Show HN: Luna Rail – Treating night trains as a spatial optimization problem

I love the concept and the renders, but I wonder... is the spatial optimization really what's holding train travel back? If you decrease passenger density in order to increase privacy and comfort, do you then have a corresponding increase in ticket prices?

In places with good train travel, it seems like they already have several cabin classes, from sardine seats (still luxurious compared to air travel) to private cabins (at several multipliers of price). Pod style rooms would presumably be cheaper than that, but still a lot more expensive than a seat?

Then in places without high speed passenger rail, like the US, this wouldn't really be able to address the major problems with train travel (slowness, lower priority than freight, low reliability, etc.).

Under what scenarios would using pods instead of cabins be more economically viable? And could these be retrofitted into existing sleeper cars, or would they have to build entirely new trains?

You yourself mention the trade off — the „sardine class“ is a six-people per cabin couchette (60 ppl per railcar). The private class is luxury (10-17 cabins per railcar).

We got 65 private pods or close to 40 little single cabins - in a refurbished railcar. In a new car it would be more.

We put together some explanation of the economics and the difference between old and new cars: https://luna-rail.com/approach

Clearly different markets have quite different requirements and comparisons to air travel.

For example a "night train" maxes out around 12 hours. A train from 6pm to 6am is functionally equivalent to a 8pm flight, arriving at midnight, checking into a hotel, getting some sleep etc.

How far you can go in that 12 hours (give or take) depends on the speed of the train etc. In Europe you can go to a lot of places in 12 hours. In the US not so much.

Much longer and other factors come into play. You have to balance the time cost of "getting there" to the time benefit of "being there".

But thats OK. This solution doesn't have to work everywhere. It can start where it works well and grows from there.

That is like comparing range in gas cars and EVs. Some do that but there are other major benefits.

The lengths I will go through to avoid air travel is much higher than a 1:1 ratio in comparable time. When I have to get the cattle treatment I prefer cattle cars over cattle cans.

And even with 1:1 remember that layovers are a completely different beast. If Münich was a hub between Northern an southern Europe I would be happy to spend a well rested day before continuing on. Especially in spargel season!

...but only a fool does not fear German railroads. They could really learn from the Austrians.

The reason night trains are not a thing is because there is no real network. Looking for tickets in Europe it is often once or twice a week departures on specific routes. No real good north south interconnected corridor from Scandinavia.

And as a proper geek I have even sought them out but often found them sold out.

They cost optimized themselves to obliteration.

My experience on the Caledonian sleeper, in a 'room' was quite cramped in all senses (I am over 6 feet tall), and quite expensive aswell. If that had been optimized better, I would have enjoyed it more.

These renders do not make me feel as if I am even considered as a desirable passenger at 200 cm.

The new ÖBB wagons seem much more practical (and currently exist). A normal sleeper train wagon with stacked beds in compartments is fine for me. This origami concept looks claustrophobic, and the sleeping positions seem to allow for no room for the normal movements you make in your sleep, let alone getting out to take a piss or something.

Well, you cannot assume ergonomics from renderings. That’s why we run extensive testing. We tested on a large range of people. In the pods there’s a fall off in perceived comfort around the 95th percentile. Even then, the feedback is overall quite good.

In the larger pods, there’s actually an uptick in evaluation for taller people. Testers were often surprised how well it works.

All beds have at lest 2m, although there are different degrees of becoming smaller at the foot end — just like in aviation business class (with ticket prices 1.5 orders of magnitudes higher).

I’m 190cm and tested luna rail’s prototypes. I was amazed how much space I had, even in the smallest cabin. Definitely much better compared to any night train experience I’ve ever had

Honestly they need far greater economies of scale to drop the price to where it needs to be. They should be competing with a daytime fare and giving you a bed in exchange for having the ability to run the train slow.

Hi Mathis-l, thanks for the shout out!

> They should be competing with a daytime fare and giving you a bed…

That’s basically what we’re doing, since the capacity approaches that of day trains, the ticket costs should be similar.

> …in exchange for having the ability to run the train slow.

The railcars can go 200km/h. It’s not super high speed, but pretty competitive in Germany at least.

As another tall person, that’s good to hear, but the pictures still make me skeptical. It would help if there were some actual dimensions listed.

>All beds have at lest 2m

As another tall person here, the length of the matress/bed is not as critical as what comes when the bed ends. 2m matresses with a wall/bedend that is massive is way more umfortable for a tall person then a 1,9m matress with 20cm of air behind it.

>just like in aviation business class

Yeah but im not flying lay-down business class when i want to go Hamburg-Vienna because the trip is only 90mins. I fly lay-down business when going trans-atlantic or to asia.

Some of the rail operators show diagrams with dimensions, although I'm having trouble finding it for Amtrak and Via Rail, it's like they don't want to show that anymore. Here's an example of what they used to show on their own website, but from a third party reseller: https://canadarail.ca/via-rail/the-canadian-train/sleeper-ca...

I think once our railcars actually operate, it would be a good idea to show something like this - especially since it allows showcasing that the seat is basically bigger than a first class seat (almost 60cm wide vs 45cm). But the dimensions keep changing around, so we don't want to make false promises for the exact dimensions.

But the goal is that all beds at least have 2m length, even if narrow at the end.

The Snälltåget goes from Stockholm to Berlin almost daily and from Berlin you can take a daily Nightjet to Zurich. Not sure what you are missing.

Many things:

A) A hub further south than Berlin. If Dresden (end station for the line) was a "hub" then OK B) Hard to find and find intercomnnectimg routes. C) It departures from Copenhagen South not Copenhagen Central. D) Poor availability. You need to book in advance if you're not very flexible on dates. This compounds when you need to interconnected. E) Insane prices. They have optimized themselves out of business. CPH - Berlin in a private cabin for 2 will cost around USD $500. This much more expensive than plane tickets and a very nice hotel room.

If you talk with "regular" people this does not even register as an option. Hence a poor network is not comparable to a proper network. It needs to be able to compete - not on all parameters but at least some.