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Comment by calpaterson | Hacker News Reader

> First, if you look at Europe as a whole, you will see that sleeper trains were never really dead.

In the UK, experiences vary. The new Caledonian Sleeper (London-Highlands) is apparently a pretty rubbish experience. However, I took the Night Riviera (London - Cornwall) a few years ago and found it a pretty good experience even though I very nearly missed my stop in Truro. The problem for a business traveller is that you would need a shower.

The other problem facing the Caledonian sleeper is that London-Glasgow is only something like 4 hours and the day trains are very good. The same is not so true for getting out to Cornwall.

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I've haven't taken the Caledonian sleeper since the revamp but did take it a few times before that.

In my experience it was a near perfect form of travel. Arrive at a train station long after most people had gone home, board the train and fall asleep, wake up at the platform very early the next day. You lose practically no 'useful' time.*

The one thing which stopped us making use of it more frequently was the cost. It was generally more expensive than flying, much more expensive than driving and even more so now that we have a child.

* In fairness, it's pretty loud and not massively comfortable so if you are a light sleeper you might not get the full magic carpet effect.

Part of the expense can be discounted against sleeping accommodations you would need otherwise though, and for many of us another part of the price is simply investing in something that is desirable for a variety of reasons (ecology being a prominent one).

For us specifically that didn't work out because the main reason we were travelling was usually to see friends or family who we'd be staying with anyway. I appreciate that's not the general case.

While I'm happy to spend a little more for the sake of the environment we're talking something like 3-5x more expensive.

> The same is not so true for getting out to Cornwall.

Trains from Paddington to Truro run every hour, taking around 4h30m.

https://traintimes.org.uk/london/truro/09:30/today

Considering its 1/3 the distance from London to Glasgow it's quite slow, but it's still faster than driving.

Here in Finland, you can get a sleeping compartment where the toilet transforms into a shower. They're quite practical...

The revamped Sleeper is great, albeit pricey, especially now they've sorted the early issues with the new trains and crews.

It's also ideal for getting a full day of work in either London/Glasgow and returning. Doing that by plane is also possible but is environmentally horrible and taxing, doing it by train eats into good chunks of the days either side.

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