End of night trains

Unfortunately this has been a trend for a while. Sad to see the end of an era but the newer faster trains make the longer night trains unnecessary. We were on the Joan Miro from Barcelona to Paris the last year it ran - the whole overnight train ritual - boarding, getting settled in, opening wine, the excitement of the journey, dinner at a table with linens and china, returning to your compartment to find the bunks all made up, the gentle rocking and rhythm of the train, peeking out the window at night to see which station you are at, waking up to coffee and croissants, breakfast in the dining car...I will miss it.

The night trains in many countries only run today because of large government subsidy or other political reasons. In these days, this subsidy can become unsustainable against other needs. If they ran with economic fares they would be even more uncompetitive.

Unfortunately, the article has no more specifics than when alert readers saw the same note from the Man in Seat 61 earlier this year. They're still selling tickets past the July "funding cutoff" for the affected routes (not all of them), making it hard to sound the final death knell. But I guess we won't be surprised when it happens.

It is a grim way to travel. With the advent of fast trains and cheap airlines, there is little reason to pay the expense and experience the discomfort of the night train.

I will offer a different viewpoint from janettravels44. I think the advantage of the night train is the ability to travel a significant distance, for the cost of a nice hotel room for that night plus a little more, without losing daylight hours better spent enjoying the sights at your destination. Daytime travel by train or air carries with it hassles too. I think the overnight train is money well spent in many cases.

The Man in Seat 61 was interviewed about night trains by the wonderful James Menendez on the BBC world service earlier this week. A neat, quick listen if you're interested in the topic!

The Man in Seat 61 was interviewed about night trains by the wonderful James Menendez

do you have a link to that interview? I couldn't find it with a search.

Here's a 3 minute clip of the interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03tq9ck?ocid=socialflow_twitter

I'd almost rather sleep in a regular seat on a train than try to sleep in the compartment. For me, the noise isn't as big of deal as the constant jostling from adding and removing cars at stations along the way. I guess there are some people who can sleep well on a night train but I haven't met them yet. When you add the significant price difference of a night train over a cheap flight, the night train just doesn't seem to make sense any more.

Hi Brad. I am one of those people that did fine sleeping in a compartment on a night train. And as opposed to flying, on our particular route which was Rome to Vienna, the airfare plus another night in a hotel and airport transfers would have cost slightly more than a private compartment on the train.

Yay!!!!!!!!

Great clip! I've said this many times before: I love, love, love sleeper trains. Great fun! Good sleep! However, since my first such trains in 1976 I pamper myself with a private compartment. I would hate to see night trains disappear. And, apparently, they are greener than flying. Wray

If it is a grim and unpleasant way to travel, a lot of people still do it, to the point that a few years ago on a Sat in the summer I found to my disappointment last minute the general seating area was sold out, Hamburg to Vienna. So, I took another night route instead, Hamburg to Munich, and transferred. Falling asleep and staying that way on the night train regardless of its disruptions is not problem.

Even places on the American tourist radar, eg, Munich, Vienna, Berlin, I don't see Americans taking night trains, they're all Germans or mostly so, others being Asians, Italian, Dutch, etc. In spite of the article, one can still go France/Paris to Berlin partly by night train, just be creative in setting up a route which includes a night option, (fortunately, not totally gone yet), such as Berlin-Offenburg, change to Strasbourg for the TGV to Paris.

It seems trend wise that night trains are going out/gone in western Europe, Amsterdam to Munich still exists, there are a lot of them still in central and east central Europe, eg, Gdansk to Vienna or Budapest -Munich.

The thing is, though I wouldn't want to take an overnight train nowadays, I am glad I have experienced it, once in Europe and the other time in Egypt. The Egyptian experience was the better one, better service, wine with dinner and a decent breakfast. In retrospect, it was fun.

Harold, thanks for posting the link. Interesting segment. I'm looking forward to hearing reviews of the service when the Austrians get it up and running as discussed in the clip.

I do have to say, though, that while the romance of riding the trains is alluring in practice I found it didn't live up to the promise. As I have posted before, I have used the DB service 3 times. One was a great trip. On the 2nd the A/C in our cabin was broken; as you can imagine a train that has sat in the sun all day during summer is quite warm, so our choices were open the window for cooler air and the accompanying noise & wind, or close it and sweat. The 3rd trip the car we were assigned was literally not on the train! A dour DB conductor eventually found us a room that was not the same class we had paid for, nor did we get a refund of the difference.

So personally to the DB service I say good riddance; hopefully Austrian rail does a better job.