LINES ELECTRICALLY OPERATED. YOU CAN SLEEP.

Should I gripe about the headline, "Full steam ahead for Austria's night trains," as Austria's main lines are almost all electrically operated?

Or should I quote from the article, and then gripe?

From early evening onwards, the departures board at Vienna's Hauptbahnhof station becomes a roll call of destinations to whet the appetite of any globetrotter: Venice, Rome, Zurich, Berlin, Warsaw...

It's an unusual sight in a continent where budget airlines and faster trains have become the norm and led to the closure of many slower overnight routes.

But Austria's state railway company ÖBB is looking to expand its network.

It already runs 26 such routes, either on its own or in partnerships with other operators.

In late 2016, ÖBB bought the night train operation of its German counterpart Deutsche Bahn, which was looking to offload a department it judged insufficiently lucrative.

Around 60 percent of DB's overnight routes were preserved, including a revamped Vienna-Berlin service which started a few months ago.

Pointing to the "moderate growth" in passenger numbers -- more than 1.4 million used the services in 2018 -- ÖBB has ordered 13 new trains equipped with state-of-the-art sleeper carriages.

Contrast that with Amtrak, where the people in charge have never had a coherent vision of their overnight services, nor are they serving that trade well today.  The article notes some challenges in operating train services across national borders -- some of those destinations are outside the Schengen zone, but there is no longer an Iron Curtain, and there's a common currency these days -- as well as the expense of a fleet of special cars, and doing laundry.  Somewhere George Pullman and Fred Harvey are cringing.

The value of the overnight trains, though, is the same as the value of the day trains: they make intermediate stops.

Among those preparing to board at Vienna station to spend a night on the rails on a recent evening, some told AFP they had chosen a night train with the environment in mind.

"It's a small gesture, and it won't stop me taking the plane for my holiday in Madagascar this autumn, but it's better than nothing," said Austrian traveller Yvonne Kemper.

David, a 42-year-old from Germany, said he was using the Hamburg service because he needed to get to Göttingen in Germany for a business trip -- a medium-sized town which, typically, is served by night trains but has no airport.

ÖBB spokesman Bernhard Rieder explained that Austria's attachment to night trains is down to "a tradition stemming from Austria's mountainous terrain, which limited the development of high-speed lines".

Göttingen might well be better served by the continental rail network than, say, Garden City, Kansas, or Klamath Falls, Oregon, both still on the Amtrak national network; let alone Iron Mountain, Michigan, or Lake Placid, New York, which last had sleeping car service half a century ago.