Freight rail fueled a new luxury overnight train startup
freightwaves.com
freightwaves.com
Interesting statement since it still runs and you can book a private sleeper room for that route. Same with the coast starlight train that already runs the SF-LA route with sleeper cars.
Note the weasel word all-sleeper. They run a non-sleeper passenger also car on both of the above for those getting off at the smaller stations on the way so that’s how they can claim those services don’t exist when you can just go book them online right now.
Along the inlets of the bay, up the sierra nevadas, through the great basin, through the moab desert with mesas either side and then into the rocky mountains winding along cliff tops. It goes through the salt flats and salt lake city at night but the daytime views either side of that one night are incredible and make the train trip entirely worthwhile. A great way to experience a sleeper car, you’ll see why people do it rather than fly and a great experience all round.
Don’t bother with the denver to chicago leg though unless you really like corn fields (chicago is absolutely worthwhile visiting but probably not worth the extra night on the train when you can fly)
Getting from a to b is definitely not the point of such a trip. Think of it as a hotel where the view changes constantly and you just happen to end up somewhere new at the end of the stay.
...Or for people who just don't but the sleeper ticket but go any distance. I went coast to coast with regular seat tickets once. It's better than Greyhound, and people do long hauls with them daily.
The track is mostly single track and heavily used by freight (where a few hours delay isn't the end of the world). Multi hour delays are extremely common and even with it being overnight, if you set off at say 11pm and aim to arrive at 8am, a 3 hour delay could see you arriving at 11am and your VIP passengers missing all their business meetings. They won't return!
FWIW I don't think Europe's push to overnight rail trains will be very effective either. It doesn't work well with overnight maintenance windows, and the yield per train is extremely low (100 passengers in 50 'rooms' vs 1000 normal seating passengers dictate a 10x ticket price). Also is extremely complex in Europe with many different signalling/communication systems, traction systems, etc.
Which may be a desirable policy outcome for state rail agencies - but this is a private venture!
I think cost is an under-appreciated aspect of this. You're carrying 5-10x fewer passengers per-train, at greater cost (the cost of turning over a stateroom is many times higher than cleaning a coach seat, along with linens, food, etc.), on very expensive custom equipment that isn't suitable for other uses.
There seem to be two "major" (really heavy scare quotes here) players in the US private sleeper service scene. Dreamstar IMO is the more promising of the two (heavy caveat that this is relative to each other, not absolute odds) by realizing the only way to make the economics work is the ability to charge $$$$$ for tickets.
The other (Lunatrain) IMO is just out to lunch, with a claimed focus on affordability. None of the above leads to affordable tickets.
Most of the sleeper startups basically just work with renderings, we work with iterating on full sized mock ups. We did ergonomics/market testing with hundreds of test users. We have evidence that with the right cabin technology, you can be profitable, even produce a margin, and significantly disrupt air travel.
It saves a lot of time, because you can use central train stations instead of transfering to/from the airport, and you depart late in the evening (get full use out of the departure day) and arrive somewhat early in the morning (don't lose much of that day, either).
So it does not have to be cheaper than an inland flight, it just has to be competitive with flight + 2x transfer + hotel, and while it might be slightly less comfortabel than a hotel room, you avoid airport transfer and -security, which is nice.
Local and short distance can be profitable.
We had multiple delays along our route and the 4 hour trip turned into almost 7.
I'll fly for the same price next time.
Pacific Surfliner is also very popular and close to profitable.
To be fair, Amtrak could make some or more of its routes profitable depending on how it allocates expenses - after all, they get hired to run some of the commuter rails, too.
It’s always my great sadness that they didn't make that the first high-speed rail segment, heck a few billion dollars on double track and other improvements would have cut an hour off that time. I don’t even know if LA union Station is straight though yet.
For example; in the UK on London -> Edinburgh, Caledonian Sleeper has on average 250 passengers per day (but this is the entire route - not just london to edinburgh). Given there is roughly ~2tph throughout the day for about 16 hours a day, each with ~1000 seats (with very high load factors), that's about 30,000 passengers/day on the "day" train. Probably roughly that again flying. Plus driving and coaches and it is absolutely tiny.
I've also taken them in Egypt and Morocco and they were loud, jerky, and smelly...
When I see pictures of trains in the USA they look very old and look like the locomotive is actually pulling the train vs providing electricity to each individual car's motors. This was the problem in Egypt and Morocco - the engine accelerate and all of the cars get jerked and when it slows down all of the cars get jerked again, making it hard to sleep.
In BFE Texas or Utah or whatever the rails are like glass because crossing 300mi of nothing in 4hr instead of 8 has enough positive impact on the rest of the system that they deem it worth paying for.
It makes sense if you think about everything in terms of time between points.
Freight trains carry heavy loads and have cars that are not inspected to have perfectly maintained wheels to the same level as trains that run on tracks for only passenger traffic, especially high speed rail (which runs on dedicated , highly engineered tracks).
The big reason that passenger rail, even overnight, isn't as economical in north america is because rather than sleeping on a train, it's cheaper and more reliable to just fly in a few hours across the country.
HSR makes sense in the dense US northeast or between Windsor and Quebec city in Canada (and probably California if it wasn't politically ruined with it's meandering lines), but sleeper trains for further distances would have to be dirt cheap to compete with flying. It'd essentially be for college kids or poorer people.
Most people who do long distance trains in North America are doing it as a cruise-like vacation/adventure.
All over the US, the tracks are being upgraded to 110mph standards. It just a slow process: 5 miles here, 20 miles there. Whenever they can find the money they do a new section. Every single grade crossing must be upgraded, every single curve regraded, etc. Amtrak can run at 90mph on those sections with the locomotives they currently have.
Sometimes they string together enough upgraded rail. Essentially everything in Michigan has been running 110mph for 10+ years, with the newer Siemens locomotives that can handle it. Also, the Texas Eagle and Lincoln Service - the entire time they are in Illinois they are running 110mph.
Upgrading 5 miles of rail doesn't make the news. That doesn't mean it didn't happen :)
That's a choice the country has made by subsidizing some kinds of transit more than others. Rail could be cheaper if we priced in externalities.
If alternatives get more expensive more people use rail, and the cost per rail rider drops.
At least in the US, people will tend to drive--perhaps shorter distances--if long distance travel gets too expensive.
Freight doesn't mean slow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_Unite...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_Unite...
Europe is densely populated, you'll rarely see 300mi of nothing. High speed rail is still common. Only realistically limited by cost, not by the difficulty to get the train up to speed before the next curve, or other rail traffic, or grade crossings.
Basically a moving hotel and office in one.
There are more expensive rooms with private shower but that wasn't really value for money.
I suspect the roomette would feel more cramped for two people, but it was better than spending 24 hours trying to relax and work in a new york hotel room.
See also: https://thebeaverton.com/2019/08/european-relatives-visiting...
Even so, the passenger trains don't make abrupt starts/stops like the freight trains do, because people would complain. :)
Common misconception. Amtrak actually has preference on US rails, but the track operators frequently ignore the law.
It's been the law since 1973.
https://www.progressiverailroading.com/federal_legislation_r...
They absolutely do: unlike the US where more freight is transported by rail than truck, the opposite is true in Europe. And personally I think this is the right tradeoff. The efficiencies of rail over road vehicles scale up with mass. The US has 200 car freight trains hauling 400 shipping containers at a time; compared to 400 semi trucks that’s a massive improvement. European freight rail isn’t even capable of this level of scale; their railroads have maximum train lengths well below the US average.
Freight is also much less fussy than passengers when it comes to scheduling, comfort, or speed, which is why this level of scale is possible for freight rail and not passenger rail.
I instead so look forward to just making the existing services more convenient/affordable where you would prefer taking the train — look forward to it even. I still have a memory of walking through a train car at night (going from Kansas City to Chicago) when I was 4 or 5 years old. Passengers sitting, sipping cocktails in the observation car like a scene out of "The Thin Man".
I've taken the California Zephyr to Omaha a few times over the past decade. It was okay. But expensive as I recall.
The idea is that you get to the station in the evening, board the train, then on the train, you eat, relax or do some work depending on how busy you are, take a shower, and sleep and in the morning, you are at your destination. Train stations are usually closer to downtown than airports and you spend less time with security, check-in, etc... another advantage. If you account for the hotel stay you saved, net travel time can be effectively zero.
And that's just the "transportation" aspect. In addition, train cruises are a thing. Not as big as cruise ships, but that's the same idea.
If I had first-class air travel money, which is probably their target demographic, I would definitely ride such a train.
This is handy if your destination is in downtown (and your origin is convenient to downtown as well), but if not, you'll need to find other ground transportation. If a rental car makes sense, they're typically easy to find near airports, but a lot of train stations don't offer them. Long term parking is hit or miss, too.
Downtown to downtown is great if you live and want to go to downtown which is sometimes true but not always.
And slow. For many ‘muricans, they only get two weeks of vacation, and it is very rare that their employer will allow them to take all of that time at once. I don’t care what you get as a cushy HN reader, your situation is not most ‘murican. When you only get to take a couple of days, you don’t want to be spending it in transit. As it is now, air travel pretty much takes up a full day with arriving x hours early, delays, etc.
If the conditions were good enough I’d be perfectly happy to be on a train e.g. 6pm-6am rather than arriving at an airport at 6pm, doing security, baggage etc etc, taxiing to the center of a city then checking into a hotel late. But every time I look the pricing for that is way out of whack.
More to the point, I don’t see myself getting meaningful work done on planes due to how much they suck total ass.
For all the VCs whose money they are going to burn.
6 hours is maybe justifiable for the comfort compared to getting to LAX in traffic, checking in for a flight, then crawling out of SFO... why not run it during the day? Save the sleeper portion for getting to PDX and Seattle?
Also, is the spa going to be open at 1am?
The idea is you get in around 8am (hopefully in station near the middle of the city) and then you can get on with you days activities immediately.
The american trains seems too high for Europe though. Would it work for vans and RVs too?
So far as self-loading - for comparison, I believe the Eurostar loads cars on a single-level. The Auto Train loads cars into two-levels where the decking is open mesh and not safe for the public to walk on. The published time is a little misleading - that's when you have to check-in. Departure time is about 90 minutes after last check-in. You could have nearly completed a 200 km drive in that time, so something like the Auto Train is only useful for much longer distances (it currently runs ~1400 km)
Amtrak has two sizes of cars. The single-level cars have to be used in the Northeast because of the lower clearances of tunnels & bridges (legacy infrastructure...) The bi-level Superliners can be used everywhere else. The Auto Train cars are bi-level height and cannot operate any further north than they presently do.
I think it's not as much about mesh form as passageways could be filled easily, but width on the other hand can't be changed at all.
That’s short enough distance that most Americans would regard it as a day trip: wake up, go, do whatever, come back. And I do mean 200 km each way.
I have, at the more extreme end, done not just 400 but 1250 km in one day as a round trip. A single 200 km segment is nothing. I go 300 km each way for a weekend break!
Unless you are on a German Autobahn: drive on, go left lane, floor the gas pedal, and you cross that distance in an hour (or less).
They suffer from as much congestion as any other major road; you aren't easily going to achieve, let alone maintain, that speed during 'ordinary' day-to-day traffic.
I have, top speed I used to do was around 250 km/h... and my longest stretch was a non-stop Munich-Vienna-Munich, 24 hours on the road. I'll admit though that I was dead after that one.
Now that airports are crowded with peasants thanks to low-cost companies, and private jets are still a bit too expansive, the new hype is to stay in a moving hotel?
They are launching something similar in France https://legrandtour.com/en
And private jets are more than a "bit" more expensive for most people. Multiples of first/business class even for a group.
If this is the route the Coast Starlight takes (this train already runs daily and offers sleeper cars https://content.amtrak.com/content/timetable/Coast%20Starlig... ) it has enough freight activity that the only time I've taken it we were delayed because a car had derailed.
As for the rest of it, not having a locomotive selected or any cars and hoping to start service by 2028 is ... shall we say, optimistic?
These would be especially good for 3-4hr trips.
- They time it exactly right, so something like boarding at 10pm, reaching at 7am, and I am able to get a full night of sleep in the middle.
- They price it to be competitive with a $79 flight or $60 worth of gas.
I'm assuming both of them, especially the second, will be a solid "no".
We also did a lot of tourism in Europe with night trains. No need to book hotels or lose daytime in travel, always start the day in a new city.