I recently took a train from Seattle to Portland with my family. One difference compared to flying that it took me a while to realize was how amazingly <i>quiet</i> it is.<p>On a plane, the engines are <i>right there</i> out on the wing screaming and conducting that sound directly into the airframe next to you. With a train, the engine is <i>way</i> up front, hundreds of yards a way, separated by several linkages.<p>The end result is that a train car is as quiet as a coffee shop. I love it.
This design is wonderful and it reminds me a of 21st century version of this: <a href="https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/venice-simplon-orient-express/" rel="nofollow">https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/venice-simplon-orient-...</a><p>Train travel can be absolutely luxurious in a way that a plane or self-driving car could never be. You don't even need to book a $3,000 historical reenactment to get a taste. On a whim, I once booked a 1st class AVE train in Spain for an extra $10 and ended up with bottomless wine/champagne and a several course dinner for 3 hours. Would I ride a chicken bus for 7 hours through Honduras? Sure, but there are points for style too.
Österreichische Bundesbahnen (ÖBB) took over all remaining sleepers run by Deutsche Bahn (DB) some years ago. One downside of this was the dropping of the Amsterdam–Munich sleeper — ÖBB's nexus lies in Vienna. The Netherlands currently has no sleeper trains, which is rather unfortunate, because the sleeper train appears to gaining in popularity after a period of decline.<p>Increasingly, people want to avoid flying if reasonably possible. A sleeper train is ideal, because you spend most of the trip asleep, and end up in Munich, Paris, Vienna, etc. early in the morning, in the middle of the city.<p>Sure, it's not as comfortable as a hotel, but it beats the torture of flying (I'm 200cm tall), and train stations are just a lot more pleasant to be in than airports.<p>These trains looks really nice.
Sleeper trains make so much sense for travel over land. They are often competitively priced with air travel, they pollute a lot less and the time saved can be huge when you consider that you spend time travelling when you would otherwise be asleep (although this is sometimes true for air travel, many/most people find it difficult to get quality sleep in economy class).<p>The London - Edinburgh sleeper train (Caledonian Express) has been running pretty much since 1873 and is an amazing way to get between the two cities. You arrive at the station in London between 10-12pm, depending on if you want to have a few snacks or glasses of wine, then wake up in Edinburgh around 8am the next day.
One high-level design choice that they made is to entirely skip any kind of in-seat entertainment and screens and instead of plan around people showing up with their own tablets and phones (to which they provide power). This makes immense sense to me and I'm sure simplifies things on their side.
There's been talk for a while about autonomous cars driving people throughout the night across countries/states for meetings the next day. Sleeper trains already do this. Sleeper trains are making a comeback as we become more aware of the impact of flying to the environment.
As a regular train traveller here in Austria and I'm very curious how this turns out.<p>Currently the Intercity/RailJet trains are more like a downgrade to what was available before. They look nicer, but provide quite uncomfortable seating and offer no possibility to change the seating inclination; due to the air condition it's very noisy; there's no place to put your feet in an elevated position; there's no compartments, the whole car is one big room; and the only option for children is an open place with a TV, you have a lot of fun chasing your small children through the train.
Having travelled a couple of times on overnight trains from Austria to other European cities, these sleeping pods look marginally a larger improvement.<p>- Tempeature: Having slept in a cabin where the aircon blasts from the bottom into those sleeping there, they inevitably have to turn it off to sleep, leaving those on the top bunks at temperatures of over 40C in the summer.<p>- Noise/Privacy: In the 4-bunk cabins, I don't want to hear anyone either. Why wouldn't they include the soundproofing curtains in those too.<p>- Space: There's a tiny gap between the beds currently. Look closely and this is also the case. It's impossible having more than 1 person do anything inbetween the beds and stepping out of your own pretty much puts you about 1foot away from the other person's face/legs.<p>Maybe someone can tell me why they can't just make lightweight carriages, and put a lot of them on the back of a train car (more than now). By having more carriages you can make the accommodation more spacious and comfortable. This is what stops me considering it as a viable option for European travel currently. Even if they couldn't fit in the station, what's to stop them letting half the carriages off first, followed by the second half?
What a great design. I like the simplicity and the lightness of it all.<p>One thing I don't understand is the private berths.<p>> Private berths are fitted in both First and Standard Class carriages and can be booked for business passengers or families travelling together.<p>They are completely transparent, nice for the lightness. But bad for privacy. I can see many reasons why a business meeting would not want prying eyes.<p>For me it has been a common issue in the past to be traveling while working on private files. But having a person sitting next to you doesn't allow for enough privacy... So usually I just stopped working, while that could be a big plus of train travel.
Compare the 20th Century Limited, 1930s version.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://s.hdnux.com/photos/77/13/43/16562379/3/1024x1024.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://s.hdnux.com/photos/77/13/43/16562379/3/1024x1024.jpg</a>
Looks very nice, but I don't like the table design. The extensions that pull out look like they don't provide a continuous level surface, which would just be a pain to use. Amtrak (at least the cars on the Acela Express) has a much better design where each side of the table flips up when you want to enter or exit the seat. It doesn't look quite as nice when folded up, but it is much more functional.<p><a href="https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/images/TextwithImage-Horizontal/RS1000_business_handicapped.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.506.380.jpeg" rel="nofollow">https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...</a>
I wonder if digitally linked convoys of cars and vehicles could replicate the smoother and quieter experience of trains, even on busy highways? The idea would be to use several "buffer cars" in front of the convoy of passenger busses. The entire convoy would be inter-linked and centrally controlled, so the "buffer cars" could accordion closer together and farther apart, so the passenger busses could use lighter braking acceleration. Build the busses with lots of sound damping and actively damped suspensions, and the experience could come close to that of a train.<p>The buffer cars would take up some additional highway area, but the passenger density of the convoy as a whole could still exceed private passenger cars.
2x2 facing seats in standard class? What an horrible idea - I have never understood why this was a standard in about every wagon since most of the time when you get this seat you get to share it with strangers, and lack leg space to feel comfortable.
I slept on a fair number of sleeper trains during multiple trips to China. It’s basically the most popular way to get around the country. A few years ago, Xuzhou-Xi’an, a 10 hour trip, was priced at 315¥ (around $50 USD) for each “soft bed” (four soft beds to a room), which was perfect for a travelling family.<p>Recently, the high-speed rail lines have started to shift things in favor of daytime trips between large cities (Beijing-Xuzhou used to be 7 hours by sleeper train, but it’s now 2.5 hours by bullet train). But, the train remains the best way to travel within the country. It’s smooth, quite cheap (esp. for an American traveler), and increasingly comfortable.
Those trains look nice, but at the same time pretty cramped and uncomfortable to me. I wonder if its just the photos, but the seats look to straight with not much legroom and the sleeper compartments seem really tiny.
As a side note recently traveled from US to Austria. I was blown away by how clean, beautiful and affordable the country is. But we can’t have the things they have over there cuz “who is gonna pay for it”?
One of the things that doesn't appear to have any real innovation is luggage space and the speed of loading. Get on any long-distance train or Eurostar service and you can wait minutes for people to drag 4 suitcases, trying to find space. Even on the Eurostar where you would expect most people to have a lot of luggage, there is often not much room at all.<p>We used to have luggage vans back in the olden days!
Slightly off-topic, but couldn't help but notice on the Projects list a really cool version of the London tube. Unfortunately it seems it's from 2014 (there's even some quote from Boris as Mayor), so probably scrapped by now?<p>Makes me wonder if these Austrian train designs are already set in stone or just a proposal that might or might not happen.
Those landscape images bear a striking resemblance to Albert Bierstadt's paintings of the American West[1], but I don't want to go pointing fingers...<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Albert_Bierstadt" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Albert_Bierst...</a>
Finally I see someone realizing the "hovering" seats in a train. Anytime I sit in a train, I wonder why they have not done so for the last 30 years or so.<p>While they state its for luggage and design purposes, I just think: Its so much easier to clean. Even automatically ;)
Really enjoyed a recent European rail trip but quickly discovered mixing flight and rail is problematic if the links between airport and train station suck
In the US I would take a sleeper train from Seattle to Chicago instead of a plane provided the sleeper train runs 180 mph on average. That would put me in Chicago in about 10-12 hours, meaning I could get to Union Station in Seattle, get on the train, sleep a full night, wake up, eat breakfast, and disembark in Chicago.<p>The red-eye to Chicago, which is a comparable trip, really sucks because you only get about 3 hours of sleep in the most uncomfortable position imaginable. This means that you arrive in the city groggy and discombobulated.<p>I would even pay airfare-level prices for that kind of service. And extra if there's a way to segregate families with small children from my cabin so I don't have to try to remain asleep while a toddler is screaming for 3 hours in the same cabin.