Memorable Overnight Train Journeys !?
 

We are trying to find a good overnight rail sector on the Continent where the Dining Car and Wine service provides a bit of nostalgia and some return to the excellence of the past. Does anyone have any ideas ?

It would not be the overnight train from Barcelona to Sevilla. We took that one recently and I would not recommend it, nostalgia wise

I'd like to help but knowing how you define the terms "nostalgia" and, more interestingly, a "return to excellence"...particularly the "excellence" part.

I've done a lot of overnight train travel, in Europe, and I have a lot of opinions. But given the overall tone of your post I suspect you might be less than satisfied with anything other than something offered by the re-incarnated "Orient Express" rail trips or something similar offered by certain higher end tour operators.

Good luck.

sounds like you're talking about an orient express type thing. a friend of mine once took the trans-siberian railroad which sounded kinda cool. i've also seen documentaries about that type of train that left south africa and went to victoria falls (i believe). there's also one in southeast asia. sorry can't be more helpful than that.

My memorable overnite train trip was from Florence to Vienna with a group of high school students. The teachers that were chaperoning the trip had no experience with European train travel. Seats/bunks were not pre-assigned. All of a sudden the chaperones realized the students had arranged themselves into coed sleeping compartments - horrors! What would the parents say! Well, that's my memorable overnite trip but I don't think its what you have in mind.

You will find sleeping car services with restaurant car, service of wine and refreshments, light breakfast, and (at a higher fare) a shower en suite on several groups of trains.

Spanish hotel trains from Madrid to Lisbon, Basel, and Paris, and from Barcelona to Paris and Zurich
German CityNightLine (CNL) trains, Dortmund to Vienna, Hamburg to Zurich, Berlin and Dresden to Zurich, and Amsterdam to Zurich and Munich
Franco-Italian Artesia trains from Paris to Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome
Swedish Kupe class from Lulea in Lapland to Stockolm anrd Goteborg.
All Swedish sleepers have showers at the end of the car. They run
With cinema car and buffet car: Göteborg and Stockholm to Östersund and Storlien (in Lapland)
With buffet car Malmö ? Stockholm
No catering Malmö ? Berlin

A luxury car on the night train between Lviv and Kyiv, run by a large hotel of Kyiv
The sleeper from Budapest to Transylvania and Bucharest on the Dacia Express may has a shower at the end of the coach on some nights

A very experienced travel hand has a site at www.seat61.com/ - with photos and details of many of these trains. The site www.cp.pt/servicos/c_inter/e_linfo.html describes a hotel train, that to Lisbon. I have a note of hints on getting the best from these trains at www.twenj.com/tipsnighttrains.htm The German rail site www.bahn.de/pv/view/service/fahrzeuge/ citynightline_info.shtml covers their CNL services, but in German: there is an English description at
www.raileurope.com/us/rail/specialty/ city_night_line.htm
Swedish rail have a site www.mikitravel.se/place292en.HTML

You did not mention showers, and once I drop them from my thoughts I have a longer list, of trains with sleepers and restaurant cars. I shall omit those that make short journeys

Sleepers between London at 2105 and the Scottish Highlands. These claim to have only club cars, but these are good for breakfast, and adequate for supper.
The Trincaria Express from Milan, Bologna and Florence to Sicily has no restaurant car, but from 0635 to 0755 and 2030 to 2140 your sleeping car is on the train ferry, so you can walk upstairs to take breakfast in the restaurant
Express trains with buffet cars run from the coast of Pomerania to Bavaria and to the Ruhr. Expresses with restaurant cars run from Vienna to Dortmund and Amsterdam Hamburg and Berlin to Munich. Some of these leave and arrive by roundabout route in
Berlin and the Ruhr, to give a long enough night in bed.

In the former Soviet Union the more comfortable sleepers have two berths per compartment, not four. They include St Petersburg to Riga, Vilnius,
Moscow, Berlin, and Chisinau, and of course many in Asia.

Please write if I can help further. This is certainly a good experience and good memory

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