Greg Moore wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 10:22 pmSo, I got thinking about a world where Amtrak promotes sleepers as an alternative to business travel, with a focus on leaving at or around dinner and arriving at or near the start of the business day. So this means leaving sometime between say 6:00 PM (this may be problematic in NYP with the number of available slots) and arriving at anytime between 6:00 AM and 9:00.
This is
exactly the model the railroads used in the golden age of rail travel before WW2.
On the New York Central, for instance, the
Great Steel Fleet was overwhelmingly scheduled for early AM arrival in Manhattan and late afternoon/early evening departure. The
20th Century Limited, for example, was scheduled in 1938 for a 5 p.m. departure from GCT and an 8:00 a.m. arrival at LaSalle Street Station, Chicago; the eastbound service left Chicago at 3:00 p.m. and arrived at GCT at 8:00 a.m. T
The
Wolverine for Detroit followed the
Century out of New York an hour later, with a 6:30 a.m. arrival in the Motor City; the eastbound left Detroit at 9:00 p.m. and got you into NY at 6:30 a.m.
And so it went on down the list, with trains like the
Commodore Vanderbilt from Chicago, the
Ohio State Limited from Columbus, the
Southwestern Limited from St. Louis all due into Grand Central between 6:00 and 9:00 a.m., and all leaving between 3:00 and 8:00 p.m.
Really the way to pitch it as a business service is not to look at it as a replacement for flight so much as a replacement for a flight+hotel. It just so happens that your hotel moves you from, say, New York to Columbus, OH while you're asleep.