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The last European train that travels by sea
- swiftcoder 1y agoWhat a delightful technological artefact. Certainly a shame to lose it, even if the bridge would be more convenient/efficient in the long run
- AntonTrollback 1y agoThere might have been occasions where a train ferry transported one of those train that carry cars onboard. I like that thought.
- gregoriol 1y agoI'd thought this would have been somewhere in Denmark or Norway
- sib 1y agoIn 1989 I took the rail/ferry link traveling from Germany to Copenhagen (and back)... It's faster now, but not as "cool"
- AntonTrollback 1y agoIt used be one between Denmark and Germany. Likely that one you are thinking about. Canceled due to the Fehmarn Belt bridge construction.
- robin_reala 1y agoIf that’s a new term to you, more info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link. It’s a new submerged tunnel that’s being constructed between Germany and Denmark, hopefully opening in 4 years time (though that’s looking increasing unlikely at this point). I’m looking forwards to it as it’ll nearly halve the Copenhagen <-> Hamburg train time, down to 2 hours and 20 minutes.
- sdoering 1y agoMeanwhile on the other side of that lovely little island: > In 2025 when the tunnel (the Fehmarn Sound Tunnel) was still not approved by authorities it was revealed that it would not be opened in 2029 as it was then planned but in 2032, which would delay train traffic along the new connection until then. Road traffic can use the old bridge. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Sound_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Sound_Tunnel I would bet actual money that we (as in we Germans) don't get that tunnel done before 2035.
- ncruces 1y agoThere's a bridge between Denmark and Sweden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Øresund_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Øresund_Bridge
- mrweasel 1y agoDenmark had an unfortunate situation about 13 years ago, where the only rail bridge to the northern part of the country was hit by a ship, cutting rail network in two. Some trains where stuck in the north and had to be ferried to Sweden and the take the trip down from Gotenburg, via Malmö and then across the bridge to Copenhagen, because those trains where needed to maintain the service level. Since then I've been wary of dismantling too much backup infrastructure. The rail tracks to the ferry terminal was still in place in this case, because they are listed as NATO infrastructure, still they where barely maintained.
- nemetroid 1y agoThe tracks on the Gothenburg side have since been removed, so even this workaround would not be possible today (they would have to go to Trelleborg instead).
- KurSix 1y agoThat's a fascinating bit of rail history
- mrweasel 1y agohttps://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jernbanebroen_over_Limfjorden#P%C3%A5sejlinger https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jernbanebroen_over_Limfjorden#... See the 2012 collision, in Danish only, sorry.
- ochrist 1y agoThat's not the last European train that travels by sea. If you go from Sweden or Denmark towards Germany the train crosses from Denmark to Germany by ferry (that is until the new Femern tunnel is finished): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8DPuDsYe_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8DPuDsYe_k https://femern.com/the-tunnel/fehmarnbelt-tunnel/ https://femern.com/the-tunnel/fehmarnbelt-tunnel/
- detaro 1y agoThe line you mention doesn't run anymore, and hasn't since 2019.
- eesmith 1y agoIts closure is also mentioned in the text: "After the 2019 closure of the Puttgarden-Rødby service between Germany and Denmark and the seasonal Sassnitz-Trelleborg route linking Germany and Sweden in 2020, the Intercity is now the last one running."
- halper 1y agoAh, sweet memories. Grumpy German border guards boarding to loudly demand papers, but if you were slow to pull the ID card out they just kept walking. Semi-open border policy ;)
- Findecanor 1y agoDuring the Cold War, the train on the Trelleborg-Sassnitz ferry went to West Berlin ... through East Germany with no getting on or off over that stretch. BTW. I was on the Hamburg-Copenhagen train on the Puttgarten-Rødby ferry in 2015 during the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. I had changed my booking to earlier trains because of expected delays. It and connecting trains were packed, as were the train stations, also with immigration officials and volunteers. Brings tears to my eyes to this day.
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- AntonTrollback 1y agoI've been on this train. The sound of the train being pulled onto the ferry did wake me up to say the least. It was dark outside and the blinds were shut in our sleeping coach. I remember feeling a bit of a weight, being in bed, in a closed coach, inside a large train, deep inside this massive ferry with many floors above us. It wasn't until much later that I realized that the train was open-air and not that big at all. You then wake up a few hours later near Palermo where the train runs just by the ocean – that was lovely. I've also been on the second-to-last train of this type a few times (Snälltåget from Sweden via Denmark to Germany). That one also got canceled for the same reason – mega bridge construction (Fehmarn Belt). There, you used to get off the train to go up to the canteen for lunch with the truckers.
- jcattle 1y agoIn the case of the Fehmarn belt it's an underwater bridge though.
- tuukkah 1y agoI think some consider the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link to consist of multiple parts, as the main tunnel (Fehmarn Belt Tunnel proper) is between a German island and a Danish island so stops a bit short. On the Danish side, they rebuild the Storstrøm Bridge, and on the German side they decided to build another tunnel alongside the existing Fehmarn Sound Bridge. So in total, one existing bridge, one rebuilt bridge, one short new tunnel and one long new tunnel will connect Germany proper to Denmark proper.
- jonp888 1y agoIt was trains from Hamburg to Copenhagen used to run on the Fehmarn Ferry until the line was shut for reconstruction, they now run via Padborg. The Snalltaget sleeper train from Berlin to Malmo used to run on the ferry from Sassnitz to Trelleborg avoiding Denmark altogether, that stopped because the ferries don't run on that route any more, and the train also runs via Padborg.
- perihelions 1y agoI'm struggling to come to terms with the depth of anti-modernity sentiment in the West, that it's considered normal (and not mortifying) to read a BBC piece praising a twenty-hour rail journey as a thing of "lyrical beauty", quoting authorities like a "philosophy researcher". Who elevated this flowery nonsense over the common sense of the masses of sane people, with lives and goals and needs and places to be?
- n4r9 1y agoIs continuous hurry your ideal state of civilization?
- lukan 1y agoIs spending life time in a train your goal? I like trains. To get quickly, safe and comfortable from A to B. Changing to a ferry is ... what I would consider a one time experience, but I rather would have the option to go by fast train straight to sicily whenever I feel like. As of now, flying remains way cheaper, despite being worse ecological. But this won't change like that.
- Xylakant 1y agoThe time you spend on a night trains is spent sleeping. They deliberately don’t run full pace - no one wants to arrive at 5 in the morning. So they slow-roll on a long stretch to make arrival times reasonable. Very often you can make an earlier arrival at a destination via night train than you can via plane - unless you fly in the evening before.
- lukan 1y agoThere are often distances I like to travel, far longer than one night. I really don't see the point in making it harder on purpose. There are plenty of places where getting there is an adventure. I like adventures. But not when just visiting family or alike.
- cbdevidal 1y agoI enjoyed the writing but the few photos left me curious about the ferry transfer. 34-minute video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BA_2p5RUbe8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BA_2p5RUbe8
- easyThrowaway 1y agoThe "mega bridge" is one of the most politicized and polarizing projects I've ever seen in my life. My family lived in Messina for a while and it seems that in the last 100 years no one was actually interested in building nor genuinely stopping the project for good, just using it to bash whoever is on the opposite side of the argument. - On the left it's seen as the biggest ecological issue they have in Italy, despite the ferry company handling the passage is a well known mafia-owned monopoly whose ferries leak tons of garbage and oil on the sea every single day. - On the right they've gone with the most ridiculous, expensive and unachievable version of a project in order to to make sure they can siphon as much money as they can before declaring that the project has to be stopped or whatever. Every summer I go back to my mother's family and when the topic comes out it's as they're basically stuck in a time loop.
- ta1243 1y agoSounds very similar to HS2 in the UK
- sdoering 1y agoOr the Fehmarn Belt tunnel (northern Germany to Denmark). Or probably most of those big infrastructure construction projects.
- mschuster91 1y agoAt least this one is getting built, similar to the Brenner Base Tunnel in the South - the common thing tying both projects together is Deutsche Bahn, the federal parliament and the local parliaments being unable to get their asses together and expand the regional tracks to be able to carry the extended traffic that both these tunnels enable.
- cenamus 1y agoBut is Germany even deeply involved there? I thought construction was split between AT and IT.
- rob74 1y agoThey seem to have missed one key detail in the title: this is the last European passenger train that travels by sea - or rather, the last ferry crossing that carries passenger carriages (I doubt that they carry the engine across by ferry?). There are (AFAIK) several other ferry lines that carry freight carriages, among them the Rostock-Trelleborg line served by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Sk%C3%A5ne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Sk%C3%A5ne
- criemen 1y ago> I doubt that they carry the engine across by ferry? I don't know about this specific instance, but the Germany-Denmark train-on-a-ferry carried the whole Diesel-powered train, engine and all. It drove onto the ferry on its own, and left it on its own as well.
- hydrogen7800 1y agoIt's not longer than the ferry?
- lmm 1y agoThey decouple/shunt the carriages so they're alongside each other rather than having to fit them all in end to end.
- criemen 1y agoThis is not true, on the route Denmark/Germany there was no decoupling involved - the train drives onto the ferry, and drives off the ferry afterwards.
- criemen 1y agoNo - it's a rather short train, only a few carriages, and the engine is mostly integrated into the carriages I believe.
- kibwen 1y ago> In August, the Italian government revived long-standing plans to build a vast €13.5bn (£11.7bn) suspension bridge over the strait – one of the world's most ambitious engineering projects. What makes it particularly ambitious? The strait of Messina is two miles across, and I don't think that even cracks the top 100 of the world's longest bridges.
- comrade1234 1y agoI don't really know but looking at a depth map at the narrowest part it's pretty deep at 200+ meters. At another section where it's wider it's about 100m. Not sure where they're planning to build it.
- agos 1y agoit's geologically and seismically challenging. The project is a single span for 3300 meters, which would make it one of the longest in the world of the kind. The strong presence of organized crime in the area also makes a lot of people uneasy about the whole deal, but that's not a technical issue.
- arethuza 1y agoIf you sort the list on Wikipedia by "main span length" rather than overall bridge length then the longest span is just over 2km? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges
- myself248 1y agoApples to appleseeds. The main span doesn't cross the entire gap. The main span is just the middle part, typically a small fraction of the overall length between endpoints or shorelines, however those are defined.
- arethuza 1y agoThe current design for the Strait of Messina bridge has a main span of 3.3km - which is quite a bit more than the current longest span? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Messina_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Messina_Bridge
- rwmj 1y agoOn a not totally unrelated topic, this gem in Aomori Japan, well off the beaten track, is amazing. It's the last train-carrying ship that used to sail between Honshu and Hokkaido (a particularly dangerous stretch of sea), before they built the Seikan Tunnel for trains. https://en.japantravel.com/aomori/memorial-ship-hakkoda-maru/30222 https://en.japantravel.com/aomori/memorial-ship-hakkoda-maru...
- achairapart 1y agoIf your destination is Messina or even Catania, you can can save some time leaving the train in Villa San Giovanni (last stop before the train will be loaded into the ferry) and, literally, jump on the first ferry that is starting, so you save all the time needed to load and unload the train. No one will ask you for a ticket (no one will ask for anything, actually). Or at the least it was like this some twenty years ago when I did it.
- easyThrowaway 1y ago... This is also a great way to randomly arrive in Siracusa wondering how did you end up there, in some sort of re-enactment of the last Indiana Jones movie.
- achairapart 1y agoWell, I guess I was lucky! More seriously: I just followed a local that suggested this, and he knew the right way but from what I remember, it wasn't that hard to catch the right ferry. And, honestly, after so many hours of train, I was happy to physically move around and not wait another 40+ minutes.
- iagooar 1y agoThis summer I took the ferry from Hirtshals, Denmark to Seydisfjordur, Iceland. 2 full days, over 48 hours of travel time. And back. Relatives and friends thought my wife and I were crazy - or at least eccentric. Why would you waste 4 full days (+ 2 days to get to and from Denmark by car). Turns out, travel time is still travel. And what a beautiful time that was! There is no stable Internet conncetion on the ferry itself (no cell connection AT ALL at sea), plus you have to pay for it a pretty hefty fee. So from observing other people, +95% did not have Internet access at all. The ferry itself is not huge, it is not a cruise ship. But large enough to be entertaining and fun to explore. Kids had a few attractions, including a tiny cinema. They sold popcorn though, that's all kids cared about besides the Minecraft movie. For us, adults, there were a few bars, restaurants to hang out. Even a little library, a corner with board games, couple shops. Because people were not glued to their phones, you could actually meet and talk to other people, have non-trivial conversations. People would read books, have a sip of coffee, walk around. Not once did I get bored, not once did I not know what to do. Sure enough, I would pull out the iPhone from my pocket only to see it is completely offline. What was also fun: if I went out with the kids, there was no way I could let me wife know we would be late or any other matters. Same the other way. Life felt slower, but somehow more real? Anyway, I can only recommend a travel experience like this, at least once in your lifetime. For us, it became part of the memories we made, besides visiting Iceland itself. I can imagine the same being the case if you travel long distances by train.
- oulipo2 1y agoThis summer I did Paris to Istanbul by train, through Vienna and Bucharest, it was wonderful!
- HWR_14 1y agoWas it a normal train or the famous "Oriental Express"?
- lmm 1y agoThe Orient Express stopped running in 2009 (after it had already been successively cut back to just Strasbourg-Vienna), although it was a "normal train" in most senses (it was a regular EuroNight service, not really any different to ride from less famous ones like the Cassiopeia or Jan Kiepura). The train you may be thinking of, a luxury train that imitates a historic one, is mimicing the the Simplon Orient Express which did not run through Vienna (and also it rarely goes beyond Venice).
- macintux 1y agoDiscussions (with more than 2 comments) of the planned bridge: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854834 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44817863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44817863 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43427008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43427008
- kaffekaka 1y agoAt least in the past trains went by ferry also between Helsingborg (Sweden) and Helsingör (Denmark). Could not find if they have been stopped. So the Italian train might be not be there only one in Europe.
- drsim 1y agoThey’re no more.
- globular-toast 1y agoSince when? What have they been replaced with? I went on the train between Hamburg and Copenhagen around 2007. Crossed on a ferry between Puttgarden (Germany) and Rødby (Denmark). Looks like this was discontinued in 2019 but I'm not sure what replaces the Hamburg-Copenhagen link. I'm glad I did it, it was definitely a strange experience to disembark the train on to a ferry and go and stand on the deck as it crossed.
- jamesblonde 1y agoI went on this train as well back in the late 1990s. It was a surreal experience that you get off the train on a ferry!
- tuukkah 1y ago> Since when? What have they been replaced with? The Helsingborg-Helsingør train ferry was replaced (car ferries remain) by railway on the Öresund Bridge (from the 2011 TV series The Bridge) between the big cities Malmö, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge The Puttgarden-Rødby train ferry was replaced by a new longer but faster railway route via the Great Belt Bridge and Flensburg until the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link is ready. https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/hamburg-to-copenhagen-by-train.htm#Route_map https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/hamburg-to-copenhag...
- jimnotgym 1y agoI can see why this is worthwhile for a freight train, it takes a long time to unload goods onto a boat and offload them the other side. But why does it make sense for passengers? Is it just because they were doing it with freight already?
- throwawayffffas 1y agoPassengers have luggage, you don't need a second train on the other side.
- wongarsu 1y agoPassengers are more time-sensitive than freight. For a 20 minute ferry crossing, having everyone and their luggage disembark the train, go on a ferry, disembark the ferry and board a train would easily double the travel time of the crossing. It would also be far less convenient
- KurSix 1y agoYou board a train in Milan and wake up in Sicily without ever having to drag your luggage across terminals, onto buses, or through port checkpoints. Especially for night trains, that seamlessness adds a kind of magic
- INTPenis 1y agoWhy don't they just maintain a separate train on the island?
- lmm 1y agoYou'd have to troop everyone on and off (potentially with quite a lot of luggage) in the middle of the night.
- INTPenis 1y agoYeah I know, that's what they do literally everywhere else in the world. You take the train to a place, and then you book a ferry, and then you take another train. Only these italians had the genius idea to keep going with the train.
- lmm 1y agoOn the contrary, train ferries used to be commonplace - for decades they were a great solution to the problem when you need to cross a relatively small stretch of water as part of a long, mostly overland journey. They've gradually faded out as we've gotten better at building longer and longer bridges and tunnels, but that doesn't mean they weren't a good approach in places where we hadn't managed to build a bridge or tunnel yet.
- INTPenis 1y agoPassenger trains used to be ferried across the baltic sea when I was a kid, in fact they still ferry cargo trains over to Poland. I think it's more about the state of the infrastructure, and the scope of the railway carrier, at least in this case with Sicily. For example the railway ferries between Sweden and Denmark ended long before the bridge was built, in the 80s.
- KurSix 1y agoIt's easy to frame the bridge as "progress," but it risks bulldozing over the kind of slow, sensory-rich travel that people are increasingly craving again
- davidw 1y agoI took that train many years ago. At least back then it was faster to get off the train in Calabria, hop on whatever local ferry was next, and then grab another train in Sicily, depending on your destination. In my case it was Catania to visit a friend.
- jvvw 1y agoThe first ever night train I went, about 25 years ago, on was from Berlin to Malmo. Early morning, I woke up to the feeling of my bed swaying and looking out of the window realised 'hang on, they've put the train on a ferry'. I had no idea that trains got put on ferries, although I had been puzzled by the way the route on the route map crossed the sea but had assumed it was just to make the diagram simpler. It was quite a surreal thing finding myself unexpectedly on a train on a ferry. It was nice though as you could go and wander round the ferry and it was quite fun seeing it go off the ferry which had special train tracks on it onto the normal train tracks on the land.
- lisper 1y agoThis is cool, but a little crazy. Why put the whole train on the ferry instead of just offloading the passengers and putting them on the ferry?
- burkaman 1y agoThat would be much worse for passengers who can normally just sleep through the whole thing, it would take much longer to do the transfer, you'd need a larger and more complex ferry with bathrooms, seating, luggage storage, and more staff to deal with the guests, you'd need to deal with scheduling issues (what if you get to the other side and the train isn't there yet?). I have taken this train and it would have been a nightmare to wake up everyone at like 3am, get them and all their stuff out and onto the ferry, and then do it all in reverse on the other side. It would add at least an hour to the trip if not more.
- lisper 1y ago> you'd need a larger and more complex ferry Don't those already exist? I don't know, but I assume that regular passenger ferries operate on this route, no? > it would have been a nightmare to wake up everyone at like 3am I presume that if one were offloading passengers onto an existing ferry one would not schedule the train to arrive during normal ferry operating hours rather than 3AM. I think the right answer here is that Sicily is bigger than I thought, about 100 miles across, and so the onward travel time can be significant, and so if you're going to offer a night train whose final destination is (say) Marsala then putting the train on a ferry in the middle of the night makes sense.
- globular-toast 1y agoWhen I took the Germany to Denmark crossing I'm almost certain you weren't allowed to stay on the train. I certainly didn't anyway. But, yes, it still saves a lot of time compared to walking between train and ferry twice.
- guerrilla 1y agoOh that's so lame. I liked the one in Denmark. I always imagined it was still there and I could go again some day. Sad.
- ilamont 1y agoI took this train or another one that crossed to Sicily in the early 90s. It was at night, so there wasn’t much to look at while the mechanics of being transferred from the wharf to the boat and then back to land took place. But I do remember the friendliness of the Sicilian people on that train. I only spoke a little French and some high school Latin, but it was enough to have a basic conversation and even a few laughs.
- Lucian6 1y ago[dead]
- discoinverno 1y agoMy family is from Sicily, and I remember taking this train every year when I was a kid. After several years, I took it again last summer and was bufflled at how inefficient the whole ordeal was... Basically you have to wait for the train wagons to be detached and reassembled on the other side, you easily waste a couple hours. Now, I don't really mind this, it's a bit of a tradition if you want, but I asked a relative of mine who used to work for the Italian national train company, and he told me that this train works like this cause in the past all the Sicilian migrants would travel with a lot of luggage, and it would be very impractical for them to transfer all of that twice. Nowadays this is not really the case anymore.