact, the fossil fuel from your plane flight is from oil and this is in large parts formed from marine sediments, also formed over geological times. What can be formed from trees is coal. Now, much of the large coal deposites we used today were formed in the carboniferous geologicial period, which was 358 million years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
Now, the thing is that the geological conditions in which these coal deposits were formed do not exist any more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal
Basically, trees use lignin. At this time, lignin was something new on our Earth and there were no fungi which could decompose lignin, so the biomass of the trees could not decompose. Only later, lignin-eating fungi evolved.
That means that these coal deposits can never be re-created, even over a time of millions of years.
But that's hardly necessary. I can just pay you the minimum necessary to get you to shift off fossil and I make some good savings.
Air travel is easily replaceable by low-carbon alternatives that exist today. When you do the accounting of carbon offsetting/carbon sinks capacity, it becomes quite obvious everything unnecessary must go.
Intercontinental and cross continental travel are a bit harder to replace with low carbon alternatives.
Europe has a functional high speed rail system due to its high population density, but the distances between some city pairs in the are hard to replace with rail or other low carbon alternatives. Think of Los Angeles to NYC, or San Francisco to Paris.
Many of these flights could be replaced by video conferencing, but if one really has to travel that distance, rail is a hard sell. It's not unpleasant to take Amtrak across the continent, but it's not fast either.
2) Again, fast travel across the globe is a luxury, not a necessity. More than 80% of the world's population has never been near an airplane.
And that's for a single pair of cities, with no cost overruns, no tunnels, straight line distance. It also excludes things like stations, rolling stock, and maintenance.
It's not impossible to build, but having high speed rail throughout the US is an investment that would be a multiple of the costs of building the entire interstate highway system.
Mind you, I'd love it if that were to happen, riding high speed rail is much more pleasant than flying. Speaking as someone who has gone across the continent a few times on Amtrak and enjoyed riding high speed trains in Asia and Europe, it's just hard to see it happening. Recent US infrastructure projects have had massive cost overruns, and there is a seemingly low political appetite for building large infrastructure compared to the 20th century.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/764486/cost-construction...
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+los+a...
Great, that's about 2 thirds of the yearly US defense budget! You have the workforce, the discipline, and as a bonus the defense industry can be repurposed for building rails and trains. Once the transition is achieved, you can build such a line every year at no added cost to the taxpayer.
(I know, that's completely unrealistic... it shows the priorities of the US government...)
But much of it is either for leisure or can be replaced by videoconferencing while saving money.
Regarding leisure, it might feel great to do fast intercontinental travel. But realistically, it is not something which will make you a happy person. Most people who are living today could not afford that luxury and are still living a happy life. Maybe even happier than the average American if their culture is a bit less materialistic.
In the light that it is going to devastate our planet, travel for leisure is not necessary at all.
All of which will be released again when the oak dies.
Net effect: Zero.
Heating is a large factor in emissions but if you fly several times a year, it is without doubt the largest source of emissions.
I'm having a hard time understanding this sentence.
In any case, I think its fair to say over time trains win out over airplanes on emissions, but it isn't that cut and dry especially early on.
400k seats a day, or 150 million a year, for an average 10kg co2 per seat in construction costs over the first year.
456km London to Paris is is about 100kg co2 each way per seat.
So construction emissions isn’t even a dent in the first year.
I also doubt they make up a substantial part of the rail traffic, if we go about it that way we there's a whole bunch of vehicles with horrible CO2 emissions that only have gotten barely viable electric alternatives in the last handful of years, like excavators, bulldozers and all kinds of other construction/hauling/maintenance vehicles.
However, railway vehicles tend to last for decades, so it might take a long time for everything to be electric. The people buying them can both afford and have the expertise to purchase reliable, repairable equipment. It's then run on a perfectly smooth "road" without much rough handling.
Why would you use a super-heavy diesel train to pull night-train carriages? Use a little electric one.
I have no idea about the numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if including building the railroads and maintenance would make plane and (electric) train equal. You don't want to know the amount of diesel smoke that's coming from the nearby railroad reconstruction.
I wonder where could one find this data
It's not possible to create a new destination, add additional capacity to an existing destination, or maintain existing capacity without additional costs to all major parts of the infrastructure, for both trains and planes.
These buildings are very similar. The major difference is that while a capital city train station handles around 10-40 trains at a time with short arrival-departure pause (e.g. Prague main station handles around 10-15 concurrent trains), capital city airports are often handling many dozens of concurrent flights (with longer arrival-departure pause and smaller groups per vehicle) -> the airport takes more area but isn't technically sophisticated at all; the train station is denser, but railroad switching at a station isn't easy. So let's just keep stations separate. Of course buildings required by the machines should be included.
It most definitely is possible to build an airport without any costs other than construction of the runway and a fuel pump, and a 2-4 km stretch of dirt is more than enough. If you want airliners landing there then simply pour asphalt or concrete over it, smaller planes can handle dirt. You'll want to bring fuel - a truck that already often drives nearby (to supply gas stations) will bring it to you, and nothing fancier than the simplest second hand fuel pump and a tank is needed.
It is also most definitely possible to add significant capacity to an existing airport with nearly zero costs and it is routinely done - every year from May to September hundreds of tiny airports all around the world start serving (sometimes) more flights than the country's capital city, bringing in thousands of people from dozens or even hundreds of different destinations all around the planet, with flights coming in every 30 minutes from 8 to 22. Usually a travel agency finds a place they like (that probably never had a single airliner fly over there before), they call it and make a deal, and it's done. They'll set up their own ground handling service if they have that many flights daily to improve efficiency - that's as easy as parking a few cars next to the airport and placing staff they already employ there, and it's not needed if it's just a flight per hour or so.
The thing that's hard about capital city airports is that everyone wants to go to a different destination and be there on time, everyone goes to the airport by their own means, the security theatre, etc. I don't know much train stations with numbers of car parking places comparable to airports, and these that do still don't like cars being parked for weeks there. The travel agency has it simpler because they're moving the whole group either by plane or by bus, and they can do whatever they like with the schedule. Many smaller cities have airports that handle few flights per week and that kind of airport is at most a single building next to the runway, nothing like FRA or the new BER.
Maintaining existing capacity - I already talked about the runway pour... That's about it. The fuel equipment will need a refresh every 20 years or so.
You have drifted so far from a reasonable comparison for long distance passenger travel that continuing the discussion is pointless.
The airport eventually lost its Ryanair connection because - allegedly - one day the plane approaching called air traffic and got no response. The air traffic controller had slept in late....
Also, it is not my particular field of engineering but there is likely no scenario where fuel efficiency of planes is better than trains. That you can find sources for pretty easily.
Also, the emissions of building railroad track are also on a similar order of magnitude to building highway, so even if the goal is to displace cars instead of planes, it is still more than worth it to build.
I can imagine it being a net negative in the US where trains travel only every few hours, or in some cases only a few times a week, except maybe in the Boston-NYC-DC corridor. SF to LA is only once a day for goodness sake, which is incapable of displacing cars or planes. Compare to Japan or China where service between major cities is every few minutes. Once a day service from a city like SF to a city like LA would be unthinkable in Europe or Asia.
As much as I love high speed trains I hate it when a night train that eats zero of your daytime gets taken out of service and gets replaced by a high speed day train that eats half of daytime.
It is perhaps one of the reasons why my generation defines itself as Europeans. And it is utterly painful to me that my young niece and her generation, at least at the moment, can't do it.
China is another story -- there are no rail passes and you don't need one. The night trains are not that expensive and extremely clean and comfortable.
(Or maybe they will stay in the existing system. Turkey seems to be in it.)
Brexit doesn’t stop 27 forward looking countries from enjoying Interrail though.
Still better than taking a bus.
A lot better! I once took a UK overnight bus from Birmingham to Inverness, it was a horrible experience. Night trains are absolutely lovely, by comparison.
I can't wait for Europe to reopen and travel in a more civilised manner!
Wilderness areas, second homes, minor tourist destinations of all kinds. It has the potential to totally change the economies and usage patterns of those areas.
I live somewhere that's just far enough from the major east coast population centers to keep weekend traffic down. But when sleeping in a self driving car is a reality? We're talking 100 million people who can spend a weekend here easily. It's going to change everything.
even better if my own car could do that - it'd make road trips on vacation so much better.
Edit: There is also a system called "Through coach" or Kurswagen in German, where you enter a coach in the evening, it starts as part of one train, and then, during the night, the train stops and it becomes part of another train - possibly with another change, and in the morning it arrives at your booked destination. (Of course you check the number of the coach well before you enter it, heh.)
From my experience my Nightjet left Düsseldorf to Salzburg or Vienna. It split in Nurnberg and merge with the train from Berlin (which also had 2 destinations).
Kraków, Poland with 780k inhabitants has "only" 10
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/50.06881/19.94768&laye...
The fix is not easy. But building taj mahal type trains isn't helpful. (simplistic trains might be - using the lower cost to build more is useful). Those of you watching local politics need to scream "NO EXTRAS, only the cheap reliable system done fast" at all local meetings to counter those asking for beauty.
While slightly pricier than flying, I had a bed and could freely move around the cabin. To top it off - anecdotally, though intuitively it holds - those who travel by train are less stressed than those travelling by plane, and therefore friendlier and open to conversation.
A great experience overall. I hope to do more of this in Europe.
For example, suppose you want to visit Budapest from Rome over the weekend[0].
If you fly out this Saturday, the flight is €10, you arrive at 10AM. If you want to whole day, you can fly out on Friday, for €23, and find accommodation for €45, totalling 68 euros[1]. Traveling by train is sadly way more expensive.
Consider instead Berlin -> Budapest, it's €10 on Friday, direct, with Wizzair, but >100€ on Saturday with stops. The train is both cheaper and faster!
[0] this is where I live and where my family lives, the route I fly most often
[1] prices are from skyscanner, airbnb
Christmas Day, Graz (Austria) to Munich. 5hr 57 minutes. 1 change in Salzburg. €26.90 one-way.
The same journey at decent times in the afternoon on Christmas Eve only increases to €36.90 - €46.90.
Seems pretty reasonable to me!
In general, the trick is to book in advance to make use of Sparschiene prices. Or if a frequent traveller, buy a yearly rail card, which offers the equivalent Sparschiene all the time.
Provided you are in 2nd class or higher, the sleep is generally comfortable and lulling. But I might be used to it, as we also did often when I was a child and I was used to rocking and train noises.
They must have thought we booked that room as a "love hotel".
I mean, I can be at the train station fairly quickly (10 minute walk): The airport is out of town and I'd take a bus - an earlier bus than I think I need just to be safe. Does the flight mean that you get a hotel that you could skip on a night train? How long are you waiting at the airport?
Airport time isn't just flight time.
I traveled a relatively short distance by plane recently and the airport time+location overhead was just about 1 hour (got from one house to my other house in 2 hours with a 1h flight). And the train would have about 20 mins of overhead. So the effective overhead was more like 40 mins in this specific case. Of course it could be much worse for many routes. But probably mostly under 2h even under very unfavorable conditions. So you're looking at 3-4h by plane.
[0] and was being pretty generous by only checking western europe too. In many parts of Europe buses can be faster than trains.
> got from one house to my other house in 2 hours with a 1h flight
That sounds pretty exceptional. 45 minutes is usually given as the minimum time to go through airport security, since you have to allow enough time to not miss your flight if you do get pulled out for some reason (or be prepared to sometimes miss your flight, I guess). Airports are usually about an hour away from anywhere in the city you're going to. So I'd say 3 hours' overhead is the norm, and it gets worse if you're trying to fly after a day's work because the transport system of the place you're going to is usually shutting down by the time you arrive.
This document [0] has airport-to-city-center-by-taxi timings for top European airports. 1 hour seems to be the absolute worst, 27 min average, 22 min median. And it only gets better with smaller cities [1].
Almost any airport nowadays lets you walk in with your boarding pass. You scan it, go through security and go straight to the gate. You'd need to be very unlucky with unusually clogged security (unlikely early in the morning). Or be dealing with a huge airport where it takes a long time to get to the gate.
Boarding for short flights shouldn't close earlier than 20 minutes before departure. For large airports 40 mins should be enough. For tiny regional airports 30. Even check-in counters will sometimes close as late as 30 mins before departure.
Also note that the arrival time given on the ticket, isn't touchdown time. It's either aircraft door open or final parking. There's often a bit of padding added too. So for arrival 10 extra minutes should be the absolute worst case.
Very conservative average for first-time travel between sizable EU cities: 50 mins before departure + 2 x 30 mins for taxis + 10 mins for exiting the airport = 120 min = 2 hours. Subtract 10-30 minutes for repeat travelers.
In my example I was going from a small city to a capital city and the breakdown was roughly: 10m taxi + 30m before departure (20m would have been fine too!) + 20m taxi + 0m for exit (disembarked before claimed arrival time) = 1 hour.
Need to be very unlucky to hit 3 hours.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/modes/a...
[1] in my example the airport was in fact closer to my house than the train station. No other departures at the same time, 0 people in line for security, 1 minute walk to the gate.
Sure; rail times were what I was assuming; your document puts them in the region of 40 minutes from a "hub" (though there's a lot of variation), so I stand by about an hour from a typical origin/destination. If you routinely take taxis then fair enough, but that comes with its own set of downsides.
> Boarding for short flights shouldn't close earlier than 20 minutes before departure. For large airports 40 mins should be enough. For tiny regional airports 30. Even check-in counters will sometimes close as late as 30 mins before departure.
I've never seen an airport that didn't officially advise 45 minutes, and every major airport I've been to had check-in counters closing an hour before departure. (Whereas, Eurostar excepted, the official number I've heard from train operators is 5 minutes). You can probably get away with less most of the time, sure, but I wouldn't want to take the risk.
Air Baltic, 40m for baggage drop-off, 30m for business class https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Air_Baltic/checkin.php
Polish airlines, 30m (also note many different airports around Europe are listed under 30m) https://www.lot.com/ge/en/at-the-airport
Munich Airport, 45m with luggage, 35m without https://www.icelandair.com/support/airports/munich-muc/
Heathrow, the busiest in Europe, 45m for short haul flights, 35m cut-off for security. https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/information/airport-inf...
Alitalia, 40m from Rome Fiumicino https://www.alitalia.com/en_en/fly-alitalia/check-in/check-i...
And again, these don't matter to us if we have out boarding pass and only carry-on luggage. But it clearly demonstrates arriving 45 minutes before departure is hardly tight. And many airports and airlines don't consider 30 minutes crazy.
I woke up somewhere in Italy. They were good about it and got me re-routed. But I ended up on this extremely slow train that was filled with high school students. Then I spent hours in the Bologna train station which I got to know extremely well ;<). It killed an entire day!
With privacy (alone in compartment) and a non-shared toilet and bathroom?
But the kind of night trains I used to take, no. But that's because I was cheap.
I even took regular, non sleeper night trains. Sleeping on seats is not as good as on beds but much than on planes or buses. These tended to be really cheap.
One interesting thing they did in France was to run high speed trains at low speed through the night (iDNiGHT). The idea was to get an extra "free" slot. Really cheap (I think I paid something like 10€ for a ~900km trip) but not the most comfortable. Still managed to sleep. I liked these but few people did, so they cancelled the service.
The joke was that I had a sleeping pad with me, but I didn't dare try and dig it out of my pack in the dark cramped shared compartment.
Have a lunch appointment 2 hours away? Get in the car at 9, bring a book or some work and tell the machine to take a scenic route.
Need to cross the continent? Bring the sleeping bag to the car and let it roll.
Edit: hyphen.
I love night trains. For distances of around 1000km, they are effectively the fastest way.
Imagine two transports:
- "fast", which can be a plane or high speed train. Travel time is around 3h. The plane is faster but with getting in and out of the airport, boarding, etc... it takes almost the same amount of time in the end.
- The night train, travel time 9h, let's say from 10pm to 7am
You want to get to your destination at some time in the morning.
With the "fast" transport, you have to get up really early and take the first train/flight. Expect a short night, and it may not even be possible without arriving late. The other option is to travel the day before in the evening and book a hotel, not ideal either. In any case, you will spend 3 active hours of your day for travel, or sleep 3 hours less.
With the night train, you have a good night sleep (generally, sleeper trains are comfortable) and didn't waste the best part of your day. And you may even save a hotel night.
Think of it as a traveling hotel.