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156 points ant6n | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.441s | 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. Saline9515 ◴[] No.44359617[source]
I took sleeper trains in France when I was younger, it was quite modern (2000-ish trains), but not a good experience honestly. You have to share a tiny room with 3 other strangers, you are stressed about a possible aggression and/or theft and/or bed bugs, everything is impractical, your neighbor may snore, you can't really take a shower... and I can imagine that a woman can feel very unsafe there, too.

I can see the appeal for young people who want to stay in hostels to save money, but honestly I prefer to drive or take a plane. Money here is not the problem.

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2. blks ◴[] No.44376811[source]
Well you need sleeper trains only for long distances usually. Quite often you can buy more expensive cabin with 1-2 sleeping seats (eg if travelling with a friend/partner). All of Russia is travelling in country via a sleeper train because of distances, slower trains, and sometimes more expensive/less optimal flights (eg a lot of flights are routed via Moscow). So it’s very normalised; I traveled this way since childhood, even going to Ukraine for holidays before the aggression started, and it was pretty fine experience, a bit rough in 90s/00s, but better now.