I flipped on N-TV this morning and there's this minor piece there which interests me....on overnight railway travel.
For those who aren't aware....German Bahn (the railway system) shutdown it's overnight train option about four years ago. What they generally said at the time was that it was too expensive for the service, and the profits simply weren't there.
Where you typically saw this running was in Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. For example, you could board the Frankfurt train around 11:30 PM, get into a sleeper cabin, and wake up around 6:30 AM in Hamburg.
So the railway folks in Vienna, Austria studied the issues, and they've gone to a cabin design and business plan which attracts people. They are running the night trains into Germany, Switzerland, Italy and shortly into Brussels. Apparently, it's profitable enough....to draw German attention.
Getting convinced to buy the cars and restart this? I kinda doubt it. The travel business has changed a great deal since the 1980s, and with airline tickets at all-time lows....it just doesn't make sense to spend eight hours on a train, from Hamburg to Munich.
Lets be honest as well....the romance of long-distance train travel simply doesn't consume that many people (as it did in the 1970s).
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