Longest overnight train
 

What is the longest overnight train journey in the world?

This November, a sleeper train is supposed to start travelling between Beijing and Fuzhou.

The fastest existing train on the route is Z59/Z58. It covers 2067 km, and takes 19:43 from the journey, departing 15:08. Not quite an overnight train - it may be easier (but more expensive) to fly in the evening. The cheapest train fare (hard seat) is RMB 231, meaning about US$ 34. Lower soft sleeper is available for RMB 642, meaning about US$ 93. For comparison, typical restricted coach tickets are RMB 1672, and unrestricted coach is RMB 4942, for 2:25 to 2:35 scheduled flight time.

Well, the sleeper train shall take a longer route, covering 2369 km and stopping in places like Shanghai, Ningbo and Wenzhou.

Yet complete the trip in 16:00. The schedule is rumoured to be, depart Beijing 19:20, arrive in Fuzhou 11:20 2nd day.

How well does it compare with flight options?

There are no morning flights reaching Fuzhou much earlier - Hainan 7195 and Air China Flight 1505 arrive in Fuzhou 11:05. How long does it take to get to Fuzhou centre from airport? Those flights depart 8:30 and 8:35. How long does it take to get from Beijing to Beijing airport and then on a domestic flight?

In the evening, Air China 1821 departs 20:05 and Xiamen 8110 departs 21:10. But Xiamen 8110 arrives 23:45, so it gets rather late by the time one can get to Fuzhou, eat supper and go to sleep.

Does anyone have a clue as to what the ticket prices of train shall be like? (Supper and breakfast would probably not be included, but can be enjoyed at leisure).

Are there any other train journeys in the world which also 1) cover 2000+ km and 2) are scheduled so that any alternative flight would mean inconvenient bedtimes?

Moscow to Vladivistok is the longest I can think of - it takes a week. Many rail journeys take several days. My longest was Moscow to Novosibirsk which took two days and two nights.

For international rail advice, try www.seat61.com

How does that compare to Moscow to Beijing?

I assume the Q means a single overnight - as in, what's the longest distance covered by a train that leaves in the evening, and arrives the next morning. Is this correct?

My great circle, MOW-VVO is 3993 mi and MOW-BJS is 3611 mi. Obviously it's further in kilometres ;)

Then it's a strange question. Overnight trains often go more slowly than daytime trains with the intention of giving pax a smoother ride.

Single overnight trip is the longest that a train can save time compared to a plane. Like my argument was, if a train travels 16 hours, 19:00 to 11:00 then evening flight means arriving late and morning flight means getting up early. Whereas the existing fastest train, 20 hours from 15:00 to 11:00 can comfortably be beaten by evening flight without staying up late.

Is CRH1E uncomfortable to sleep in?

I doubt that trains follow the great circle ;)

But I understand the question :)

What? I doubt anyone knows every flight and train option in the world.

Where and when did railroads begin doing this as it obviously costs them extra money to do this. Certainly not in the US, Canada or Mexico or anywhere I have been.

MisterNice

It's pretty common in Europe. In the UK, for example, you can get from London to Glasgow or Edinburgh in a little over 4 hours by day train. The night train, however, takes 7h30. Not only do you get a smoother ride and allow slack for engineering works, the train leaves and arrives at far more sociable hours, making it a much more attractive prospect.

Most of the shorter routes on the CityNightLine network are like this too.

It does cost more in terms of staffing, but not necessarily in terms of track access costs and energy. You rarely get night trains using the high speed lines.

Based on my (only) recent experience, my overnight train went much smoother the fast we went. Pulling out of stations was the worst part.

Perhaps that's because the smoother the track, the faster the train can go. Pulling out of stations, track have lots of points and crossovers. That makes for a bumpy ride and it has to be done very slowly. But generally, on any given piece of track, the slower the train goes the smoother the ride will be. That's why trains used to slow down for rickety bridges rather than speed up for them.

I would guess this was less due to the driver consciously going slower than allowed and more due to more limited maximum speeds of the equipment (standard rail carriages versus high-speed ones), using different routes with slower speeds allowed, etc. I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I highly doubt that any company--even a government agency that's not in it for profit--would choose to pay higher staffing costs for slower trains (unless market research proved it increases revenue because of the better hours and/or more comfortable ride).

It's probably not the case in Europe, where high-speed passenger rail has made virtually all track of the continuously-welded kind, but going slower doesn't always result in smoother rides. In the U.S., the harmonic rocking motion of railroad equipment going over the standard 39-foot sticks of jointed rail (the kind where the rails are bolted together instead of welded, which creates the nostalgic "clickety-clack" sound of railways of old) reaches its peak (on such jointed rail, which is mostly absent on the major routes now) between 35 and 40mph. Going faster than that actually causes the ride to be smoother.

I don't recall what the historic standard length of jointed rail in Europe is (which would affect the speed at which the ride is roughest) and/or how much non-welded track is left, but it's something to consider.

Which is the key point, really. Nobody is going to take a sleeper leaving at 1am and arriving at 5.30am unless they have no other choice - and these days, they usually do. UK sleepers (on privatised railways) use coaches that have a maximum speed of 125mph, too, so they're definitely running slowly.

Yes. Shorter routes.

Because a night train little over 4 hours is, indeed, stopping at unsociable hours.

But what about routes that are so long that the fastest day train is 10 hours already, like Beijing-Shanghai, D31 takes 9:52 for 1463 km?

What would then be the point of a night train being slower and taking 18 hours?

Do night trains travel slower to provide smoother ride? Or, when they do, solely and exclusively to stretch the trip out for sufficient bedtime?

The world is not black and white. It's likely to be a compromise over several factors, including the above. You want sociable hours, good connections, a good night's sleep, reliability and cost-effectiveness. The balance will depend on distance, quality of track, quality of rolling stock, the cost balance between staffing and infrastructure, and the number of maintenance tasks that are expected to take place overnight. And probably more factors still.

I wouldn't suggest slowing overnight coaches down to 50mph for the sake of it - I wouldn't like to try sleeping in one hurtling along at 186mph either.

I have the feeling that this thread is becoming increasingly pointless. The definition of what we are supposedto be looking for is so vague and imprecise, so subjective, as to be meaningless.

I'm guessing that's why it has descended into petty sniping on irrelevant details by those who can't believe that anything isn't just the same as it is in the United States of America - and if things are different then they shouldn't be.

In the UK the carriages are capable of the same speeds as most regualr daytime trains. They travel more slowly (maximum speed of 80mph v 125 mph capability) for the better arrival hour/better ride argument. The marginal cost of the staffing is pretty tiny compared to the fixed costs.

And before we get into the private v public debate these trains are run by private operators and have been for 10+years.

No, but knowing a few outstanding ones is more likely. There are not so many trains that sustain high average speeds over very long distances.

There already is an overnight train Beijing-Shanghai. 1463 km, and the shortest time is 10:07. About 144 km/h on average.

There are no 1500+ km overnight trains in Great Britain, of course, because the isle does not span that distance between London and Scotland. How fast are the fastest trains between New York and Chicago? Or other prime longhaul routes?

Although the Trans-Siberian main train, from Moscow to Vladivostok, takes a week, there are in summertime extras that run from Vladivostok right down to Sochi on the Black Sea that take a day or so longer. These seem to have no near competition for both distance and time taken.

The issue of no very high speeds at night is driven by the speed of the other trains on the railway at this time, principally freight, and the need to fit in around these slower ones. Plus there is no commercial demand to run high speed end-to-end overnight, to achieve the minimum journey time on a long journey, that market went to the airlines long ago.

The Trans-Siberian is not a single train (although only one, the Rossiya, is really marketed to "westerners"), but has several that depart each day, plus others that nearly make the complete run, like Moscow to Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East. Interposed with these are freight trains along the line (which are its majority usage), the whole lot running evenly at about 50-60 mph, and with a train each way passing about every 15 minutes. Many of the passengers seem to be making shorter 1 or 2 day trips between the intermediate points, which the Russian airlines, mainly focused on Moscow, do not readily cater for. It's an impressive sight to stay overnight by the railway in the middle of Siberia (at Perm in my case, just one day's travel from Moscow, and not really Siberia yet) and see it all in action. Needless to say we got to Perm by plane !

Anyone who has read Pushkin's "The Stationmaster", written before railway times about life along the old Imperial Road where horse travel from Moscow to the Pacific and back took a year will understand what an amazing effort has, over the centuries, gone into holding Russia together, which the railway continues.

Airplanes do always beat the trip time of high/speed trains, yes. But including travel to airport, from airport to hotel at destination etc., travelling by air requires unsociable hours.

I found some examples of Eurostar.

An Eurostar travelled 1422 km, from London to Cannes, in 7:22 or so. But this was a record attempt for Angels and Demons. It did not remain scheduled.

What IS scheduled is Eurostar Alps Direct train. Departs London St. Pancras 20:31 in the evening, arrives at Bourg St. Maurice 6:27 second day....

Except that the whole night must be spent, at best, in ordinary Eurostar Leisure Select seat. The accursed Brits lost their Nightstar rolling stock!

They need it back. And more destinations. In 2012, Stephenson gauge railway shall open all the way to Malaga.

Well you can look at any UK airport and find multiple daily departures to Malaga for significantly less that Eurostar would need to charge to break even. You can leave after breakfast and be there for a late lunch.

The world has moved on. Time was when if you were going to/from Malaga you needed to go by the odd ship and it took a week (which was how Seville oranges got sent to Britain in the old days). Then the railway came and took that market. Now things have moved on again, people go by air and the oranges go by road truck.

Actually, we went to Cannes a couple of months ago. Mrs WHBM :) went to a business meeting in Central London first, then we went to City Airport, Air France to Nice, drove to Cannes in 30 minutes and had a drink in a seafront cafe and a swim in the sea that afternoon. This is what people do nowadays. If we had gone on that special Eurostar it would have left too early and arrived too late for any of this.

I still don't understand what you're getting at, or what your question is. Not the longest train, distance-wise, that involves an overnight, apparently. And not the longest train, time-wise, that involves an overnight. So, at least, the thread isn't titled very well. And I don't think I'm the only one having a problem deciphering what it is you're after.

I suspect the OP's point (if he'll forgive me for speaking on his behalf) is that he is impressed to have found a long distance train that might, under certain circumstances, look like a better option than a plane. He has therefore, somewhat unsuccessfully, contrived a question to justify starting a thread to tell us about it.

Yes. And you will have wasted your morning.

What you cannot do is leave in the evening, sleep at night while getting closer to Malaga, and wake up there. Jets do not slow down to match flight time to bedtime.
If it travelled by day, yes.

Longest train, distance-wise, that involves a single overnight - and does not waste enough of either day to justify flying on either day. (Basically any train that travels two or more nights does waste the whole day between, and therefore justifies a day flight).

:rolleyes: