Has a UK to Europe sleeper ever been considered?

[Bald Rick]

The problem is the flight at 7am which means leaving home at say 5am. I hate. That night is disruptive, and I would much prefer a more civilsed experienece.

Fly the evening before, stay in a decent hotel, have a decent dinner. Far more civilised than sleeping in a mobile cubicle experiencing the vagaries of French cant deficiency rules. And flying / hotel / dinner would be much, much cheaper.

 

[Gordon]

Many people get up at crack 'o dawn to commute so it's not a particular hardship for a goodly percentage of the European population, hence the decline in sleeper trains.

I actually like the concept of the 5am start plus flight. It gives me quite a buzz to go from 'my own bed' to the lineside in rural eastern Germany in around 3 - 4 hours.

for example I was in the Berlin area countryside last year by 10 ish German time:

Less rural was getting to Dusseldorf Rath by a similar time in the morning to see this:

.

 

[po8crg]

If you really wanted to, you could run sleepers from Lille.

Build 200m trainsets capable of 300 km/h purpose-designed as sleepers; you should be able to take a late departure from Lille (2200-2300) and still make it to major cities for 7:30 or 8am. I reckon you could run eight routes: Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid.

For a 2200 departure, I make the following arrival times, based on the fastest daytime trains:
Copenhagen 09:09
Berlin 05:47
Prague 08:49
Vienna 08:08
Venice 08:09
Rome 08:45
Barcelona 06:18
Madrid 10:21 [Note that this would need a gauge-changing train capable of TGV speeds in France and between Valladolid and Madrid; no such train exists]

Some of these routes would be much faster by the time your service came on-line (e.g. Madrid will be accelerated by LGV-SEA to Bordeaux).

Direct sleepers from London make sense for Milan, Munich, Berlin and Barcelona - those four are really too close for the change in Lille to make sense, but you'd need to put in the security and immigration controls of Gare du Nord or Bruxelles-Midi at those four stations, while only running one daily train to spread the costs over, rather than 10-15.

 

[Gordon]

If you really wanted to, you could run sleepers from Lille.

Build 200m trainsets capable of 300 km/h
Madrid 10:21 [Note that this would need a gauge-changing train capable of TGV speeds in France and between Valladolid and Madrid; no such train exists]

The train could / would run via Barcelona which is already standard gauge most of the way.

 

[po8crg]

The train could / would run via Barcelona which is already standard gauge most of the way.

Actually, all of the way now; the Perpignan-Figueres-Barcelona line is open.

But those timings are for the western route, not the eastern. The AVE only take 2:45 from Barcelona to Madrid, so that would be an 09:03 arrival (from a 22:00 departure from Lille) in Madrid that way.

 

[Bald Rick]

If you really wanted to, you could run sleepers from Lille.

Build 200m trainsets capable of 300 km/h purpose-designed as sleepers; you should be able to take a late departure from Lille (2200-2300) and still make it to major cities for 7:30 or 8am. I reckon you could run eight routes: Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid.

For a 2200 departure, I make the following arrival times, based on the fastest daytime trains:
Copenhagen 09:09
Berlin 05:47
Prague 08:49
Vienna 08:08
Venice 08:09
Rome 08:45
Barcelona 06:18
Madrid 10:21 [Note that this would need a gauge-changing train capable of TGV speeds in France and between Valladolid and Madrid; no such train exists]

Some of these routes would be much faster by the time your service came on-line (e.g. Madrid will be accelerated by LGV-SEA to Bordeaux).

Direct sleepers from London make sense for Milan, Munich, Berlin and Barcelona - those four are really too close for the change in Lille to make sense, but you'd need to put in the security and immigration controls of Gare du Nord or Bruxelles-Midi at those four stations, while only running one daily train to spread the costs over, rather than 10-15.

Minor problem, all the LGVs are closed at night for maintenance and renewal.

 

[po8crg]

Minor problem, all the LGVs are closed at night for maintenance and renewal.

Yeah, which is why sleepers are disappearing; they're being out-competed by high-speed daytime trains.

The point about sleepers is that passengers won't take trains that take more than (about) four hours in the day, but you can run a train for eight to ten hours overnight. So if you have two locations that are (at 160 km/h) 1200km apart, then you can run a sleeper from one to the other, but (next to) no-one would take the eight hour daytime train.

But you can run a 300km/h high-speed train there in four hours instead, and people will generally prefer to take the faster daytime train than the sleeper, especially as it's probably cheaper. Of course, some people will fly in two hours, but sleepers can rarely outcompete a flight.

The only way for sleepers to come back is to run them at 300km/h so they can be used for much longer journeys. You'd be looking for 2000km sleeper journeys - to give you a feel of the distance, that's like from London to Malaga, or Belgrade, or Stockholm. Now, we don't have fully-high-speed routes that far, which is why I was suggesting slightly shorter routes like Madrid or Rome.

You might be able to agree to have the LGVs open six nights a week, with the overnight work moving from one line to the next from night to night (so LGV Est is closed on Mondays, LGV Sud-Est on Tuesdays, Atlantique on Wednesdays, etc). The same story will apply in Italy, Spain, Germany, etc.

But your trains would have one night off a week, unless you could come up with alternative routings - which would still mess your timetable up. On top of that, you'd need to pay for a third shift of signallers to keep the lines open overnight, and you'd have to do so from the revenue of a handful of actual trains. That will drive the per-passenger costs through the roof.

I doubt you'd make an operating profit, much less pay back the cost of your expensive custom-configured trains.

 

[Bald Rick]

You might be able to agree to have the LGVs open six nights a week...

You won't. We can't even persuade SNCF to keep LGV Nord open for an extra hour if there is a late running continent-bound Eurostar. The engineering hours are 'non-franchisable'.

 

[po8crg]

You won't. We can't even persuade SNCF to keep LGV Nord open for an extra hour if there is a late running continent-bound Eurostar. The engineering hours are 'non-franchisable'.

Then you're right, sleepers are completely doomed.

And at least I now know why there aren't any late Eurostars.

 

[Frothy]

I'm currently convinced that there is a market for sleeper trains, but the product needs to be completely revamped to make them comfortable and modern - comparable to budget hotels although with tiny compartment rooms, while remaining bright and clean.

Realistically, until you can get a great night's sleep in a night train, they cannot serve their purpose and compete with daytime flights.

 

[Oscar]

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/main-line/db-shrinks-city-night-line-network.html?channel=542

DB shrinks City Night Line network
Written by Keith Fender

inShare

DB shrinks City Night Line network Keith Fender

GERMAN Rail (DB) long-distance subsidiary DB Fernverkehr is planning to further restructure its night train and Autozug motor rail services, which have collectively lost more than €20m annually in recent years.

DB says revenues from the services remain relatively low with little growth in recent years whilst operating costs are relatively high and largely fixed. DB has therefore decided to make significant changes to remove the worst loss-making routes. The services use specialist vehicles that are nearing the end of their useful life but DB says the trains currently do not make enough money to warrant investment in a new fleet.

Services will be withdrawn in December on the following routes:

• Basle/Amsterdam and Prague to Copenhagen

• Hamburg/Berlin and Munich to Paris

In addition Warsaw/Prague – Amsterdam services will no longer serve the Netherlands and will be cut back to Cologne.

DB says vehicles freed up by these changes will be redeployed to improve availability levels on other routes and to lengthen trains at busy times.

I find this deeply disappointing, but not surprising given that DB does not receive subsidy for City Night Line services and is expected to compete with airlines which pay little tax.

 

[Gwalker1987]

I have a copy of the original brochure of the Nightstar service. I have uploded a copy and attached some scans below. Looks intresting.

Printed in Feb 1995.

No photos of the outside:cry:

 

[Oscar]

I have a copy of the original brochure of the Nightstar service. I have uploded a copy and attached some scans below. Looks intresting.

Printed in Feb 1995.

No photos of the outside:cry:

Really interesting, thank you for posting. The journey times seem very long - I was particularly surprised by the time allocated for Ashford - Roosendaal.

 

[po8crg]

There was also a fair amount of work done around 2005 by the London Direct Sleepers Group, intending to commence service when HS1 opened.

There's some information in Railwatch from the time and some information from a forum post a few years ago about what went wrong.

Quoting from Michael Guerra:

I spent 4 years (and a good deal of my own money) running a research project on exactly the same thing (the London Direct Sleeper Group). The project was wound up last year after we completed a business plan. I spent a good deal of time talking to everyone: UK and French government officials, EU bureaucrats, train manufacturers, security consultants, government security customs and immigration agencies etc. It was a tortuous process with no one wanting to give anything away. However we were able to come up with a business model that suited almost everyone.

First, the trains will need to be capable of 300km/h; this is because they need to run fast enough to only need one Eurostar path. As sleepers can only accommodate 20-30% of the numbers of passengers per unit length of train, compared with a day train, the units would have to be double-deck to be more cost-effective. The Nightstar service model was doomed before it turned a wheel because of the weight of the rolling stock, slowness and the requirement for external traction (sometimes double-headed). As they were also built to a minimum UK loading gauge they were very confined inside, in addition to all the extra equipment they needed inside. For that reason any night trains running from St Pancras will need to be high-speed multiple units, not loco-hauled stock. As multiple units running to a variety of destinations in Europe the trains would have to be fitted for at least 12 signalling systems and for running under 4 overhead voltages. This is a lot easier than it used to be. The also need to be certificated for long high-speed tunnels, which requires the fitment of all kinds of specialised safety equipment. Needless to say they would be very expensive trains. In short, you cannot use loco-hauled ex-Wagons Lits stock through the Channel Tunnel. But even with all that there is the fundamental issue of security.

Every man, woman and child travelling on a passenger train through the Channel Tunnel must past through airport style security (luggage irradiation & metal detector arch). So that if your sleeper was able to leave St Pancras it wouldn’t be able to return with any passengers unless the station they leave from has an equivalent security check to that at St Pancras, Paris Nord or Bruxelles Midi. This is a not inconsiderable infrastructure expense. We suggested running security checks from the train, but unless you were at a terminus station the platform dwells would have been far too long, we also looked into near-future scanning technology but that was not backed as ‘not being the same as’ the current Eurostar agreement. It became an impasse. Technologically nearly everything was possible today, but for the security arrangement. It is interesting that it is possible to ride trains from Stockholm to Sevilla without having to show your passport or having your baggage irradiated due to the Schengen Zone agreement, but as the UK is outside that anyone wanting to run a train through to the continent has to deal with Fortress Britain, which is very difficult to unpick. Paris and Bruxelles are too close to run night trains to, so our business plan is with DB, who might have the resources to build security infrastructure at Koln of Frankfurt, or Berlin. They are really the only active players looking at new services; however with the current economic crisis it is unlikely to happen very soon. But I live in hope.

As to your own research, I’m afraid that although there is ready market for such a service (however, you would have to run 70-80% full every night on 3% interest on around a 1bn Euro investment on 8 routes) you will probably come to the same conclusions. The security issue is the real difficulty, and I certainly spent too much time on that with absolutely no movement.

and a second post

The research I undertook (it seems many years ago now) was based on the idea that comparing air travel with overnight rail was to look at the total journey experience. Typically city to city an air traveller has to travel out to an airport (with some time and cost), hang around in the airport to go through the various security checks and boarding pass queues and deliver up their stored luggage (possibly paying extra for the service) before being shoe-horned into a potential flying bomb for a relatively short duration flight. At the other end there will be the usual passport checks, luggage reclamation (for those with stored luggage) before finding transport into the city of their choice. For someone wishing to arrive for an early meeting in a distant city the choice is often an unearthly departure from home or a hotel close to the airport. So to compare a 2 hr flight with a 10-12hr train journey is to hide much of the time (and cost) of getting to and from airports, as well as the limit on the earliest flights.

The train service used in the research was based on the double-deck CityNightLine cars, fixed in 100m or 200m high-speed multiple units to run in multiple rakes to various destinations, splitting and coupling as need be to reduce the number of route paths to be purchased. The routes chosen were based on popular destinations (from London) which were about a night's sleep away - that is 7-12hrs total journey time. One of the benefits of railways is that can pick up and set down passengers along a route.

It was true that most of the people replying to the questionairre wanted to know the potential cost of the rail service, and at the time (~2005) we were working on around £100 for a single journey of up to 800km. The service still showed a great deal of support, simply because the costs were comparable with most flights of the same distance, based on the city centre to city centre costings. Additionally attractive was the fact that you could have an early arrival without the pain and (physical) cost of very early starts. Those who replied and showed an environmental interest were attracted by the fact that per passenger mile a plane uses around 10 times more energy than a train. Economically, during times when avaiation fuel is ever more expensive and with the introduction of carbon taxes the economic reasons for taking the train become stronger.

However, all this depended on delivering a reliable, comfortable and cost-effective service. It was always a joke that when conducting this research we wished that the Channel Tunnel had connected with any other country except France, as that is where we came against the greatest difficulty politically, and where the rail unions are most resistant to any change (and strike more than anyone else).

In the end, it was the UK government that provided the least flexibilty. We had tackled all the technical challenges with the rolling stock, including traction, signalling, infrastructure limitations etc. We also seem to make the numbers work (though we were dealing with a good deal of soft data). But it was the security arrangements that UK authorities were unwilling to change. By insisting that every passenger using the service towards the UK was to have a passport check and security scan, and be held in a secure waiting area before boarding the train meant that every station we wished to serve in Europe (and potentially it could have been any station - if our charter service was to have gone ahead) would have to have built all the paraphenalia that is found at St Pancras, Bruxelles, Paris Nord, Avignon and Bourg St Maurice, including X-ray scanners, passport booths, secure platforms, even little jails, to comply with the Eurostar agreement.

At that point we gave up. Bar the UK security restrictions we felt it could have been a wonderful, viable service. We tried introducing the idea that security and passport checks could be carried out on the train prior to arriving at the Channel Tunnel entrance (as it is this strategic piece of infrastructure that is ostensibly being protected from rogue train travellers, as well as being the border), but that was discounted as 'not being the same as' the current security arrangements. We investigated near future passive and active scanning devices, some of which could have been incorporated into the train doors, but again, not being a proven technology was discounted. Depressing, but that is where we are. Perhaps I will try again, but right now the economic situation means that as a sustainabilty and engineering consultant I am getting no work, and with a family to support it is not easy to lobby the individuals that could make a difference.

and finally

The issue of security is interesting in as much that most of Europe is within the Schengen Zone. It is quite possible to drive large amounts of explosive or nuclear material around Europe without any border checks (though many national authorities do random checks within their borders). Most actual security is based on intelligence and perceived threats. That I can travel by train between Sweden and Spain unmolested by passport or security checks is possible due to the Schengen agreement, that is there to promote trade (and reduce the costs of trade) while improving cross-border intelligence. An argument in favour of reducing security checks on trains relative to planes is one of perceived risk. A terrorist is more likely to bomb a plane as it can cause enormous secondary damage. The bomb can be small (as small as a tennis ball) and potentially kill thousands of people. Terrorism on trains, while a significant threat, cannot cause nearly as much damage for a comparable explosive charge, even when used to derail a high-speed train - which is infra-structure security, not security on the train. As has been seen in Madrid, the terrorist targets were packed commuter trains using sizeable remotely timed devices, while in London commuters were attacked by suicide bombers carrying probably similarly sized devices. These devices were probably 50-100 times larger than those required to down a plane. So to a terrorist planes are far more attractive targets than trains, but if all you can get to are trains, then tightly-packed commuter trains are the ones to be targeted.

Security is not just about stopping bombs. Certainly in the UK transport security is being used to control access, to monitor travel, to stop smuggling as well as a method making the travelling public feel safe. Unfortunately, most of the security technologies being used today are not perfect. My youngest brother studied forensics, and it is clear that it is quite possible to produce improvised explosives that do not contain nitrates or oxidisers that are scanned for by the latest colour X-ray machines. It takes a good deal of training to become competent on an X-ray scanner, and if the staff is tired or distracted it is relatively straightforward to pass something through that could be a potential threat. Ironically, most X-ray scanners in use today would probably not pick up Plutonium!

So, given an imperfect security system, and the realisation of that fact by the authorities, the best they can do is to use targetted intelligence and visible scanning (including the increasing proliferation of cameras) to dissuade anyone from breaking the law. But it will never defeat the determined intelligent malcontent from doing something horrible. I have an A level in Chemistry (I am an engineer by trade) and I could produce a reasonable amount of explosive in my kitchen in a hour or 2. To deliver it across a border I would use a car. It is much easier to carry illicit items across the Channel in a vehicle than on a train, security or no. The average car carries a gallon or 2 of petrol, and with some fertiliser and a homemade detonator (that is actually the tricky bit) you have a bomb. As it happens I haven't owned a car for 20+ years, and as a Buddhist I am likely to do anything quite that exciting, but to the average dissafected person with an agenda it is relatively easy to cause mischief.

So why should plane passengers be subject to more security than train passengers: simple - it only takes a very small thing to turn a plane into a horrific device for mass slaughter, with a train it is far, far harder. So as governments cannot afford to observe everyone doing everything the most cost-effective thing to do to save lives from terrorism is to ensure security on planes.

If I was to look back at my own irritation with flying in general (apart from all the energy use and environmental issues) and decide to undertake all this research into high-speed overnight trains, it is probably the experience of studying for my finals at Brunel in west London with a plane going over every 90 seconds!

I've attached the PDF from Railwatch in case anything ever happens to the sites - there isn't much good information on LDSG out there and it would be a shame for it to disappear off the net.

 

[edwin_m]

Thanks po8crg - I think that just about says it all. Except that it is actually quite kind to the security issue, by not mentioning the increased running as well as infrastructure costs and the time penalty for those who have to use it.

 

[po8crg]

Michael Guerra spent four years of his life and a fair chunk of his savings. The least we can do is acknowledge his expertise.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bkhtele]

Thanks for these pictures, I would love to hop on the sleeper at Swindon and wake up in Paris, Lounge coach looks good as well! Guess we can only dream....

I have a copy of the original brochure of the Nightstar service. I have uploded a copy and attached some scans below. Looks intresting.

Printed in Feb 1995.

No photos of the outside:cry:

 

[gingerheid]

Attached European Passenger Services factsheets may be of interest to some people; have information about the (then) proposed "beyond London" daytime and overnight services.

I remember when all the publicity started to appear in Glasgow, it was an exciting time. They even built a Eurostar passenger lounge!