Europe’s ‘night train renaissance’

Gavin Haines welcomes the return of the sleeper service

We travelled by sleeper train, but rarely slept. The rhythmic rat-a-tat-tat of wheels on track was fine, almost soothing. It was the human interruptions that kept us awake: the surly ticket inspectors; the suspicious border guards; the drunks in the corridor; the middle-of-night trips to stinking toilets as the cheap local lager hit our bladders. And there was always the anxiety of sleeping past our stop; of not hearing the alarm on our Nokia phones and waking late in a nowhere town in Slovakia. The prospect of early mornings always did breed insomnia.

It was the early 2000s and we were exploring Europe. We couldn’t afford beds in the sleeper compartment, but in those days most of the carriages were split into six-seater compartments. The worn, faux-leather seats inside pulled out like a decrepit sofa bed, so you could lie down, stretch out, be horizontal. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but who cares when you’re 20, living on your overdraft, and think the world owes you a good time?

Sleeper trains were a double-win for shoestring Interrailers – you got to your destination and saved money on accommodation. Money that could be spent on nightclub entrance fees and pizza, cheap fags and booze.

The night-time journeys between European cities passed in the analogue way. We played cards, read books, thumbed through pilfered Lonely Planet guides; had an earphone each leading to an old Walkman. Then there was the disposable camera, and its appalling photography.

Recalling all this now – surrounded by my son’s Lego, my iPhone flashing – I reflect that those breezy, month-long Interrail trips in the late summer were among the freest of my life. And they were shaped by night trains.

Subsequent years have seen a gradual whittling away of those youthful freedoms – and of Europe’s sleeper train network. Low-cost flights, high-speed railways and the debatable benefits of some Interrail tickets shunted many grand old dames of the tracks into the sidings.

So it’s ironic that concerns about the ecological impact of low-cost flying are helping fuel a night train renaissance in Europe. Austria’s staterun rail firm – OBB – is leading the revival, rebooting routes like Paris-Vienna and Amsterdam-Zurich. Berlin-Paris is coming sometime in 2024. Private operators are also getting in on the act. European Sleeper, a Dutch-Belgian startup, will debut its Brussels-Prague overnighter this summer, while the French firm Midnight Trains plans to launch a network of luxury “hotels on rails”.

Greta Thunberg and Sweden’s “flight shame” movement have helped with the marketing, of course. France assisted the cause by banning some short-haul flights. Then the German Greens sparked the imagination with plans for an ambitious, pan-European sleeper train network if they got elected (which they did, although Europe has had other things to focus on lately).

Rail anoraks were aquiver at some of the proposed routes, namely EdinburghParis, Berlin-Rome and Oslo-Prague. Just “lines on a map” is what some said of the plans, citing many obstacles. Maybe so. But don’t all the best journeys begin with lines on a map?

‘Those breezy trips were among the freest of my life’: Gavin in his 20s