The trouble lies in the old rolling stock. They bought all that from Deutsche Bahn who suddenly stopped all sleeper train services a few years ago.
Deutsche Bahn had neglected that segment for years and did not invest into more than the bare maintenance to keep the stock rolling.
Maybe the rolling stock itself won't be new - maybe they plan to rebuild old carriages? A few years ago, they could have bought DB's Talgo night trains (probably at bargain price), but now they were apparently scrapped because they didn't manage to find a buyer for several years (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talgo_(Deutsche_Bahn,_1994%E2%... - German)...
I cannot understand why they aren't more night trains. For me, it's the perfect way to travel. You have your own room which you can lock and do whatever you want, you have a bed, some storage room, a table, a sink, and if you spend a little more money, you even have a shower. I enjoyed using night trains when I was single, I enjoyed them as a couple, and I enjoy them very much now as a father, as it is basically the most comfortable way to travel with small children. For inner-European travel, it is often cheaper than flying, but much more comfortable. Who cares if takes 12 hours to Kopenhagen if you are sleeping 8 of them, and relaxing on a bed with your laptop, eating breakfast or looking out of the window drinking wine for the remaining 4. You arrive fresh, relaxed, with brushed teeth and shaven and you do not have to worry about getting into town from the airport, because the train station will usually be near the town center.
The problem seems to be that their once glamorous image has been lost. At least in Europe, they have gained a somewhat dubious reputation over the last decades.
Deutsche Bahn stopped their night train services 2 years ago, they sold if off completely to the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), which now run it with a profit. Their idea? Clean up the trains, fix the reputation and attract families. As a passenger, I am happy about that, they are also planning to extend the network. As
a German, I am a bit sad that the Austrians are now running our night trains, but providing train services does not exactly seem to be the main area of expertise of Deutsche Bahn.
It's not wideley known that part of the problem is Siemens with their abysmal quality of trains, for instance the Desiro models. I found an older article about this in connection with the Belgian rail
The situation hasn't improved, though. Recently a local provider of train services has acquired a new fleet of Desiro and Mireo that were broken right out of the factory. The quality was so bad that Siemens was forced to send people to the train provider for weeks to fix the most urgent problems.
Also the introduction of the "Deutschlandtakt" was delayed not for years but for decades, so won't happen in my lifetime:
> If you're thinking of a European trip, do it right now - Deutsche Bahn are withdrawing many of the sleeper trains in December as they're unprofitable.
The same is true across Europe — HSR has helped kill sleepers in recent years.
It's difficult. They privatized everything in the early 90ies and even attempted to go to the stock exchange - this resulted in cuts and bad long-term decisions - now most of the Deutsche Bahn is public owned but a private company. They probably want to make some profit where it's possible. They need to invest a lot of money in the coming years because their infrastructure is crumbling and running on attrition.
However the price for a certain track depends on a lot of things and this new high-speed track has lot's of buisness customers that avoid a flight this way - so it's priced higher.
It's a complicated system with lot's of subsidies, subcontractors and so on. There is a price to pay for using the track to a different company that runs the train...
Another problem is that freight train traffic is even more expensive and they simply forgot to invest in the system for 30 years - now the Autobahn is clogged with trucks...
That's because German rail is an absolute disaster. They used to have +90% on time schedules which is now below 60%. Compare that to Switzerland where the "Chancellors" do travel via rail and the on time rate in 2022 was 92,5% for the entire network (Connections where made at 98.9%!). [1]
German rail is no longer what it was 20 years ago.
The previous admin underfunded it and basically destroyed it. It requires over 80 Billion in rapiers and the current government is only promised to spend maybe half over the next few years.
Current spending on German rail is around EUR 100 per capita per year while in Switzerland it is EUR 400+.
I don't think the problems with German rail apply universally. The prevalence of low-speed tracks and frequency of delays comes from a period of missing reinvestment following the (semi-)privatization of Deutsche Bahn. Not every network will have this issue.
Some information to put into perspective the articles which are now regularly published about the revival of sleeper trains.
First, if you look at Europe as a whole, you will see that sleeper trains were never really dead. There are plenty of them in Germany and Eastern Europe. Often they go from large cities to holiday destinations and therefore are mainly used by people travelling for leisure.
The novelty of these new lines (be it this company or the transeuropean effort to connect european capitals with sleeper trains) is that they mostly travel business travellers, people who would usually have taken a place. As plane journeys are often the largest item in a company carbon account, they are betting that some will push their employees towards the train.
It might not be easy however. Track capacity at night is often severly limited by maintenance work in France for example and these trains will have to compete with rail freight transport at a time when Europe wants to massively develop rail freight.
There are some sleeper trains still in Germany - although you need to pay a supplement on top of the annual train-ticket to use them. It would limit you quite heavily to certain transport coridors though.
first, Germany has had a high level of sefvice quality with trains for the last 15 years, compared to much of the world, there's little to improve
and second, DB had become a HUGE holding company of many kinds of business endeavours and rail service is not in the states hand anymore, while the company "optimizes" for profit which makes travel aside of high traffic routes become worse and worse and coverage deteriorates.
And the national train operators are being challenged on their own turf by open-access operators. The days of sleepers are probably numbered in this part of the Europe. Wagons with convertible benches are uncomfortable both for sitting and sleeping. They're utterly uncompetitive vis-a-vis reclinable seats deployed by operators like Leo Express. Perhaps one day they'll start putting lie-flat recliners used in airliners on trains one day. That's more economical--and flexible--than having separate rooms.
First, Deutsche Bahn simply could hire a security agency for a fraction of the money.
Second, they're trying to solve a non-problem. Their trains are notoriously and regularly late. Their fares are horribly complex and overpriced. They only offer Internet access on two of their high speed routes through Germany. You want Internet access while travelling to Germany's main startup hub Berlin? Well, bad luck for you. No such service. Their trains fail regulary during spring because of the rain, they fail during summer because the trains' air conditioning can't handle more than 35 degrees centigrade, they fail during autumn because their trains' wheels can't deal with wet leaves on the tracks and they fail during winter because of a few snowflakes.
I couldn't care less what their trains look like from the outside if they didn't smell like piss and sweat on the inside. Maybe, they should fix that issue first before buying some expensive toy with their shareholders' money, which happens to be taxpayers' money since Deutsche Bahn is still more or less owned by the German state.
German Rail cancelled their night train service a few years ago, and then Austrian Rail took over and offered a proper service. As the article covers, the Germans were neglecting this service, which in turn probably lead to their poorer service and poorer uptake, and they presumably thought "well, it seems nobody likes taking night trains any more, so let's cancel them".
This project was probably very cheap compared to the cost of fixing the Deutsche Bahn's horrendous problems with delays and cancelations.
The Deutsche Bahn has literally decades of maintenance to catch up on. Even if the Deutsche Bahn does everything right from now on, the next decade is going to be very painful for German train commuters.
Doubly painful, now that people are once again more open to the use of a sleeper train to avoid flying (for environmental reasons, or just not having to deal with airports).
ÖBB took over Deutsche Bahn's sleepers, which coincided with the retiring of the last sleeper train from/to the Netherlands (bugger me). But their service does seem to be working pretty well.
I missed an opportunity to travel from Milan to Paris by Thello's sleeper train due to the railway strikes in France this year, unfortunately.
I really wish the EU or collaborating national governments would invest more in sleeper train services by taxing flights. It's much more sustainable, and the real kicker is this: yes, a train takes longer, but in a sleeper train you just wake up with a complimentary breakfast early in the morning in the middle of a city hundreds of kilometres from where you started.
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