After yesterday’s news that Basel-Malmö will not happen, today there’s news that a new night train route will open up – European Sleeper is proposing to run from Bruxelles and Amsterdam to Switzerland and Milano from June 2026. Their press release about it is here (PDF). A few of relevant […]
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So there will not be a Basel – Malmö night train from the spring of 2026. Switzerland’s parliament did not approve the subsidy to allow it to run. Without the 10 million CHF the parliament refused to grant to get this going (from a wider fund of 47 million CHF […]
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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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A few days ago it was announced that Stadler has won the contract to supply new long distance trains to Norway. The official press release from Norske Tog in Norwegian is here, and there are articles from IRJ and Global Railway Review in English as well. While this tender only […]
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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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The #CrossBorderRail project that I am running as part of my wider Trains for Europe advocacy work has taken on a life of its own, and hence I am putting the main Trains for Europe site on pause between now and the start of August 2022. The need for the […]
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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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