Europe was promised a new golden age of the night train. Why are we still waiting?
Jon Worth
Romance, excitement and sustainability – continent-crossing sleeper trains should be a hit. It’s time for the EU to catch on
Worth’s blog is, for some dim and distant reason, in my reader. So, I gain access to years and years of mithering over why the 6.01 am to Mainz is late. That’s the general level of content.
‘E just loves ‘is continent spanning trains.
As Europeans woke up to the joy of travel post-lockdown, it looked as though we were in store for a resurgence of continent-crossing night trains. Sleeper train fans hailed a “night train renaissance” and a “rail revolution”, combining some of the nostalgia for an old way of travelling with modern climate and sustainable transport concerns.
The long-distance European train journey might be slower than a short-haul flight, but it is surely better in terms of the environment and the traveller experience. For those on a budget, the prospect of saving on a night in a hotel appeals too.
But as anyone who has tried to plan a holiday train trip for this summer is likely to have found, night trains are still few and far between, especially in western Europe. And if there is a night train at all on a route, it will often be booked up months in advance. That’s not all: reliability and onboard service are often not up to scratch, with carriages on many routes pushing 50 years old.
There’s a surely in there which means no.
Why this insistence on slow, dirty, smelly, late and expensive? My assumption is that he got laid on a night train once as a teenager. As it’s not happening much since then and therefore the romance etc.
Now, as it happens, I once got laid on a night train. Very enjoyable it was too – as was the 5 month affair that followed. But the experience left me with a hankering for bouncy American redheads not the InterCity 125 from Inverness.
Takes all sorts I suppose.
For a few years, when we were transporting stuff about, the missus and I used to get the car train from Dusseldorf to Vienna.
It was really civilised. We’d get the ferry or tunnel, drive over to my brother in East Clogland for tea and a natter and maybe drop off some sausages.
He lived an hour and a bit from D-dorf. We’d get to the far side of the Hauptbahnhof and load the motor. The people-train left from the main part of the station. My missus insisted on a first class compartment, which had an en suite. I wasn’t too bothered and if I travelled alone went 2nd. Always friendly staff, coffee and snacks available, we took food and booze with us though. Decent continental brekkie. Arrive Vienna next morning at 8am. 15 minute drive home. Lovely.
Bastards stopped it of course.
ps Vienna Westbahnhof had the most terrifying ramp up to the upper train deck. Real Evel Knieval stuff.
I enjoyed my one trip to Inverness on the sleeper. Waking up to a decent breakfast and views of Speyside. Then a day’s work and a flight back down to The Smoke. Very satisfactory.
Also enjoyed in Oz. Sur le Continong – couchettes, isn’t that what was easily available? OK if you’ve been hill-walking much of the day – you’ll sleep like a lamb.
About the only train trip in Oz I remember was when my parents took us kids down to Tweed Heads in New South Wales.
I remember them telling me to shut the window as the coal smoke from the steam engine was coming in!!!
Just don’t have red wine with the fish.
I saw a train documentary* once where a chap took a dim view.
*Pretty sure.
“And if there is a night train at all on a route, it will often be booked up months in advance. That’s not all: reliability and onboard service are often not up to scratch, with carriages on many routes pushing 50 years old.”
One of the problems with night trains is that they’re very expensive to run (and that’s whoever runs them), but governments insist on subsiding the fucking things, and having the normal Clownworld railways running them.
Sleeper trains are a luxury experience. There are people who just like train travel, waking up to views of the mountains or the coast. It’s a fun thing to do, like taking a cruise down the Rhine. You’re not doing that because it’s cheaper than driving from Koln to Koblenz.
So you treat them that way. End the subsidies and put someone from Cunard in charge of them. Nice beds, nice meal, decent booze. If people want them, at the price, they’ll pay for it. If not, you shut it down.
“The long-distance European train journey might be slower than a short-haul flight, but it is surely better in terms of the environment and the traveller experience. ”
And the environmental aspect is questionable. Trains are generally carrying people sitting upright. So in a carriage, on the Reading to London 0745, you carry a lot of people. Sleepers need beds. That’s a lot less people you can carry. You also need bathrooms. And a proper dining car. There’s normally an 8x difference in CO2 between a busy train and a busy plane, but you’re going to get a lot less with a sleeper. My guess, it’s not even half the CO2 of an aircraft. But why fuck around with working that out? Just stick some pigou taxes on and see what people want.
It’s inevitable that one day we will have self driving cars allowed on all European roads. It’s just when that is debatable. This opens the possibility of self driving camper vans, which would give a similar experience to sleeper trains except for the slow, dirty, smelly and late bit. You wouldn’t have to worry about them being booked up months in advance either. Just get in at home one evening and wake at your destination the next morning in time for breakfast. All that’s required to complete the experience is the bouncy American redhead.
WB
The sleeper part of the journey was expensive. The car cost hardly anything, but you weren’t allowed to kip in it. Health and safety gone mad.
After they canned the service and we still had to drive back and forth, we sensibly split the journey. Stopped at Nuremberg on the way down and Frankfurt on the way back. I had a loyalty card for Novotels.
It’s 14 or 15 hours Calais to Vienna non stop and it ain’t fun.
I hate this sort of sentence construction:
“long-distance . . train journey might be slower than a short-haul flight”
Is Jon Worth doubting which is slower, and if it’s the same distance why is one ‘long’ and the other ‘short’.
There is a market for sleeper trains. And they are very nice things too.
https://www.belmond.com/
Just make sure you are sitting down with a stiff drink and a cast iron credit card when you book a place for you and the host sexy mistress. Not the wife. The price of the tickets are so high that you would not want to waste the trip with the wife.
Wasn’t there a story doing the rounds a few years back about a German IT worker who worked out it was cheaper to get a year’s rail pass than pay rent.
The best part of the sleeper train experience is the late-night bar. On a trip from Glasgow to London I stayed in the bar until 3am talking with the huge, fat steward, who knew absolutely everything there was to know about the service and its history. Brilliant.
The kip? Meh. A bit like camping, but with similar pleasures. Good to use the night in that way, though.
My daughter is planning a visit from Hull to her pals in Eindhoven. After looking at all of the various options it’s going to be the P&O ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, for similar reasons as taking the night train: the journey is overnight both ways so you regain the two travel days.
Pronouns! “Why are *they* still waiting?”
…and it’s post-lockdown travel, not travel post-lockdown, but it’s the Guardian, where you have to prove complete utter illiteracy before you’re allowed to work there.
Rev Spooner
I guffawed muchly at that one.
Thanks !
Norman,
Ferries operate on a massive scale and without a lot of the costs like track and signalling, though. Like we go overnight to France. Bit more money but worth it for the convenience.
I looked into Inverness by train and it would be £550 return for 2 of us. Or it’s £160 on Easyjet. Go in the evening, arrive at 9pm, crash into a £100 hotel room. Total of £260.
Most rail talk is just people with a boner for choo-choos who want someone else to subsidise their trip.
The thing about a train is that it is that it is a compromise. Not enough people want to travel from Leeds to London to justify the service? Pick people up from Wakefield, Retford and Grantham en route. Even people who — for some unfathomable reason — want to travel from Doncaster to Newark but (understandably) can’t be arsed with the A1. It costs pretty much the same to run a train regardless of the number of people on it, so you optimise it to be as full as possible for as long as possible, and the fuller it is the better chance you have of stinging punters for overpriced coffee.
But the market for getting on/off a train at 3am is miniscule, so the sleeper services are more-or-less point-to-point, so in turn you’re running a train with far fewer people on board. OK, they get beds rather than seats so the capacity of the train is lower, but you still have to spread the cost of running the train — including all those unionised workers — over fewer people. You’re then running typically running the train into a busy major city, taking up valuable platform space at probably peak commuter time.
I seem to remember that the overnight services to the south of France were notorious for thievery from the passengers and the vehicles.
ruby cart
You have a blog on how much you hate Keir Starmer ?
Count me in !
( As Ukrainian male models like to say )
The last (and final) time I took a sleeper train was to go to Paris with my wife (with whom I had only been married a couple of years at that point). It was fucking awful. We had the top bunks in a six-bed cabin that we shared with one other person that made very strange noices all night and I was convinced was going to try to rape my wife. So I had 0 sleep. In the end there was no attempt of rape but I did find a used bra in my bed.
We were also 3 hours late so missed our connecting train to go to a wedding in Bretagne, I had to rent a car and then drive at 180km an hour to get there (somehow avoided getting fines), we arrived 5 min before the bride walked into the church, without having slept or changed clothes. Even my wife realised that we were never going to take a night train again.
(Oh and Europcar charged me 500 euro for damages they claimed I had made to the car, so it was also the last time I rented a car from Europcar)
@salamander
Only taking one sexy mistress is a bit cheapskate. I was once on a trip to NY in the Heathrow first class American Airlines lounge and Dave West came in accompanied by three tall stunning Estonian girls. Any one of them would have stopped every man present in his tracks. Dave was the “flamboyant” owner of the “Eastenders” booze cruise destination warehouse in Calais. It was nice to know the profit on all the wine I had previously bought there (with him often sitting at the till taking the money) was being wisely spent.
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@WB
I was on that train in February this year. Horrible experience.
(and the view? what view?. There’s nothing to see until you’re there!)
“P&O ferry from Hull to Rotterdam”
We used the Hull-Zeebrugge ferry a few times. Worked well. We’d rather have sailed from Leith or even Newcastle but they weren’t minded to undertake the diversion.
It’s inevitable that one day we will have self driving cars allowed on all European roads.
“It’s inevitable that” is just another way of spelling ‘surely’. Tim’s observation applies.
Bouncy American redheads are indeed the best 🙂
The problem with all forms of public transport is the often disgusting public. The inconsiderate, the obese, the malodorous et al make travel increasingly a trial of my patience.
Theo, I know this will be somewhat indelicate language, but those who really get my goat are the cunts watching TikTok without headphones; the cunts having shouted conversations with their phones on speaker; and the vast entitled slags with their vast entitled buggies and vast entitled broods.
I’ve just been subjected to all three.
Norman,
If the Hull – Rotterdam ferry is anything it was when I used to use it regularly, well 2 to 3 times a year, tell your daughter to get a cabin if she wants some peace. It was renowned for hen/stag/who need a reason parties that started on the ferry, continued in Rotterdam and then back on the ferry the next night.
If it was anything like rough you can imagine the state of the floor.
Thanks for the tip, BiND. I suspected as much.
Just stick some pigou taxes on
Please don’t use the phrase “pigou taxes”, WB. They’re a wet dream of economists. If anyone can show me a “pigou tax” that hasn’t just been used as a revenue source , without any relationship to the cost of the activity being taxed, they should win a prize. Finest example being the London Congestion Charge.
BIS,
I’m not saying how politicians do things, just how they should be done.
Make WB Emperor and everything will be fine.
Sorry, Theo, I can’t hear for all the cunts bellowing or screeching down their phones.