The railway sector's energy impact is increasing, and this trend is expected to persist over the next decade. Particularly, the energy consumption of Heating Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems is significant among various services provided on board (30 % of total energy requirements) due to the rising attention to passengers' thermal comfort. In this framework, this research proposes an innovative method for enhancing indoor thermal comfort while also studying the associated energy consequences. It consists of an advanced passenger-centric-control framework for HVAC systems that prioritizes comfort, utilising optimized indoor air setpoints, which surpasses the rule-based control logic proposed by the existing standards. To analyse the proposed control framework, a novel mathematical model for the energy, economic, and environmental performance analyses of train HVAC systems, which can incorporate weather data associated with actual railway paths, is developed and validated. To prove the potential of the proposed method, a proof-of-concept analysis is conducted. In particular, for an existing railway coach operating in Italy, the standard and the innovative control logic are tested and compared. The results show an interesting thermal comfort hours increase (≃+1000 h) and energy savings (−27 % yearly), proving the benefits potentially achievable by adopting the proposed method.