The article reflects on a journey taken on a sleeper train from Paris to Nice, emphasizing the tranquility and unique experience of traveling by train, particularly in an all-women cabin. In contrast, it highlights the decline of sleeper trains in the U.S. since the mid-20th century due to increased car travel and air travel, and discusses the detrimental environmental impact of these transportation choices, noting that trains produce significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to planes.
Unlike the cramped airplanes where my long legs are always too long, I slept on a twin bed with fresh blanket, sheets, and pillow. The sheets were certainly not silk, but good enough to surrender to the arms of Morpheus.
While iconic scenes in Hitchcock's 1959 masterpiece North by Northwest captured the romance of sleeper trains, that era quickly waned in America with the rise of the car.
Those tradeoffs have had dire environmental consequences. For the same distance, night trains in the European Union produce just 3.6 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions a plane does.
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