In December 2023 the Paris-Berlin night train re-started after a 9 year hiatus. Operated as a Nighjet service by ÖBB, SNCF provided motive power for the train from Mannheim to Paris. They even put SNCF stickers on some of the carriages, and ÖBB lauded the launch of the service as […]
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From the start of this Trains for Europe campaign I have argued that the absence of enough couchette cars and sleeping cars is the main constraint on the expansion of night train services. You cannot run more trains unless you literally have more carriages. I do not deny there are […]
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When I launched Trains for Europe close to a year ago, my key demand was that the European Union organises the procurement of a fleet of new night trains. To me that this is the key to improving the provision of night trains is obvious. But, as the year has […]
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I listened in to the Back on Track Belgium conference last week, and the founder of a startup night train company said something interesting. “The reason we are against things like night train rolling stock pools,” he stated, “is that means we cannot configure the trains the way we want […]
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At the start Trains for Europe had two major questions: how could the European Union organise the procurement of a fleet of night train carriages, and how many carriages would you even need to run enough lines for which there is a market in Europe? We’re still working on our […]
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When we started the Trains for Europe in mid-2021, our demand was that the European Union organises the procurement of a fleet of new night trains. Now – 8 months on – it is time to take stock of what has(n’t) happened in the interim. We started with the assumption […]
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We’ve been invited to present at an event in February about night train services to and from Berlin, the city where our campaign is based. That has led to some interesting reflections – rather than seeing the complete picture of night trains in Europe, what would work from one city […]
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When I started the Trains for Europe project a little over 6 months ago, I had identified the key problem – that the main barrier to scaling up night trains in Europe was the absence of the trains themselves. To get more night trains onto Europe’s rails, someone has to […]
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