DB to withdraw all remaining sleeper trains

[jis]

Indeed. DB is trying to fulfill its charter the best it can. It is unfortunate that overnight sleepers have just become more irrelevant over time in the overall mix of transport modes available for typical journeys of its customers. The amount of money they plan to spend overall in facilities improvements is impressive. I wish we had such problems (er solutions) on the other side of the pond.

 

[Anderson]

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/europe/db-seeks-to-renew-itself-after-strategic-review.html?channel=537

"GERMAN Rail (DB) has announced the outcome of months of strategic review, assisted by consulting firm McKinsey, confirming a programme of measures to tackle the company's worsening financial performance.

CEO Dr Rüdiger Grube set out the process that DB will implement to "renew itself," by first "cleaning" the company of unnecessary management and business structures and from 2016 focussing on both train punctuality and service quality."

Seem that DB has some issues to address. City Night Line did not cover the full allocated cost. Overhead and capital of course.

Of interest is the 350 new passenger station over the next 15 years. 55bn euro of capital investment next 5 years.

Oh to have issues like these

I have to wonder what the situation was on direct cost (e.g. at least notwithstanding overhead, possibly also notwithstanding capital).

 

[neroden]

This is a case of idiocy by Deutsche Bahn -- but the main reason for it is a parochial attitude. The "costs" line is a phony, a lie.

All of the CityNightLine trains were profitable; DB has admitted as much. It looks like they even covered depreciation, which is a real cost of operation. They didn't cover "assigned overhead", which was used as an excuse for not running them -- but we all know that's just an excuse, because "assigned overhead" is not a real cost of operation.

The real issue is that distances within Germany are too short for sleeper service. The successful and popular sleeper services of CityNightLine all extended across the borders to other countries, and those countries were the main beneficiaries. And DB doesn't want to help people from other countries; this has been an ongoing trend in Europe, with cross-border services being eliminated.

The result is that the Paris-Berlin sleeper market is now being grabbed by *Russian Railways* (really!) as part of its Paris-Moscow route, while Austrian Railways is grabbing the services which go to Austria. Denmark's railways are a basketcase and have many other priorities so unfortunately the Danish services will probably not be replaced. There are decent odds that the Swiss Railways will replace the services to Switzerland.

Worth noting that "no subsidies of cross border services" rules (with idiotic overhead-inclusive definitions of subsidies) do not apply to countries outside the EU. So Russian Railways can operate any service which makes a real profit, regardless of overhead. And apparently they intend to.

 

[neroden]

And it cost over 130 million euros to run according to some reports.

Those are what we call "fake numbers". DB has admitted that the City Night Line services were profitable. That's just another case of assigning overhead to specific trains, which is always and everywhere a mistake.

I'm just not seeing where overnight sleeper service is needed within Germany at all.

But what if you want to go from say Italy or Switzerland to say, Denmark.

You're both right! And this is exactly the issue which is ending the services. I honestly would not be surprised if we see an expansion of international sleeper services pushed by countries on the fringe of Europe, who are the ones who benefit. Unfortunately Denmark-specific issues are likely to prevent the resumption of Danish services for a long time, but Switzerland and Italy are another matter.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

But what if you want to go from say Italy or Switzerland to say, Denmark.

When I went on my first trip abroad with a EurailPass -- what more could I need? -- I was very young. World War II and the assorted war crimes had not faded from memory. So I arranged my life to travel from Innsbruck in Austria to Copenhagen without setting foot on German soil. Then Copenhagen-Amsterdam I misread the timetable, and had to change trains in Hannover. I'm not forgetting the war crimes, but I have forgiven Germany. After all, on a DNA basis I'm 37.5% German. So a week in Berlin, half a week in Hannover for their little World's Fair. Several train trips, but the first one was overnight thru Germany.

 

[jis]

And it cost over 130 million euros to run according to some reports.

Those are what we call "fake numbers". DB has admitted that the City Night Line services were profitable. That's just another case of assigning overhead to specific trains, which is always and everywhere a mistake.

I'm just not seeing where overnight sleeper service is needed within Germany at all.

But what if you want to go from say Italy or Switzerland to say, Denmark.

You're both right! And this is exactly the issue which is ending the services. I honestly would not be surprised if we see an expansion of international sleeper services pushed by countries on the fringe of Europe, who are the ones who benefit. Unfortunately Denmark-specific issues are likely to prevent the resumption of Danish services for a long time, but Switzerland and Italy are another matter.

The neat thing is that the open access rules allows any outfit to enter the market with a service that people are willing to use and pay for. So if Sleeper service is really missed, it will indeed materialize run by someone. It may not be the old familiar outfits that run it, but so what as long as there is service? I am not so sure about fringe of EU pushing too much in all cases. It is Poland that killed most cross border trains into Poland before any core EU countries had a chance. It was basically DB that was funding the remaining Sleeper train to Warsaw from the west.

The French and the Spanish have moaned a lot about the loss of overnight sleepers but have done exactly nothing to actually restore them so far. So we'll see. The whole idea of Sleeper trains through the Channel Tunnel, which at one time seemed to be an absolute no brainer collapsed completely before it turned a single wheel and the entire rolling stock landed up in Canada. So clearly demand for Sleeper service is not as overwhelming as some of us make it out to be.

Now this I believe is a local phenomenon in Western Europe given how their transportation system has developed and what the relative costs of travel by various modes have turned out to be. There are many other countries in the world where Sleeper service is bound to live on for a long long time. So what happens in Western Europe or Japan (where Sleeper service has also been completely withdrawn) dose not portend anything about what will happen anywhere else.

 

[Anderson]

The Nightstar plan collapsed because cross-channel business simply didn't come within a light-year of projections (I think Eurostar ridership wound up being about 1/3 of what was projected a few years in) and London and Continental (the overseeing company) had to be bailed out. IMHO it was a no-brainer...but the Eurostar got into a major mess first and that scuppered everything.

As a serious question, aside from throwing out some of the damned EU directives, what could France, Spain, etc. actually do to reverse this? It would seem that if they were allowed to directly subsidize some limited sets of trains (even if by way of an open-bid contract) we wouldn't be here, but EU rules seem to prohibit that...which to offer a US analogy makes about as much sense as saying that Illinois can't run a train into St. Louis because that would be interstate commerce.

(Also, if you have an 8-10 hour trip...yes, you may only get one major city pair, but in most of those cases there are substantial feeder networks and connecting services the likes we could only dream of in the US...the best analogy I could think of would be if the Silvers terminated at Orlando...but you had the whole Florida rail plan in place. Yes you lose a reasonable amount of traffic with a connection, but if the feeder connections are reasonably high-frequency and reliable I think that should at least control the damage.)

 

[jis]

France, Spain etc. first have to come to the conclusion that they want to reverse this. There is zero indication that they are at that point. Actually France started discontinuing its overnight sleeper trains way before there was any European directive, and it is not as if the European directives materialized without the approval of Germany and France. Even Europe does not quite work that way. The reason that the subsidy directive was approved is that each country was deathly scared that the adjacent country's rail operator would be subsidized by said country to undercut the local rail operator. So they settled for no cross border subsidies. It turns out that even in united Europe, within country rail service is way more important for everyone concerned apparently than cross border rail service, at least to the extent that they would not subsidize such. In spite of the non-subsidy rule there are plenty of cross border services and more are getting added by more operators getting involved other than the national ones too - though sometimes partially owned by one or more national operators.

BTW, no one prohibits running trains to adjacent country. it is just that they must pay for themselves using whatever the cost computation method is specified by the Commission. There is a lot of cross border service that operates, as I have mentioned before. The rules that apply to rail in their case is very similar to the rules that apply to airlines, which has been causing no end of problems for the likes of Air France for example.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Don't forget at this time only the sleeping cars and couchettes are getting drop. DB stated the trains themself will continue. Of course that might change at the next timetable release. (PR move anyone?)

My heartache is that the map link I posted came directly from there web site, and it was out of date. That a sure sign of big problem. These trains in the past had many more swapping / dropping of cars. All required a bit of daily management to get done. Too much of a hassle, and not enough returns?

Marketing short falls, operating headache, older equipment. Parent company trying to increase profit.

Boom there goes the whole show.

 

[trainviews]

I'm not sure the EU rules are quite as tight as you depict them. I know for sure that the City Night Line that was running to Copenhagen until last year was subsidized by the Danish state for the run in Denmark (more specifically it was part of DSB's contract with the state that they pulled the train from Copenhagen to the border partly paid by the state). It might be because the train was grandfathered or running under some sort of transitional rule but never the less...

Likewise the regionals to Sweden are run under contract with both Denmark and the southern region of Sweden, but are probably considered a commuter and could work under different rules. I don't know about the intercity trains between Hamburg and Copenhagen or north into Jutland, but I would be highly surprised if they didn't have som sort of subsidy too.

The only ones I know are running purely on a commercial basis are the Swedish high speed trains from Copenhagen to Stockholm, which runs only a few miles in Denmark from Copenhagen via the airport and on to the bridge to Sweden. (regrettably to be terminated with the new stupid border controls from after New Years).

As for commercial sleeper operations, Veolia is operating in Sweden and up until last year they too had a sleeper train from Malmö in southern Sweden to Berlin, but it was terminated around the same time as the City Night Line, I think because the ferry company transporting them across the Baltic cancelled the run, and apparently Veolia didn't want to run it through Denmark instead. As far as I know the slot was actually reserved, but they never took up the alternative route and gave up the train instead.

 

[Seaboard92]

I remember watching the night trains departing München and Berlin the last few years. Back in 2010 they were some of the longest trains in town. And we're frequently assigned track 11 in München which is I believe the longest platform. And the trains were consistently packed. Then 2011 they were still packed but not as predictable as they once were on arriving time. But they had a lot of tourist traffic. In 2013 they were becoming a lot harder to find and ridership from tourists was still high. But I don't recall many Germans. The Germans I ran into went into the IC thru cars. And in 2013 I saw the Praha-Amsterdam train in Berlin originally scheduled around midnight and I saw it at ten am. Most of the cars weren't the standard CNL either most were from the operating railroads. And then 2015 I saw a handful but short consists and not really full at all. I saw a video of a day in the life of a CNL attendant. I'll try to find that for you guys. Tschüss

 

[Anderson]

Anecdotally, for a collapse that fast to happen it really does scream "sabotage"...*sighs*

 

[jis]

The Paris - Moscow Sleeper service run by RZD provides one sleeper option from Paris to any enroute station by Sleeper. It runs three times a week this winter. How often it runs varies. It has been known to run as infrequently as once a week and as frequently as five times a week depending on traffic projections. Originally when introduced it ran as a part of the Paris - Berlin City night Line, but then RZD decided to pick up the extra cost of a slot and run it separately. Meanwhile of course the CNL went bye-bye.

In the new timetable it is overnight from Paris to Berlin and then Brest to Moscow. RZD is hoping to pick up some of the clientele of the discontinued CNL. Restaurant service is provided by the Polish Railway Dining and Sleeping Car service outfit WARS between Paris and Brest, and by RZD between Brest and Moscow.

RZD also runs a similar service between Moscow and Nice via Warsaw, Krakow, Vienna, Genoa on ce a week.

This train appears to be pretty nice though not as luxurious as the Helsinki - Moscow Tolstoi which I have traveled on. The Restaurant Car on the Tolstoi is a sight to behold in and of itself.

Clearly the West European Railways are not particularly worried about competitive issues with Russia running the Sleeper service, since they have pretty much decided to exit the sleeper business themselves and leave it to someone else to run as they see fit. If they saw a competitive issues they would have the Commission making rules about regulating funding and such. But they have not and there is no indication that they will.

 

[Anderson]

Very interesting. There's a strange logic here...honestly, Russia is the only country in Europe (with a few odd exceptions in "long" countries) where even with super-fast trains there's no way they can dump the sleeper trains...and besides, I suspect they have some spare equipment from the ex-Moscow-to-Kiev route if nothing else I'd actually be strangely comfortable if the Russians threw together an Amtrak-style route skeleton (e.g. a dozen or so very-long-distance trains which "happen" to hit a bunch of major cities along the way to Russia, with a cross-connecting train or two in central Europe)...though the idea of RZD becoming the spiritual successor to Wagon-Lits is quite a strange one. Frankly, considering the tangled mess (to say nothing of purposefully bad marketing and so on) that having a bunch of railroads run their own sleeper ops was/is...this would probably be a massive improvement. As far as I can tell, there's no equivalent to Amtrak.com for Europe. Yes, I know a large east-west system is more likely than much of anything north-south...but one can always hope.

Also, FWIW the fact that the Caledonian sleeper was renewed for 15 years with new sets of equipment (what I wouldn't give to get the old stuff over here...*sighs*) stands in stark contrast to this. The key difference IMHO is that the Caledonian (and Night Riviera) get promoted on Network Rail's site rather than being gratuitously hidden. My best guess, adding all of this up, is that DB didn't want to have to renew the equipment (which I suspect they would have been under substantial pressure to do if it were profitable above-the-rails), especially if they're expecting to "drop off" a few more routes in the next decade as travel times keep getting improved...so they sandbagged the living hell out of the operation.

One thing I think this does speak to is the idea of forcing some level of consolidation on the booking end. It would be interesting to see what the effect would be if the EU basically forced all pax operators to put all non-commuter operations into a centralized system which the would-be passenger could then look up...and made it easy to search (e.g. I want an overnight train from Paris to Berlin, I can punch that in and the relevant options...and all the various sorts of services on said train...get listed).

 

[neroden]

As noted, the CNL trains were patronized mainly by non-Germans. There can be some *very parochial* attitudes in Germany. And I think this drove DB's decision to cancel them.

This is actually why the EU isn't working. They aren't united. Each country is all "my citizens first and to hell with the rest of you". (Germany's economic treatment of Greece is the most extreme example.)

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/main-line/obb-evaluates-options-for-new-couchette-coaches.html

Well DB rail is getting out of the sleeper buisness, however OOB is buy new equipment. Interesting the new couchettes are for night time use only. No day time seating. You can sit up in your bed and that it. Of course it's not the final design, but...

 

[caravanman]

It is rather hard for me to grasp the full design, from the descriptions in the article, but seems like an attempt to give more privacy.

Most uplifting is the news that there may be some future for sleeper trains in Europe, if the Austrian intent is to take over some of the German services being lost.

I don't know much about the in depth economics of train operation, but I hope that new or reinstated night trains will still have fares around the 50-80 Euro level... Just right for this pensioner!

Ed.

 

[Palmetto]

Definitely an attempt to achieve more privacy. Convenience, as well, since they will be internet-capable.

 

[Palmetto]

I read somewhere--don't know where--that the SNCF is looking for a contractor to operate their remaining services.

 

[ScouseAndy]

Was it here ? http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/main-line/france-to-put-night-train-services-out-to-tender.html

Its all gone quiet since this was announced mind.

Italian overnight sleepers keep getting axed every couple of years but thanks to the strong unions going on strike and bringing the whole rail network to a standstill they keep getting reprieved but I'm sure its only a matter of time that they will lose theirs as well.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/main-line/france-seeks-new-operator-for-overnight-trains.html

The deadline for the French Night Service is 31 May 2016.

 

[Barciur]

I'm seeing something similar happening in Poland. Poland does not have a high-speed rail, but even then, just higher speeds are making night trains less favorable. For example, from my hometown, Lublin, there used to be a night-time train to Gdańsk (Danzig). It'd take 9 hours. However, since the fast-speed line between Warsaw and Gdansk was done, regular time with a changover in Warsaw is 5:20. Same is happening to other lines - Kraków to Gdańsk is 6 hours on a new Pendolino train rather than a 10 hour sleeper ride. Unfortunately, international trains are not popular due to costs. You can fly from Budapest to London for €50 round trip many times. Europeans are used to MUCH cheaper air fares than Americans domestically, hence expensive international trains seem completely out of line for them.

 

[cirdan]

Don't forget at this time only the sleeping cars and couchettes are getting drop. DB stated the trains themself will continue. Of course that might change at the next timetable release. (PR move anyone?)

Some of the CNL trains are being replaced by ICE consists.

Some CNL trains are even being replaced by DB-run buses.

So basically people who used to be able to travel in couchettes and sleepers now have to camp out on ICE or bus seats.

And at the same time DB is bemonaing that it is losing traffic to the buses, who offer precisely this: seats.

Surely here is an opportunbity for DB to be brilliant at what it can do better than the buses, rather than scrambling to join them in the race to the bottom.

 

[jis]

What DB is doing is not unheard of in the industry in general. A company chooses to concentrate on one or two product lines and spins off the rest. happens all the time. One could quibble about the choice of business lines made to keep in house and the choices to be spun off. but the restructuring along those lines comes with the territory of evolving a company in a new competitive environment. We saw this sort of thing unfold in the US when telecommunication was deregulated.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

The ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways) has purchase 60 second-hand sleepers and couchettes. In addition 20 ÖBB passenger coaches, will be converted to a new configuration of Couchette.

ÖBB is step up. Be interesting to see what going to be left after December.