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Comment by gregoriol | Hacker News Reader

It's quite successful in Europe

I would be surprised if it has even 1% marketshare on the routes they are on (vs driving, coach, day trains and flights.

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 almost reflexively avoid both intra-European air travel and renting a car when I can. But if you're being cost-conscious, it's hard to avoid the European budget airlines compared to other alternatives a lot of the time, especially if you're traveling between major cities.

Yeah it's decent but the utter majority of cross European passenger travel happens by road and air.

Like, where? I lived in four EU countries and travelled to most of member states. I only heard of Austrian sleeper and some luxury Swiss expertise. Never heard anyone taking a sleeper in the modern times. Moscow-Paris train used to be a thing, but that’s in the past.

There's the London to Edinburgh Caledonian Express which I took and I took a sleeper from Brussels to Koln to Vienna? Koln was a stopover. Forget where the sleeper segment was. But I'll admit it was situations where neither time nor money were critical and were intermixed with business trips.

The fact that _you_ have not heard of it does not mean that it does not exist. The Austrian ÖBB has created a massive network over the last few years, including some innovative new rolling stock with sleeping cap capsules. Many classic routes within larger countries still exist, like the multiple routes in the UK, France and Sweden. There are new private startups like European Sleeper that operate an Antwerp - Prague sleeper

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