No crazy stories from your time?
There's lots, but not for camera.
You find that it's a bit of like a bucket list for people,
to be able to travel on, because there's only two in the country.
Sleeper trains across Europe are making a comeback and, from luxury services to more practical options,
new routes and refurbished carriages are cropping up across the continent.
Just five years ago, the continent’s sleeper trains seemed, if not in an existential crisis, then in decline.
Factors including track access charges for train operators, a prioritization of high-speed rail projects
and competition from lower air fares all contributed to cuts in the number and range of services.
There was a huge decline, people forget that sleeper trains used to be commonplace,
they used to be part of everyday life.
Problem is, they are the most difficult train to make work commercially.
But since the pandemic, air travel around Europe is more expensive than it used to be.
And due to environmental concerns, an increasing number of people are looking for alternatives to flying.
Running what’s essentially a hotel on wheels is no small task.
This is the Great Western Railway’s Night Riviera service, that runs between London Paddington and Cornwall.
- So this is a two person room? - This is yes, this is a double.
Nice. So you’ve got your towel, your power point.
Yes, you have your own personal soap underneath, all your power sockets and just behind you
is your own personal sink.
We have a little tray that we can pull down and then they can sit in their bed and have breakfast
or they’re more than welcome to go down to the first-class lounge.
And of course an essential feature here, the toilet.
It's right next to our accessible double-berth bedroom.
And no showers on here?
No, we don’t have showers, we have a shower in the first-class lounge
which we would book for you when booking you in.
So now we have the seating carriage, so some people can choose this option instead of a bed?
Yes so this is the cheaper option.
They will have a seat and they’ll also have access to the buffet area as well.
This is your sleeper seating area where people can come down,
have a drink from our bar.
- Do people chat? - They all chat, yeah.
You wouldn’t find it on a day train at all, but they come in here in the evening and they're all talking to each other.
There's something really romantic, isn't there, about riding on trains through the night
going to bed in one country and waking up in another.
This is Anthony Coulls, senior curator at the U.K.’s National Railway Museum.
So the first carriages that are set up to have beds in them are late 1830s, early 1840s.
It becomes really popular in the 1860s with George Pullman in the USA.
Pullman introduces the idea of comfort and style, brings it to the U.K. in the 1870s,
and on the continent in Europe, Georges Nagelmackers in Belgium creates the Wagons-Lits.
The carriage behind me is from the Wagons-Lits. The train ran from London down to Dover.
Small matter of a bit of water the English Channel, but the trains were placed onto a ferry,
which then took you across the English Channel to France.
When do you start to see the emergence of opening up sleepers to the everyday person?
As the 19th century continued, people began to have more disposable income.
The whole idea of holidays comes in.
By the time it was phased out, they're saying: actually, it's not really the premiere experience at all.
It's a little bit seedy, it's a little bit tired.
And, of course, that was the end of really long-distance sleeper trains from the U.K. because you start to get
cheap flights coming in, cheap hotels, from the 1960s onwards.
Europe is home to some of the world’s most iconic sleeper routes, from the Caledonian Sleeper through the Highlands of Scotland,
to the famed Orient Express, which once connected the continent from West to East.
Excitement is building around the sleeper train market and a big part of that is the launch of a new service in 2023 by a start-up.
Travellers as well as the wider industry will be watching carefully to see if they can make a success of it.
A few years ago, like six, seven years ago, a lot of night trains in Western Europe, were cancelled by the large railways.
And that was quite a frustration to us because night train travel is so pleasant and efficient.
Chris Englesman is the co-founder of European Sleeper, a new operator
aiming to tap into the growing demand for night trains.
At the start of the year, the European Union announced it would support 10 pilot rail services,
both new ones and expansions of existing ones, by breaking down barriers to cross-border rail.
So far the support has been logistical rather than financial.
The European Sleeper, which had its maiden voyage on 25 May 2023,
currently runs between Brussels and Berlin, with a stop in Amsterdam,
with a total journey time of between 10 and 13 hours.
In 2021, Chris and his business partner Elmer van Buuren, both long-time rail industry employees, raised €500,000
from 330 small investors, then launched a crowdfunder that attracted another €2 million.
Our crowdfunding round was very successful because also, we do think there's a large night train community.
We like the idea that we are community-owned, and we're not owned by some large investment fund.
But we will take the next step and that would be to own our own night train coaches
and have our own look and feel to the coaches and do a refurbishment, and that step
would require, of course, larger funds.
You've spoken a bit about the difficulties finding the rolling stock for this,
that's been a huge challenge for you and for other people that are looking to set up similar services.
The larger railways have been neglecting the whole product for years.
So there's just such a huge lack of proper night train rolling stock. And that was the biggest challenge.
Do you see it as a bit of a risk that you've taken? These are obviously relatively no frills.
I believe there's no WiFi, no power points, limited dining options.
Are you sort of believing that people will still support the product, still believe in the power of the sleeper offering despite that?
It's important to give it a start and not to wait for another 2, 3, 4 years for new rolling stock.
People want to travel by night right now, they know that the product can be classic.
So how does the European Sleeper stack up against other options?
Well, if it’s going to tempt travellers away from short-haul flights across Europe,
it needs to compete in two key areas: convenience and cost.
Let’s say I want to travel from Brussels to Berlin over a long weekend in September.
A return trip on the European Sleeper starts at 128 euros, around 140 dollars.
Or it's around 100 euros for return flights arriving at similar times in the morning.
If I want a bed in a female-only compartment, or a private one for me and a travel companion, that’s more expensive.
Add-ons to my flight will bump the price up too.
The carbon emissions of the two journeys could also factor in how you want to travel.
And there’s also the experience as a whole to weigh up.
For many people, including me, train travel has a charm that’s difficult to find on flights.
From looking out the window from the dining car, watching the world go by,
to arriving directly into a city center instead of a far-out airport terminal.
Someone who agrees is Mark Smith, known online as The Man in Seat 61.
His comprehensive online guides have helped many people plan long rail trips.
What people tell me now is two things in the same breath: They're fed up with the airport and airline experience,
and they want to cut their carbon footprint.
The Austrians, OBB, the Austrian State Railways, bought most of Deutsche Bahn’s former sleeping cars,
many of their couchette cars, and took over many of their routes and rebranded it Nightjet.
And they have a model that works; Nightjet is now in the black,
OBB is now the biggest operator of night trains in Central Europe, and they've proved that sleeper trains can work.
And the problem is on the cost side, it's not on the demand side.
OBB is rolling out its next-generation Nightjet sleeper car this year and is in the process of route expansions.
Meanwhile, Czech operator České Dráhy relaunched routes in late 2022
and has plans for new carriages.
There’s also Midnight Trains, another start-up which plans to launch a sleeper service from Paris in 2025
and is also part of the EU support scheme.
The Night Riviera service, as well as the Caledonian Sleeper between London and Scotland, had complete refurbishments
over the last five years to attract more passengers.
But they both remain lossmaking for the operators and receive government subsidies.
Imagine you buy an intercity train, it can shuttle up and down, maybe four or five journeys a day, carrying 70 people per coach
between any two stations on its journey.
Now you take a sleeper train, and it requires specialized rolling stock.
It's got beds, it's got bed linen, it might have more plumbing washbasins, it's expensive.
It requires couchette attendants and sleeping car attendants, so your staffing costs are high
and you're travelling over a longer distance.
You're still expected to have competitive fares, competitive with budget airlines.
There have been calls for European nations to support sleepers through cuts to tax on fairs and lower track access charges.
There are also hopes that train operators will work together to improve connectivity on journeys with separate legs.
So are you kind of optimistic that when we're looking 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we're gonna have a much more developed
European sleeper network, potentially with more players, potentially with some of these supply challenges having eased?
It’s gonna be a slow process because it's not easy to run sleeper trains well,
but OBB have already got new sleeper trains being built that will raise quality and make them even more attractive.
They've got plans to cautiously expand their network.
I'm hoping that European sleeper will be successful and will expand their services.
It may just be that as we move through the 21st century, with people less willing to fly,
as long as it's economically viable, who knows?
We could well see a renaissance of the sleeper train, which would be really rather splendid.