You can also find out more about the A-Team here.As Europeans started to travel again after the Lockdown, we thought that there was a lot of fun in store. resurgence Night trains that cross continents. Fans of sleeper trains hailed “night train renaissance“rail revolution“, combines nostalgia for an older way of traveling with climate change and concerns about sustainable transport.
Long-distance European trains may take longer than short-haul flights, but they are better for the environment as well as the experience of the traveller. The prospect of saving money on a hotel night is appealing to those who are on a tight budget.
Anyone who has planned a summer holiday train trip will have noticed that night trains are few and far between. This is especially true in Western Europe. Even if a route has a night train, it is often booked out months in advance. Not only that, but reliability and service onboard are not always up to standard. Many carriages on routes are over 50 years old.
The traditional behemoths of European rail – France’s SNCF, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn and Spain’s Renfe – have little or no interest in the night-train market, preferring more profitable high-speed daytime trains instead. Only Austria’s ÖBB has bucked the trend, ordering a fleet of 33 new trains Nightjet, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn, is the only airline that offers this service. For comparison, Deutsche Bahn owns almost 300 High-speed trains run during the day. Night services are a mere drop in an ocean.
Now Nox has been launched by a Berlin-based startup. announced plans It claims that it will revolutionize the night-train industry and open up the market by radically rethinking the passenger experience. Nox plans to replace all of its old carriages with new ones. The fleet will only have one- or two-person compartments. Pilot services should begin in 2027 with regular operations to follow by the end.
This approach on the key question is right – the only way to offer more night-train routes is to build new trains. Nox won’t be the only newcomer trying to break into this market. Midnight Trains is a Paris-based start-up that promised hotels on wheels Investors were not convinced that the market would be able to support this in 2021. venture folded. Dutch operation GoVolta been unable It is possible to convert a successful business in air-packages into an equivalent rail travel business. European Sleeper, which also launched in 2021, has done a little better – its motley collection of elderly carriages runs three times a week from Brussels via Amsterdam and Berlin to Prague, but without new carriages the company will remain tiny.
Nox is facing a similar uphill battle as its predecessors. However, it has some differences. Its plan to rethink the layout of a night-train carriage, making it more appealing to modern travellers – and safer for women – makes sense. Standardisation, where all carriages are the same, simplifies operations. FlixTrain’s German rail arm FlixBus has a founder who is a true railway expert. Either way, UK passengers should not hold their breath – night trains through the Channel Tunnel are not on the cards, being operationally too difficult to even contemplate.
Private operators’ efforts to solve this puzzle are appreciated, but in the end the issue is political. Since most European nations are too small to have national night trains it is necessary to solve these issues at the EU level. In a statement, the European Commission said that it was aiming to solve these issues at an EU-wide level. 2021 report The report identified a dozen routes on which night trains could be economically viable but are not currently operated. Since then, nothing has changed.
Brussels has been working hard to harmonize the divergent national rules which make operating international trains so difficult. But night trains – locomotive hauled, medium speed and running at night when track capacity is easier to obtain – arguably face fewer hurdles than other train types.
It’s time that the EU provides financial guarantees for the acquisition of new night-train cars. These guarantees should be available to state-owned and privately-owned companies. The EU has at least a half-dozen train manufacturers, which could benefit the European industry. And the requirement from the commission in return would be Europe-wide compatibility – that guarantees would only be for go-anywhere carriages that can be deployed anywhere from Barcelona to Bodø, Stockholm to Sofia.
Remember that this summer as you wait in long queues for an airport or in traffic jams, you could do better. You could reach your holiday destination in greater comfort and sustainability with a night-train revival.
Actions by the EU on international rail are not in line with its rhetoric. The building of more night-train cars to run more services along tracks that are already there is a no-brainer.
