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156 points ant6n | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.216s | source

Hi HN, I'm Anton, founder of Luna Rail.

I've always thought night trains are a fantastic, sustainable alternative to short-haul flights, but they're often held back by a lack of privacy, comfort, and poor economics due to low passenger capacity.

I became overly fascinated with this puzzle. I view it as a kind of night train Tetris (my wife less charitably calls it "sardinology"). I spent way too much time learning about and sketching various layouts, trying to figure out how to fit the maximum number of private cabins into a standard railcar, while making them attractive for both day and night travel.

This eventually led to a physical workshop (in Berlin) and a hands-on rapid prototyping process. We've built a series of full-scale mockups, starting with wood and cardboard and progressing to high-fidelity versions with 3D-printed and CNC-milled parts, with various functional elements.

Hundreds of people have come in to test our various iterations, because you can't test ergonomics or comfort by looking at renderings (although we did create a bunch of nice ones).

The link goes to our home page showing our approach and some of the thinking behind them. It’s been a lot of fun working on this puzzle, and we're excited to share what we've come up with. We hope you think it's cool too and would love to hear your thoughts.

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Freak_NL ◴[] No.44344932[source]
Sleeper trains are held back by flying getting subsidised heavily by not having kerosene taxed, and national governments giving airports effectively unlimited room to grow; happily externalising the environmental cost. Why take a train if you can fly for a fraction of the cost?

Trains in general are held back by governments not investing in rail infrastructure, because the pork barrel of another motorway link is so hard to resist (and we're not properly maintaining these either).

Sleeper trains are held back, because cross-boundary collaboration between the various semi-national rail companies is tough (for Europe).

Sleeper trains are held back, because there is a lack of modern rolling stock. Not completely new concepts; just up-to-date sleeper wagons (the ÖBB has the leading edge here now with their new wagons).

There is room for improvement in the wagon designs, but it is almost irrelevant in the face of the other challenges.

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1. gruez ◴[] No.44347309[source]
>Sleeper trains are held back by flying getting subsidised heavily by not having kerosene taxed

Is whatever fuel trains use taxed? If not, I don't see how this is relevant.

>and national governments giving airports effectively unlimited room to grow

Which countries are those? For instance in UK they wanted to expand Heathrow since as early as 2006, yet due to various government shenanigans isn't due to complete until 2040, assuming it doesn't get backtracked again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_Heathrow_Airport

Moreover since you're comparing against trains, don't trains need land as well, for the tracks and stations? Why do trains seemingly get a free pass from you on that?

>Trains in general are held back by governments not investing in rail infrastructure, because the pork barrel of another motorway link is so hard to resist (and we're not properly maintaining these either).

What makes motorways more of a "pork barrel" than train tracks?