Overnight sleeper service through channel tunnel.

[7ftBroad]

I know there was plans for regional Eurostar services before the tunnel open and this was scrapped. But I always thought sleeper services from St Pancras to selected destinations would do well, with even a carriage for post/parcels. I know with border control problem this won't be easy. But what destinations would you choose, my first choice would be Berlin.

 

[DPWH]

Well I agree that overnight services to/from London ought to do better in theory that the planned services that were planned originally for Nightstar (What were they? Plymouth-Brussels? and Glasgow-Paris?).

London-Berlin, London-Munich, London-Milan, London-Barcelona. All possible in theory, but the lack of political centralisation in Europe and the consequent lack of political support for such projects makes me think they won't happen.

If Europe wants an overnight train system to model on, it needs to look to China. But there are network effects that the centralised Chinese system benefits from that aren't possible in Europe.

 

[codek]

Theres another missing link here. Or rather there was! Last time I travelled the first train into Brussels got there about 10am. Thsts fine for politicians but useless for professionals meaning an extra overnight stay the night before!!

 

[Bald Rick]

I think the plan was London Köln/Frankfurt. London - Berlin would be, at the very best, 12 hours.

But as ever:

a) there’s no money in it
b) the EU airline liberalisation and low cost carriers happened.

 

[anme]

Theres another missing link here. Or rather there was! Last time I travelled the first train into Brussels got there about 10am. Thsts fine for politicians but useless for professionals meaning an extra overnight stay the night before!!

"Professionals" don't necessarily need to arrive by 9am. 10am will often be good enough.

 

[A Challenge]

Sorry if it this is too 'sensible' a suggestion, but would be right in thinking there would be a slightly slower path through the tunnel at night despite there still being Eurotunnel services as they are only every 20 minutes?

 

[30907]

"Professionals" don't necessarily need to arrive by 9am. 10am will often be good enough.

The first arrival on Mondays and Fridays is 0922.

Back to sleepers: as long as we have to have pre-UK border controls on inbound services, the difficulty is to find a single destination or maybe two big enough to produce a trainload of London passengers (I am assuming that sleeper passengers won't take kindly to the Lille arrangement!)

Of the destinations mentioned by DPWH, Milan has (on a random day) the greatest number of London flights (I counted 37 including Bergamo).
There is a daily Italy-Paris sleeper which serves Venice, Verona, Milan and Turin (?) plus connections from further south, and it is the only international night train into Paris apart from the weekly Moscow service.
Given the additional complications of UK services, not to mention the need to find new rolling stock (hello, Nightjet...) the economics will be a struggle.

 

[Mag_seven]

I think the plan was London Köln/Frankfurt. London - Berlin would be, at the very best, 12 hours.

But as ever:

a) there’s no money in it
b) the EU airline liberalisation and low cost carriers happened.

Agreed but if we now must act on climate change, could a government subsidised service work i.e. get people off those low cost carriers and onto trains?

 

[coppercapped]

Agreed but if we now must act on climate change, could a government subsidised service work i.e. get people off those low cost carriers and onto trains?

Why do we have to act on climate change by restricting peoples' choice of travel modes? Most energy in the UK is used for domestic heating - transport is a small proportion and air transport even smaller. We have exported the energy consumption that used to be used for manufacture to China - this gives us at one and the same time the virtuous feeling of not using coal as well as being able to look down on China for its high levels of carbon dioxide production.

As a rail offering will, because of geography, ONLY serve South East England to Northern France, Belgium, parts of the Netherlands and the western edge of Germany effectively - then, no, you will not get passengers off low cost air carriers or indeed off high cost air carriers. Getting people from, say, Glasgow or Bristol who want to go to La Rochelle or Split onto a train will not happen.

 

[Bletchleyite]

"Professionals" don't necessarily need to arrive by 9am. 10am will often be good enough.

Indeed. Almost all morning meetings are actually at 10am, because it allows the host to get in at 9am, have a coffee, read emails and prepare the room and meeting materials.

Just about the only meetings I ever have at 9am (and we mostly prefer 9:30 for a similar reason) are "daily scrums" and similar which are by definition not for visitors.

Weekly commuters might find 9am useful, but mostly 10am would be fine, they'd just work an extra hour on the end of the day instead.

 

[gordonthemoron]

London-Beijing, or better still Hong Kong, would be great

 

[etr221]

I think the plan was London Köln/Frankfurt. London - Berlin would be, at the very best, 12 hours.

IIRC the proposed 'ex-London' EuroNight services were (1) to Amsterdam and (2) to Dortmund and Frankfurt (am Main), splitting at Köln.
And from the provinces, to Brussels from Plymouth & Glasgow, and to Paris from Swansea & Glasgow; with portion swaps at Kensington O.

But as stated, a combination of airline deregulation, and all the hassles down to border control and security, rendered them unviable.

 

[edwin_m]

Why do we have to act on climate change by restricting peoples' choice of travel modes? Most energy in the UK is used for domestic heating - transport is a small proportion and air transport even smaller. We have exported the energy consumption that used to be used for manufacture to China - this gives us at one and the same time the virtuous feeling of not using coal as well as being able to look down on China for its high levels of carbon dioxide production.

As a rail offering will, because of geography, ONLY serve South East England to Northern France, Belgium, parts of the Netherlands and the western edge of Germany effectively - then, no, you will not get passengers off low cost air carriers or indeed off high cost air carriers. Getting people from, say, Glasgow or Bristol who want to go to La Rochelle or Split onto a train will not happen.

Air travel may be a small part of total emissions but it's one of the few that's increasing, with some scientists saying that CO2 discharged directly into the upper atmosphere is more harmful than on the ground. It's also one of the few sources with no obvious technological route to bring it down - electric planes are mentioned but they look to be only suitable for short haul flights for which trains are already often a good alternative. So we may see measures such as higher rates of passenger duty on those shorter flights, or even aviation fuel taxes large enough to make a difference. Either would be politically very difficult and wouldn't dent the price advantage of flying by very much - though the figures are a bit better if compared with a flight plus hotel.

This may explain why there seems to be a bit of renewed interest in overnight trains, for example with OBB taking over routes formerly run by DB. I'd say the range is a bit further than you suggest, with up to 12hr (London-Berlin according to Rick) being possible for a sleeper but anything less than 8hr being too short for a good night's rest. It's complicated by most high-speed routes being closed at night, though HS1 would be working at the times London sleepers arrived and left.

The lower passenger density of a sleeper makes the passenger number issue slightly less bad, as the capacity of the train is about the same as that of a 737/A320 on an early morning flight. There are plenty of destinations about the right distance away having one such flight - in fact the opposite problem exists as the rail network wouldn't have enough capacity to replace all of them. The extra weight per passenger of a sleeper also reduces its environmental benefit.

Even if all this happened on the Continent I'd see the UK as being about the last place to benefit. Our general semi-detached state creates political risks for an operator. They would have to comply with Tunnel security procedures as mentioned, but also with Tunnel fire procedures which probably rule out standard European stock. If going beyond London there would also be the loading gauge issue, which makes quite a big difference to sleeper capacity.

 

[Ianno87]

Sorry if it this is too 'sensible' a suggestion, but would be right in thinking there would be a slightly slower path through the tunnel at night despite there still being Eurotunnel services as they are only every 20 minutes?

Presumably overnight periods are the chance to do single line operation in sections of the tunnel to allow for maintainence.

 

[Bald Rick]

Agreed but if we now must act on climate change, could a government subsidised service work i.e. get people off those low cost carriers and onto trains?

Firstly, consider the environmental cost of shifting 500tonnes plus of metal for over 12 hours (albeit with electricity) compared to 100t plus of metal for an hour and a half.

Secondly, governments could find far, far more effective methods of reducing carbon emmissions per pound/euro spent than subsidising sleepers.

 

[edwin_m]

Firstly, consider the environmental cost of shifting 500tonnes plus of metal for over 12 hours (albeit with electricity) compared to 100t plus of metal for an hour and a half.

I get your point that it's not as clear-cut as for day trains versus planes, but I still think that's a little unfair to the train. Even if it crosses the Alps the train doesn't have to be lifted thousands of metres into the air, with no possibility of recovering the energy on the way back down. And the aircraft will be travelling about three times faster so its aerodynamic losses will be about nine times as much.

 

[coppercapped]

Air travel may be a small part of total emissions but it's one of the few that's increasing, with some scientists saying that CO2 discharged directly into the upper atmosphere is more harmful than on the ground. It's also one of the few sources with no obvious technological route to bring it down - electric planes are mentioned but they look to be only suitable for short haul flights for which trains are already often a good alternative. So we may see measures such as higher rates of passenger duty on those shorter flights, or even aviation fuel taxes large enough to make a difference. Either would be politically very difficult and wouldn't dent the price advantage of flying by very much - though the figures are a bit better if compared with a flight plus hotel.

This may explain why there seems to be a bit of renewed interest in overnight trains, for example with OBB taking over routes formerly run by DB. I'd say the range is a bit further than you suggest, with up to 12hr (London-Berlin according to Rick) being possible for a sleeper but anything less than 8hr being too short for a good night's rest. It's complicated by most high-speed routes being closed at night, though HS1 would be working at the times London sleepers arrived and left.

The lower passenger density of a sleeper makes the passenger number issue slightly less bad, as the capacity of the train is about the same as that of a 737/A320 on an early morning flight. There are plenty of destinations about the right distance away having one such flight - in fact the opposite problem exists as the rail network wouldn't have enough capacity to replace all of them. The extra weight per passenger of a sleeper also reduces its environmental benefit.

Even if all this happened on the Continent I'd see the UK as being about the last place to benefit. Our general semi-detached state creates political risks for an operator. They would have to comply with Tunnel security procedures as mentioned, but also with Tunnel fire procedures which probably rule out standard European stock. If going beyond London there would also be the loading gauge issue, which makes quite a big difference to sleeper capacity.

Even if 'some scientists' claim that carbon dioxide released into the upper atmosphere has a greater effect on global warming that the same quantity released at ground level sometimes one has to accept that there is a cost to every activity done by man. Have you ever asked yourself why air travel is increasing? Could it be that it is filling a need/want/desire more effectively than an alternative?

The number of flights which could be avoided by an expansion of sleeper or other overnight trains, will not be great. Even if one could get from London to Berlin overnight in about 12 hours that still means that train would replace one flight at the most and the number of city pairs in Europe that could support such overnight services is limited. As you say, anything less than eight hours is too short and anything longer than 12 hours loses out to a night in one's own bed and then a flight. So one is looking at city pairs between 8 and a maximum of, say, 14 hours apart at night train speeds and which have a sufficiently large travel demand between them to consistently supply 150 to 200 people per night in each direction. Rome to Frankfurt-am-Main or Berlin might just be possible, Bordeaux to Warsaw won't and neither will Göteborg to Tallinn.

And this example brings us back to the UK. I say again, regardless of any other constraints, geography is against rail travel from the UK to the near continent because the ONLY crossing is in the south eastern corner. Any rail route has to go this way which will therefore involve significant dog-legs except for those cities for which the Tunnel is already on or near the shortest route. It is no accident that air travel per capita is highest for people living on islands.

Anyway, even if there is a marginal decrease in the growth of air travel in Europe such developments will have no effect whatsoever on carbon dioxide emissions in other parts of the world. I am in Germany at the moment and have just learnt from a TV programme that although Germany has very high levels of CO2 emissions compared to other countries in Europe (in spite of covering the country with wind turbines) resulting from the use of brown coal (lignite) for electricity generation total German emissions make up only 4% of the worldwide total.

 

[edwin_m]

Even if 'some scientists' claim that carbon dioxide released into the upper atmosphere has a greater effect on global warming that the same quantity released at ground level sometimes one has to accept that there is a cost to every activity done by man. Have you ever asked yourself why air travel is increasing? Could it be that it is filling a need/want/desire more effectively than an alternative?

The number of flights which could be avoided by an expansion of sleeper or other overnight trains, will not be great. Even if one could get from London to Berlin overnight in about 12 hours that still means that train would replace one flight at the most and the number of city pairs in Europe that could support such overnight services is limited. As you say, anything less than eight hours is too short and anything longer than 12 hours loses out to a night in one's own bed and then a flight. So one is looking at city pairs between 8 and a maximum of, say, 14 hours apart at night train speeds and which have a sufficiently large travel demand between them to consistently supply 150 to 200 people per night in each direction. Rome to Frankfurt-am-Main or Berlin might just be possible, Bordeaux to Warsaw won't and neither will Göteborg to Tallinn.

And this example brings us back to the UK. I say again, regardless of any other constraints, geography is against rail travel from the UK to the near continent because the ONLY crossing is in the south eastern corner. Any rail route has to go this way which will therefore involve significant dog-legs except for those cities for which the Tunnel is already on or near the shortest route. It is no accident that air travel per capita is highest for people living on islands.

Anyway, even if there is a marginal decrease in the growth of air travel in Europe such developments will have no effect whatsoever on carbon dioxide emissions in other parts of the world. I am in Germany at the moment and have just learnt from a TV programme that although Germany has very high levels of CO2 emissions compared to other countries in Europe (in spite of covering the country with wind turbines) resulting from the use of brown coal (lignite) for electricity generation total German emissions make up only 4% of the worldwide total.

To a large extent I agree with you. Medium haul air travel is one of the most difficult sources of pollution to address without making signficiant changes to society. However if I ruled the world I'd take a very strict line on taxation and subsidies to make sure airlines are truly paying their full external costs and to incentives them further to move to a more environmentally friendly model - whatever that is.

 

[DPWH]

I have said before that a market focus should be London-Amsterdam, but for that I think a line by-passing Brussels to the west (roughly Lille-Ghent-Antwerp) would be required. This would enhance both the London-Amsterdam and Paris-Amsterdam routes.

 

[edwin_m]

I have said before that a market focus should be London-Amsterdam, but for that I think a line by-passing Brussels to the west (roughly Lille-Ghent-Antwerp) would be required. This would enhance both the London-Amsterdam and Paris-Amsterdam routes.

If we're discussing Amsterdam sleepers this would be of no help, because the journey via high speed is too short a journey to get a night's sleep and making it quicker makes it worse. If anything an Amsterdam sleeper shoud dawdle along on classic routes!

 

[Craig2601]

Why do we have to act on climate change by restricting peoples' choice of travel modes? Most energy in the UK is used for domestic heating - transport is a small proportion and air transport even smaller. We have exported the energy consumption that used to be used for manufacture to China - this gives us at one and the same time the virtuous feeling of not using coal as well as being able to look down on China for its high levels of carbon dioxide production.

As a rail offering will, because of geography, ONLY serve South East England to Northern France, Belgium, parts of the Netherlands and the western edge of Germany effectively - then, no, you will not get passengers off low cost air carriers or indeed off high cost air carriers. Getting people from, say, Glasgow or Bristol who want to go to La Rochelle or Split onto a train will not happen.

Ryanair is now officially the 10th biggest polluter in Europe...

 

[DPWH]

If we're discussing Amsterdam sleepers this would be of no help, because the journey via high speed is too short a journey to get a night's sleep and making it quicker makes it worse. If anything an Amsterdam sleeper shoud dawdle along on classic routes!

What I mean is promoting and enabling London-Amsterdam high speed day services would have a better CBR than promoting and enabling London-elsewhere in Europe sleeper services.

 

[coppercapped]

Ryanair is now officially the 10th biggest polluter in Europe...

..sez who?

 

[Craig2601]

..sez who?

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-47783992

 

[sprunt]

Why would border control be any more of an issue for this than it is for existing services? Assuming the endpoints were all going to be in Schengen countries, surely the same system that is in place now - you pass border control at the first Schengen country you enter (ie France) and are then free to go anywhere in the Schengen zone - would apply?

 

[PeterC]

Why would border control be any more of an issue for this than it is for existing services? Assuming the endpoints were all going to be in Schengen countries, surely the same system that is in place now - you pass border control at the first Schengen country you enter (ie France) and are then free to go anywhere in the Schengen zone - would apply?

Outbound from London border control is not an issue. Inbound to London either the start station has full border control facilities or customers get thrown off before breakfast at Lille for controls.

If the UK had joined Schengen I am sure that we would have seen greater variety in destinations.

 

[edwin_m]

Border control could conceivably be done on the train by staff with appropriate scanners etc, although on a sleeper this would probably involve getting people up. Luggage scanning is a bigger issue, literally, as it needs bulky and costly equipment and can't practically be done on board.

 

[etr221]

Back in the 1970s-80s (so pre Schengen) in Europe border control was normally done by customs/border people coming through the train - even east of the Iron Curtain, though there were long stops at frontier stations in places for this to be done, certainly to and in the Eastern bloc. (And I recall getting East German transit visas in the process (on the train), en route to and from Poland). In the west (at least) sleeping car and couchette attendants would collect passports, etc. overnight, to present them as required, and return them in the morning. Only in the event of an issue were you disturbed or required to alight. But the authorities are far more paranoid these days...

 

[Bald Rick]

Back in the 1970s-80s (so pre Schengen) in Europe border control was normally done by customs/border people coming through the train - even east of the Iron Curtain, though there were long stops at frontier stations in places for this to be done, certainly to and in the Eastern bloc. (And I recall getting East German transit visas in the process (on the train), en route to and from Poland). In the west (at least) sleeping car and couchette attendants would collect passports, etc. overnight, to present them as required, and return them in the morning. Only in the event of an issue were you disturbed or required to alight. But the authorities are far more paranoid these days...

My memories of (just) pre schenegen European overnight travel are a little different - sometimes. Being woken up by border guards coming through the train, sometimes with dogs, was not uncommon. I seem to remember the Austria / Italy border being particularly interesting.

 

[Chester1]

There is no chance of the UK joining Schengen and borders within it have become more problematic because of the migrant crisis.