The French train vlogger Thibault took another trip on the Caledonian Sleeper in the "fancy" room all the way to Fort Williams. Spoiler alert - he loved it.
One interesting note is that the dining car doesn't take reservations so he recommends going there immediately after checking into your room. It's also interesting to see in the comments that many others did NOT have the wonderful experience that he had and the train is perhaps not so beloved as the marketing would have you believe.
While I am a great supporter of night trains I do feel that the Caledonian Sleeper does suffer from a flawed and over specified build of train cars. Given how good the old Spanish and Portugese hotel trains were (may be again later this year) it is not clear why CAF (a Spanish company) did not build better cars. I do like the old Mark 3 sleepers on the Great Western sleeper a lot better, and not only for their price point but their far better quality in all respects.
I don't know why Thibault doesn't tell you that you can also have exactly the same meals as on the train in the sleeper lounge at Euston from 6pm (for the Highland Sleeper), at the same price.
And an alcoholic drink or two as well.
Or maybe that doesn't fit his narrative.
And it's not as if the Euston area is at all short of really good places to eat and drink before boarding, or as an alternative to the Sleeper Lounge. That is before the option of making your own picnic up from the food stores at Euston.
Given the selfishness you encounter all the time in normal restaurants of people reserving tables then changing their mind I am all for not allowing table reservations on the train.
One of the reasons for the lack of capacity in the Lounge Car northbound (it is not called a dining car) is that the trains are at a maximum possible length of 16 cars so the Fort William section has to have it's Lounge Car and Seating Car attached northbound/detached southbound when the train splits at Edinburgh. Another reason is that it is a Lounge Carso a lot of people go and just have drinks, rather than full meals.
As regards the pricing it is seriously expensive, but then it is very much on a par (if not cheaper) than Amtrak or VIA rail night trains.
The journey can be done hugely cheaper (often a third of the price) by taking a late afternoon day train on the 4:30 journey from Euston to Glasgow (the 1730, 1830 or 1930), staying in a central Glasgow Premier Inn or similar (which are very often available at around £40 a night, certainly if booking months ahead of time) then the 8am day train, arriving less than two hours after the sleeper.
Subjectively I would debate that is a better travel experience, rather sadly.
But then travel experiences are not always about the monetary cost alone, or even the speed of travel.
We did the Caledonian-no-sleeper a couple years ago and once was enough. :) If it had been a more modern train that glided smoothly on the tracks, it would have been totally fine, but the train lurched and shrieked all night long making sleep very difficult. Ironically, it was the roughest and noisiest train we rode in all of England and Scotland.
I took the Caledonia a couple of years ago. It was fine, but the biggest thing is it is not a long enough trip to justify an overnight. I left from Edinburgh very late (just hanging around in the city waiting to board) and arrived to London so early i thought it was unplanned stop. Don't get me wrong, I love long train rides. This one just wasn't long enough to be worth it. Plus at night, you don't get to see the excellent views off to the East.
