Re: XPT Sleepers

["Ron BESDANSKY (formerly Ron BEST)" <ronbest@bigpond.com>]

A hotel or motel does not charge twice as much if a room is occupied by two
people rather than one. It should be possible to pay a "single supplement",
less than the full berth fee, to have exclusive use of a twinette. At least
at times of relatively light loading, when the sleepers are unlikely to be
fully booked. It comes down to a gamble - if the train operator books N
compartments for "exclusive use" at, say, 1.5 times the normal berth charge,
they risk having to turn away a maximum of N potential passengers. But (a)
those people may well choose to travel on a different service, or sitting
up, and therfore not be "lost", and (b) the train operator  may get an
overall increase in patronage if people know they can get exclusive use of a
compartment. It would be interesting to see some estimates on this. Anyone
in Countrylink interested?

Rgds

Ron BESDANSKY (formerly Ron BEST)