"European style" sleeper car?

[wayman]

Are there many european multi-day trips? The only one i've been on was an overnight service in Italy, which didn't really have a "day" part to it - we got to our desintation at around 7-8am, having left maybe 11pm the previous night.

France and Germany both have overnight north-south trains that stay entirely within country boundaries, run by SNCF and DB respectively; I've taken both (though on the German train I detrained at about 10:30 PM in Worms instead of continuing overnight to ... I think the train ran through to Copenhagen without requiring a transfer at the Danish border, but I'm not sure about that). I think Poland has some overnight trains entirely within the country too. You may be right that few of these trains have much travel time in daylight, but they're not all sleeper-cars or slumber-coaches--I was in regular coach class on the German overnight train.

I know there are major east-west overnight trains which cross country boundaries--not just the pricier CityNightLine but also pedestrian trains crossing from, eg, Moscow through Poland to Berlin or from Prague up into Germany; I don't know who runs those, but I think they are through trains and don't require a midnight border transfer. But even Moscow to Berlin is only 1,000 miles, so at a conservative 50mph average speed it's only 20 hours.

I could be wrong about the international through trains, though--at the Dutch-German border in the hinterlands of the north, you still have to take a dinky Dutch train to the border where it meets a dinky German train, while at the French-Swiss border, I had to detrain, walk through customs in the station, and then re-board the same train to continue on to Basel (barely across the border; Switzerland is not part of the EU and thus still requires a passport check and customs to enter the country) and to get from Switzerland to Germany I had to take what was essential a Swiss commuter train shuttle from Basel to Lorrach (after passing through pass-control in the Basel station), from which I could catch an intercity German train. It may just be CityNightLine and a few other special services that pass borders non-stop.

 

[jis]

I could be wrong about the international through trains, though--at the Dutch-German border in the hinterlands of the north, you still have to take a dinky Dutch train to the border where it meets a dinky German train, while at the French-Swiss border, I had to detrain, walk through customs in the station, and then re-board the same train to continue on to Basel (barely across the border; Switzerland is not part of the EU and thus still requires a passport check and customs to enter the country) and to get from Switzerland to Germany I had to take what was essential a Swiss commuter train shuttle from Basel to Lorrach (after passing through pass-control in the Basel station), from which I could catch an intercity German train. It may just be CityNightLine and a few other special services that pass borders non-stop.

In Europe, international through trains very often had immigration checking on train while it's in motion. I have experienced that crossing into/out of Switzerland at Vallorbe, Como-Chiasso, Brig-Domodossola and from Zurich into Germany.

BTW, the border checks between France and Switzerland will become a thing of the past in 2009 as Switzerland enters into a special Schengen relationship with the Schengen countries of EU. The big holdup was Leichtenstein which has an open border with Switzerland and has some really weird ideas about financial matters as in banking laws that the EU members find problematic, but the last I heard they had figured out some way around it. Oddly enough the Swiss have joined Schengen but not the European Customs agreement, so although there will be no immigration checks at the border, one could still get hauled up by border police for customs violation!

Now on the matter of European style sleepers, here is an example of

, which is more like what were called Sections in the US in the past except that the berths are arranged in cubicles without doors on one side and along the corridor on the other side. The interior is shown about half way through the video pointed to above.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

People are probably ok with using that sort of accommodation for one night, I doubt there is a trip in Europe that goes into 2 nights and 3 days like the LD trains in the US.

Russia sure has plenty of overnighters.

 

[WhoozOn1st]

Russia sure has plenty of overnighters.

With something like 11 times zones, I guess so! From what I've read, Russian overnight trains are either a nightmare or a pleasure, depending on how you look at it. Surely interesting, no matter what.

 

[Ispolkom]

Russia sure has plenty of overnighters.

With something like 11 times zones, I guess so! From what I've read, Russian overnight trains are either a nightmare or a pleasure, depending on how you look at it. Surely interesting, no matter what.

The year I spent in the Soviet Union (1990-1991) really opened my eyes to what a long-distance train network could be. You could get anywhere on the frequent, efficient overnight trains, and tickets were easily available. At that time I'd never traveled in a sleeper in the U.S., so I assumed that you shared compartments with strangers of either sex everywhere, and waited in line for the toilet in the morning. So the slumbercoach where you sat in a one-person compartment facing your own toilet struck me as silly.

The main problem in those days was that everyone wanted to drink with The American, so arrivals could be rather painful. The only time I was robbed the thief left me enough rubles to make it to the end of the month, which made sense to my Russian friends ("He was an honest thief!"), if not to me.

While I've ridden probably a dozen Russian trains, including an odyssey from Moscow to Brussels, I've never seen the allure of the Trans-Siberian trip. How many birch trees to you want to see?

 

[WhoozOn1st]

How many birch trees to you want to see?

I'm a staunch advocate of getting rid of all trees on the insides of curves. I volunteer to cut them down myself. Good paper material. So many shots ruined, or not even possible, due to trees. Hate 'em.