Despite the ongoing shitshow, night train news keeps flowing like a gentle mountain stream.

From the Back On Track email update by Joachim Holstein:

“ÖBB will invest another 500 million euros in night trains and build new infrastructure for maintenance in Vienna-Simmering.”

In Austrian Railways’ words:

“To ensure perfect maintenance of the new Nightjet trains, TS is currently investing more than 225 million euros in its TS workshops throughout Austria. At the Simmering location, a maintenance hall is now being built with an investment volume of almost 40 million euros to ensure optimum maintenance of the new Nightjet sets. The new hall will thus become the home of the new Nightjet trains. Here, all maintenance work, starting with small service activities up to repairs and major overhauls will be carried out.”

As a reminder, here are the totally awesome new night train cabins on the way for Austrian Railways:

These are the individual “sleeping pods”. There are also redesigned shared cabins too. I’ve blogged about them before here.

Austrian Railways are the real deal.

The Swiss have also seen the light at the end of the tunnel:

“Switzerland is also getting back into the night train business. It is doing something very simple, but apparently difficult to do in some countries: it is using the revenue from the air ticket levy to promote environmentally friendly transport. Starting in December 2021, SBB plans to run a train from Zurich to Amsterdam, i.e., on the route of one of DB's most popular night trains, abolished in 2016. For this purpose, the SBB will rent rolling stock from the German branch of a US company.”

Here’s more on the incoming Swiss tax on airline tickets (article from June 2020):

“The overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a proposal for a levy of between CHF30 and CHF120 ($32 and $126) per ticket for flights departing Switzerland.”

That’s a lotta dough.

The crazy thing is that most of these up-and-coming and already-here night trains pass through Germany, and Germany is missing in action on this one.