Austrian rail company OBB unveiled the latest generation of European night trains on Saturday, as a slower but far less polluting mode of transport than airplanes begins to make a comeback, AFP reported.

Compared to the old trains and their “dark” sleeping places, “it’s a great luxury. It’s crazy,” said Rosemary, a 69-year-old retiree who did not want to give her full name.

These new night trains were presented in Vienna to mark the 100th anniversary of the Austrian company.

“Every kilometer by train is a kilometer of climate protection” and “a contribution to a better future,” Austrian Environment Minister Leonora Gewessler told AFP.

These new trains offer passengers more comfort than the previous ones, including showers.

• PHOTO Austrian comfort – What the most modern European carriages for night trains look like

When will the first state-of-the-art trains be launched?

The first of them is planned to be put into operation on December 10 on the lines Vienna-Hamburg and Innsbruck-Hamburg.

These trains, which can reach a speed of 230 km/h, will gradually be deployed in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands.

For France, the national railway authority has to give the green light, reports ÖBB.

“Unfortunately, we are not yet a united Europe in the rail sector,” ÖBB CEO Andreas Mattae told AFP.

These trains were ordered from the German manufacturer Siemens in 2018.

ÖBB has invested 720 million euros in a fleet of 33 night trains, which will be phased in by 2028.

ÖBB claims to have Europe’s first fleet of night trains, including sleeping cars, used by 1.5 million passengers.

The Austrian company plans to double the number of passengers on night trains by 2030.

In early September, ÖBB announced the resumption of Berlin-Paris night trains on December 11, nine years after their cancellation.

Therefore, many European companies are involved in the revival of night trains, which almost disappeared in the 2010s.

But this desire comes up against the cost of the equipment needed to replace the cars, which are often several decades old, numerous night-time works on the network that disrupt night traffic, and the very low profitability of this type of service.

At the opposite pole are night trains in Romania, which have slow speeds, very old carriages, poor conditions and high prices.

Romania has always had a lot of night trains, but the level of comfort was not great, and the problem was not that the passengers would enjoy traveling, but out of necessity, because the plane was too expensive or there were no flights in the destination city.

Read widely Why Romanian night trains are left “in the dark”, while the rest of Europe invests a lot and always launches new routes