The quiet return of the night train

At 22:14 on a Thursday, the platform is busier than it has been all day. Families wheel suitcases past commuters heading home, a conductor checks a list on a clipboard, and a couple in matching raincoats photograph the carriage number as if it were a landmark.

Ten years ago this service did not exist. The route had been cut, the carriages sold, and the consensus among operators was that the overnight train was a charming relic, too slow for business travellers and too expensive to run for anyone else.

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That consensus has quietly collapsed. Across the continent, operators have reopened or announced more than twenty sleeper routes since 2020, and most of this summer’s departures sold out weeks in advance.

The reasons are less romantic than the posters suggest. Airport security has become slower and more expensive. Hotels in city centres have become more expensive still. A bed that moves, it turns out, is a reasonable deal when it saves you a night’s accommodation and a morning in a departure lounge.

“We used to sell the journey,” one operator’s head of planning told Dispatch. “Now we sell the arrival. You wake up in the middle of the city with the whole day ahead of you.”

There are still problems. Rolling stock is scarce, track access at night competes with freight, and ticket prices swing wildly depending on how early you book. But for the first time in a generation, the people running these trains are talking about expansion rather than survival.