Home: Bed: Motion
Round Trip Train Ride Hotel   (+13)  [vote for, against]
Diddle-de-dum diddle-de-dum ...

Sleeping on a train is great - the rhythmic noise of the train lulls you to sleep and there is something romantic and beautiful about travelling through the night in a sleeper compartment on a train (I shall leave it to others to comment on the merits of sex on a train)...

City centres tend to be short of hotel space, or to have very expensive hotels, but plenty of train stations (London, for example has at least nine large mainline train stations)...

Train lines tend to be under-utilised at night...

So, this idea is for a train-station based hotel, which incorporates nightly round trips. You check in between 8 pm and 10 pm and go to bed in your train compartment. The train leaves at 10 pm and travels through the night until 2 am when it reaches a convenient siding. It then goes back to where you started, arriving at 6 am. You get your hotel 'room' for the night in the city centre, and a lovely train ride.
-- hippo, Mar 04 2004

(?) cheesy picture http://www.travelin...per/compartment.jpg
[hippo, Oct 04 2004]

http://www.seat61.com/ [pocmloc, Jun 19 2011]

cheesy picture link is dead... http://cdn.c.photos...ian-compartment.jpg
did you mean this one? [pashute, Jul 13 2015]

Baked sample (in bus form) https://greentortoise.com/
Bus by day, 'sleeper car' by night; saving time & $$$ since 1974! [Sgt Teacup, Jan 27 2020]

Rock-a-bye hippo, in the sleeper compartment top.
When the train rolls, you'll sleep 'til the next whistle stop.
-- FarmerJohn, Mar 04 2004


nice idea could work for nights out on the town better than a Taxi or the night bus not as they really exist and Hippo if this train is in the UK what about our brilliant and punctual rail service? couldn't get to work because of leaves in the siding, or a lost driver
-- engineer1, Mar 04 2004


Too bad we don't have enough trains in the Western US to make this work here.
-- oxen crossing, Mar 05 2004


One can visit many different places on very cheap, if they are one train's night journey apart.

Spend the nights in the train, sleeping, while travelling. Visit the place during day. .. and so forth...
-- VJW, Jun 19 2011


Could one buy a ticket, go to sleep in London, wake up next morning, wash, dress, step out onto the platform, and find oneself in a randomly selected other city? That'd be fun.
-- mouseposture, Jun 19 2011


Yeah, I love it too.. Imagine 10 days journey, with absolutely no hotel stay, which are large chunk of expense in any journey.
-- VJW, Jun 19 2011


Excellent!
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 19 2011


The Krauts pioneered it in 1940; lots of people slept on the Underground every night for months, so there's Prior Art there.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 05 2019


//(I shall leave it to others to comment on the merits of sex on a train)...//

Very dangerous. Be sure to duck when you go into those tunnels. Or have her duck depending on the posit... never mind.
-- doctorremulac3, Sep 05 2019


What would I want with her duck?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 05 2019


You've led quite a sheltered life in some ways, haven't you [MB] ?

Yes, much more sensible to do it inside the train rather than on it.

Leaving aside the obvious opportunities offered by person-carrying balloons (guaranteed privacy being one of the more obvious ones), presumably prior to 1907* there was a predecessor to the Mile High Club utilizing trains rather than aircraft. Given the numerous discomforts and inconveniences of a typical steam locomotive footplate, it seems unlikely that any but the most adventurous (or foolhardy ) would even attempt such activities ; but the possibilities offered by even quite basic rolling stock suggest that the Eight Feet High Club probably inducted its first members not long after the Stockton & Darlington first took paying passengers, and given human nature very likely sometime before ...

*altho the Wright brothers achieved sustained powered flight in 1903, it was some years before aircraft were capable of climbing to 5000' AMSL** and higher.

**Note that the applicable unit of measurement is actually the Nautical mile which is 6080'.

<later>

While generating the above annotation, and thanks to a bizarre synergy of a typo and the outcome of over-enthusiastic spellcheck/autocomplete we were presented with the disturbing phrase "Mule High Club" , but that's a very dark place where pretty much no-one would want to go ...
-- 8th of 7, Sep 05 2019


//the disturbing phrase "Mule High Club" , but that's a very dark place// - as opposed to the "Mild Hugh Club"
-- hippo, Sep 06 2019


//Mule High Club//

There's an ass joke in there somewhere...
-- bs0u0155, Sep 06 2019


Yes, but it's a bit of an old chestnut ...
-- 8th of 7, Sep 06 2019


There are cheaper ways to provide exactly the same sound and vibration.
-- Voice, Jan 27 2020


Enterprising* individuals seem to be transforming all sorts of vehicles into sleeping accommodations. Why not trains?

Sample template uses a bus (see link). After enjoying a communally-prepared supper at a well-stocked kitchen bus hidden cleverly along the route, staff fold seats and tables in interesting ways to create beds. This is known as 'The Miracle'. Vacationers wake up refreshed, already at their next destination, having saved time by traveling through the night.

*Generally because they are excluded by enterprise, and society in general. See: 'The Grapes of Wrath'.
-- Sgt Teacup, Jan 27 2020


// There are cheaper ways to provide exactly the same sound and vibration. //

Yes, but thanks to a very carefully balanced combination of bribery, threats, blackmail, extreme violence, industrial alcohol and a High Court injunction, the Intercalary has stopped doing it.

For now.
-- 8th of 7, Jan 27 2020



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