i don't know about these new night trains but oebb.at is what made our euro trip more affordable. We purchased our eurail pass but then got so confused as to how to purchase the reservations on italian high speed trains using the reduced eurail rates. Eurail's website wasn't showing the routes and trenitalia doesn't have pricing for eurail holders either. Then I learned from some eurail forum that we had to go through oebb's website to purchase the reservations. Thank you oebb and thank you revolut for making USD -> CHF, EUR, GBP conversions super easy.
They took over the DB lines, incidentally bringing back sleeper trains from/to the Netherlands after a short absence, and I think rolling stock as well. ÖBB is certainly delivering on its promise. We took the sleeper train from Arnhem to Innsbruck and back just this month for a trip to the North of Italy (which is just two hours on the EuroCity from Innsbruck). The rolling stock is ageing a bit, but it's clean and has great service.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the fast, no-fuss refund of 25% when our return trip was delayed for 65 minutes. After alighting, on the next train, I arranged for the €80 to be refunded in just five minutes of entering the relevant details through their chat bot.
The Austrian federal railways (OeBB) is doing really well with night trains after the takeover. They even ordered new trains which should go into service in 2022. Really happy for this because the current rolling stock is just ancient and sleepers are a nice concept.
Night trains are already competitively priced in parts of Europe if you factor in the hotel night you save. Take Amsterdam to Innsbruck:
Travel 1000 km by car, and you arrive late at night, exhausted, go to sleep at your accommodation, and get up in the morning for the start of your itinerary. Don't forget to factor in the costs of wear-and-tear on your car for those 1000 km.
Take a night train, and you get to leave much later in the day, but end up at the same point as the car example above, but the cost of the night's accommodation (the train) was already part of your ticket.
Same for the return journey.
The current market situation is not perfect — this only works for places within reach of the night train network by a few hours of additional transit at most — but night trains are gradually becoming an attractive option for more and more people in Europe. ÖBB took a gamble a decade or so ago by taking over the DB night train lines, and they are now the market leader with a fairly good track record.
Night trains form the backbone of my holidays further a field in Europe. It's only getting better.
It was pretty amazing pricing DB train tickets vs. Eurail passes (I'm going to 30c3 and will probably be in Europe 25 DEC to 12 JAN). A single 2nd FRA-HAM-BER trip costs more than a 5-travel-day pass, in first on ICE.
"There are high costs, but a lot is down to attitude, willingness and management focus," says Smith, who praises ÖBB CEO Andreas Matthä, who took over in 2016, for "making night trains wash their faces commercially."
Well that is an understatement. Last time I checked to get a night train to Vienna they started at €200 per person. You can fly there for €30.
It's nice that they're expanding, sure. But at this rate you're not going to convince the masses of going electric on their middle-distance travels.
The Nightjet network has reconnected to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris, and OBB seems to be investing heavily. The Thelo trains from Paris-Italy have disappeared, but that was a recently opened service and frankly not very good when I rode it. When DB pulled out it looked like the end of an era, but European night trains are in better shape now than they have been for a long time, Covid notwithstanding.
I'm lucky to live in a city (Hanover, Germany) on the intersection of many night train routes. Back when Deutsche Bahn operated their night trains one could travel to Amsterdam, Brussels, Warsaw, and Prague. Now with ÖBB operating them one can ride to Hamburg, Vienna, Innsbruck, and Zurich.
Some years ago I did Hanover -> Warsaw and Hanover -> Prague. It was very chaotic to board at night and all the confusion which one of the train parts goes to which end station. Clearly other passengers had the same problem. Seems to be part of the adventure. You also have to get used to sleep in those trains. When ÖBB started to operate them I did Hamburg -> Hanover to ride back home (which continues to Vienna) and Munich -> Venice.
Of course your riding experience depends on whether you book seats, beds, cabins, or just the train ride. One time when I woke up I saw the polish worker standing by the window having his first beer. I didn't even notice him enter the cabin in the middle of the night. We talked for hours. Another time I just booked the train ride and when boarding the train spend minutes to cross the compartments full of people to find a nice spot. There were even some sleeping on the floor. I was lucky to reach the Czech part of the train, which had a lot of empty seats. The ride on the tracks next to Elbe and Vltava rivers is very magical.
For the train ride to Venice I reserved a single cabin which was very comfy. And the one departing from Hamburg had a delay of 120 minutes. I entered the train a searched for a cabin and was greeted by someone who smiled at me. So I entered the cabin and had a chat with her. She told me the delay was due to ÖBB having problems with loading all the cars and motorcycles on the train, and added there seems to be a delay between 60 and 120 minutes every day, because the problems don't go away.
No it's not a technicality?
I can buy tickets from Deutsche Bahn for all kind of European Train Operators, including ÖBB Nightjet. It's just a nice service to have a unified booking system
Those services are great. I used Eurail (a similar one). Bought X train trips for a flat rate, all I had to do was write in my To and From cities on the travel log. Reading this article, I took that for granted with how simple it was.
ÖBB is leading the pack on the sleeper train front though. Wien, Graz, Innsbruck, all linked up to the rest of Europe on a neat network of NightJet trains. The next generation of rolling stock for the sleeper cars looks amazing too.
Well it's not an ÖBB Night Train, it's a train operated by MAV-Start (Hungarian State Railways).
It also says when booking that it's a partner train.
Maybe do your research before complaining about the wrong company
As tourists, we got a Eurail pass, and international travel was as seamless as you could expect (at the time, the Italian trains were slow, the French trains stank, and the British ticketing offices were full of useless queues. The German trains were a little nerve wracking because the conductors were in a blind panic because the train was 30 seconds late).
Anyway, some computer figured out the transfers for us, and the itineraries were fine.
The only real problem was that we had to book weeks ahead. They physically mailed the tickets the US. I can't imagine it works like that now.
Either way, it's proof the patchwork of national operators can work well together.
Same here. Travelling to Europe for the first time from South America and it's been a godsend. Naively thought that train travelling was simpler than it really is (which is completely understandable that's why I say I was being naive). Eurail community posters pointed me to that webpage and didn't need anything else.
Enjoy big savings of up to 65% on the booking of various Rail Passes at raileurope.com! Grab the great opportunity to save online and keep enjoying shopping online forever!
I travel between Italy, Austria, Germany and Switzerland somewhat regularly, not rarely passing through 3 of the 4 countries for a given trip. I use the Austrian national railway‘s (ÖBB) app to book my tickets, I get a single QR code on my phone that is valid for all legs of my journey, gets scanned by the personnel of whatever country‘s railway company, and I‘m good. Never had any problems whatsoever.
Cool, together with the planned offerings of the austrian railway it seems the Europe wide night lines will finally be reality... I really hope they will also finally tackle the complicated mess of buying cross boarder train tickets within the EU... vienna -> paris, a day in paris, and then paris -> porto seems nice :)
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