The new age of sleeper trains | Hacker News Reader

The new age of sleeper trains

spectator.co.uk

20 pointshhs12 comments

I did the Caledonian Sleeper recently from London back to Scotland. It was a great experience, my cabin even had a shower. One thing that surprised me was how fast the train went - it does not saunter through the countryside in a relaxed manner as I assumed!

Yes, I was told there are some sleepers in the UK that actually arrive a little too soon, so they wait outside the final stop for quite a while just so that people can have a little more sleep before it’s time to disembark!

It being a relatively short distance this makes sense to me.

Only in the UK is an 8.5h train journey to cover 400miles (Caledonian Sleeper from London to Glasgow), slower than driving according to Google, described as "fast" ;)

The train stops multiple times for long periods of time. Carriages are swapped at different stations to go to different places. Next time I should use a GPS tracker to see the actual profile of the journey.

If airports could stop being unpredictable, that would make train travel not worth the time and money premium.

But with COVID, airports added an extra hour of recommended time for both domestic and international, and security is staffed for the median, not the peak, so it looks like we can expect no improvement there.

A big argument for night trains is ecology and diminishing your CO2 footprint, which won't be affected by airport efficiency

It's also quite convenient compared to all the actions required to board an airplane... Just hop on and off straight from the city center. If only governments stopped advantaging flying at the expense of trains.

Every time I've checked thus far the were sold out way in advance and not priced competitively. e.g.

Random dates in July: £270 sleeper, £62 flight

If they are sold out they are apparently competitive enough?

Can't fault that logic.

Perhaps demand is from people that don't like flying?

I think they are trying to compete against flying+hotel rather than just flying.

Basically for people who would fly in the evening and stay at a hotel in order to be ready at destination first thing in the morning.

Of course, within the UK distances are so short than you can also be at destination early in the morning by flying very early...

So, really, people pick the sleeper train for the experience.

Yeah exactly. That flight...lon to inverness...is 1.5hours. Train overnight seems almost less convenient given that I'm not sure I'll sleep well

Reply on news.ycombinator.com