“Talking Transportation”
By Jim Cameron
President
CAMERON COMMUNICATIONS INC
Author: “Off The Record: Confessions of a Media Consultant“
When it comes to trains, everything old is new again: the latest trend for rail travel is night trains.
A private California company, DreamStar Lines, is planning an overnight train between LA and San Francisco offering “luxurious accommodations” in modern sleeping cars designed by BMW. Service could begin as early as next summer.
The sleeping cars will range from a bedroom for two (with a shower and toilet) all the way up to a family / group room that sleeps up to six (four adults + two kids).
There will also be a lounge car available to all guests, which will serve light food and a full bar featuring breweries, wineries, and distilleries from across California. There may even be a bring-your-own automobile option akin to Amtrak’s AutoTrain.
Depending on accommodations, pricing would range from $300 to $1000 one way. But with hotels in both cities being so pricey, combining travel and a restful night sounds like a money and time saver.
DreamStar says its trains would leave each city at 10 p.m. and arrive at their destination by 8 the next morning. It’s been 40 years since Amtrak offered overnight trains on that 470 mile run, one of the busiest travel corridors in the US. Amtrak’s famous “Coast Starlight” between LA and Seattle still operates on the same route but as a day-train to San Francisco.
A Canadian non-profit is also proposing a night train from Montreal to Boston, but they’d need about $100 million for track work on the Canadian side, so “tant pis” (too bad).
Aside from that, there are no plans for new overnight sleeper trains here in the East… yet. But Connecticut has certainly had its share of sleeper trains in decades past.
As recently as 2003 Amtrak’s “Night Owl” ran between Boston and Washington, leaving at 10 p.m., passing thru New Haven at 12:30 a.m and arriving in DC at 7 a.m. Hardly traveling at Acela-like speeds it made so many local stops it was nicknamed “The Nightcrawler”.
In the heyday of the New Haven Railroad there were through-sleepers to Boston, Portland ME, Cape Cod (in the summer) and even to Montreal, a service Amtrak continued (with stops in Stamford, New Haven and Hartford) as “The Montrealer” until 1995.
In the rest of the “civilized” world overnight trains are enjoying an amazing renaissance, especially in Europe. Today you can travel between Scotland and London, Vienna to Venice, Munich to Budapest and Berlin to Brussels, among other city pairs. Train operator NightJet (owned by the Austrian national railroad ÖBB) which runs many of the trains, has just launched a new fleet of ultra-modern sleeper cars, too.
In China there’s even a high-speed overnight train from Beijing to Guangzhou (very close to Hong Kong) that makes the 1000 mile trip in as little as 10 hours.
Clearly, with travel worldwide on the rise and flying becoming slower and less tolerable, there may be a real market for overnight train travel in comfort, even here in the US. But notice that it’s entrepreneurs leading this effort, not Amtrak.
Jim Cameron is founder of the Commuter Action Group and advocates for Connecticut rail riders. His weekly column “Talking Transportation” is archived here. You can contact Jim at [email protected].
