My wife and I want to go to Inverness, Premier Inn want £150 per night, the day train is £115 each one way, that's £380 so makes the sleeper cost exactly the same, plus we're there a day earlier. How can that not be value for money?
And the sleeper train is an experience!! That has some 'value'!
Exactly, a "once in a lifetime experience" for some I admit but it seems a lot of the negative comments on here are from people who've never actually been on it!And the sleeper train is an experience!! That has some 'value'!
If I was going alone I'd fly! ...(cause the missus won't)
For me personally, I'd rather take the Sleeper...For a start I don't think there is even a helipad let alone an airport at Corrour
- which is where I'm usually off to, and the idea of 3.5 hours on a sprinter out of Glasgow after having got into the City from the airport, or even longer with Edinburgh doesn't appeal to me!6) Less chance of catching something nasty. A few years ago we had to take the plane/bus/train/hotel option to Fort William (via Glasgow) because the Sleeper was on strike. A few days later we got pinged by test and trace, for a contact made somewhere on the day we had travelled, resulting in an unwanted extension to our holiday as we had to isolate in the remote highland hotel we happened to be in at the time. We never did find out whether the contact had been on the plane to Glasgow, the airport bus, the train to Fort William, or the hotel, but we wouldn't have been in contact with anyone in a sleeper compartment.For me personally, I'd rather take the Sleeper...For a start I don't think there is even a helipad let alone an airport at Corrour
Other Value that the sleeper adds for me:
1) Since I can easily get to Euston in good time for departure from here, after work, then that allows me to have a couple or three drinks at the Euston tap before boarding (Don't anyone tell me that doesn't have value!)
2) As it's overnight, I don't lose another day travelling, so can take one less day's holiday off work. That adds value for me
3) It gets me in to Corrour around 0900....Which is perfect for getting breakfast before heading out for the day
4) The food offering, while not the cheapest is going to be far better quality than on an aircraft
5) Getting to an airport, checking-in, going through security, then picking up my luggage at the other end, and getting into one of Glasgow or Edinburgh during the day would just eat into my holiday allowance
Yes some hotels are expensive but there are plenty of cheap hotels around to suit everyones budget, it all depends on whether you're bothered where you stay. I personally don't care for all singing and dancing hotels and will happily bed down in a 1 or 2 star dump if it means getting a kip. Done it many times when away on lads trips or European football trips.
I agree with this assessment.
The Caledonian Sleeper requires (April 2022 to March 2023) a whopping £30million in net subsidy.
The scale of the subsidy is irrelevant to the end users though. Invariably the CS performs an important role in providing connectivity and tourism to a large number of remote communities.
Yes agreed, but 4 members of staff for the lounge car (as observed last month) must be over £500 a night, I think they'd have to sell a lot of haggis and whisky to actually break even, let alone make a profit
What dates? I haven't seen anything under £200!
New sleeper services are being introduced in Europe. Are they receiving massive subsidies? Or any subsidies are all? If not, what's different here?
Are you really trying to compare the likes of Amsterdam to Zurich with London to Fort William?
Sharing of course is something you don't even have the option for any more in the UK.
It demonstrates that there's actually high demand for night services though.
I was talking about the Nightjet services.
It's when considering the reintroduction of routes like this, that looking closely at what's going on on the continent would be useful. And one of the things I'm unclear on is how many of the continental night trains (if any) actually manage to run without subsidy.
So what though - if they are viable commercially.
It roughly breaks even, I think. Routes like Hamburg to Zurich are definitely profitable, the Austrian government aren't in the business of subsidising services which wholly serve other countries. But it does benefit from being able to use national operators' traincrew efficiently in a way that hasn't really existed in the UK since privatisation (or at least since Virgin stopped running LHCS along the same route). For that matter, there's no need to employ a small team of shunters when you already have them at places like Salzburg for joining an splitting Railjets. There are certainly economies of scale at work, hence the suggestion someone else made of adding in a NE-SW sleeper.