Overnight train ideas gratefully received
 

Hello from New Zealand,
It is so wonderful to be back planning our European trips again. Our next trip will be for the month of March and am hoping to enjoy bucket list new experiences while also going back to explore some of our favourite places.

Our starting point for planning may seem strange but we would love to do an overnight train trip (childhood memories of chugging along and waking at every station!). It would be great to get some recommendations as to your thoughts on the best trip. We are not worried about missing scenery as we can go back and see things in the daylight.

We do want a private compartment with an attached shower, etc. A little comfort and preferably food on board but open to taking our own. Really don't mind where it starts or finishes as long as it leaves early evening and arrives a little later in the morning so we can enjoy dinner and breakfast.

Budget wise the Orient may be a bit too much but otherwise happy to pay for a bit of luxury.

Thank you for your help.
Jinz

We've taken the NightJet from Vienna to Venice a couple of times. Some compartments have showers and we found you need to book early to get them. We brought wine, cheese and snacks aboard for the evening departure. The porter brought breakfast in the morning. There's something intriguing about waking in the middle of the night to a high pitched locomotive whistle, the soft squeal of brakes and the back and forth as the train winds its way through the Alps.

H jinz,

I also love night trains and also always get a full private compartment with its own toilet (necessary now in my life). I love to get undressed, turn off the light, open the shade, and watch the countryside or towns slide by the window from my bed.

Austria's ÖBB has the most extensive night train network, linking Austria & Germany with Italy. Here's a network map.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...d55bec88fa.jpg


Have fun as you plan!

s

There are also night trains to and within Sweden, and of course from London up to Scotland - assuming they aren't still on strike next year, but who knows?

I wouldn't take the one that goes from Brussels to Berlin via Amsterdam just yet. It is using old rolling stock at the moment with little luxury.

There are new routes planned all the time, which may or not be running by March depending on the red tape involved.

As always https://www.seat61.com/ is a great resource.

This is pretty comprehensive: https://www.night-trains.com/europe/

I still remember our night trip from Paris to Italy. We went to sleep shortly after leaving Paris and awoke to the Mediterranean glittering in the sunlight. Simply magical.

I remember going from the UK to Italy by train as a teenager and grabbing the top couchette, wonderful views, but could be hot, noisy and not the most comfortable . More recently I used the Autorail from the Netherlands to Italy which had a dining car and similar views, but sadly is no longer in business. There are various routes from Paris to Italy and Spain. Not sure what the rolling stock is like currently.
I know someone who loves taking the overnight train from London to Inverness, says it is great.

I have ridden quite a lot of night trains, in quite a few countries, although none more recently than 2018. None of them had en-suite showers, and only a couple had en-suite toilets. (Some train stations have showers.) Mostly I shared with other, previously unknown, passengers (in couchettes). However, if you are willing to pay for it, there are now trains with en-suite facilities.

Sleep in a private compartment will depend on the hardness of the bed and the roughness of the ride. I took the Caledonian from London to Edinburgh in 2018 and the ride was the second worst I've experienced (the worst was Hanoi to Sapa).

There is detailed info for Europe here: https://www.seat61.com/sleepers.htm and the same site will tell you whether there are night trains between any pair of cities you are considering.

Berlin - Stockholm. Are you in for a long ferry ride? Plymouth - Santander

Thursdaysd, Nightjets have showers, and more importantly loos which are private for the deluxe and shared for the economy class sleeping cabins.
Same with Swedish night trains.

I am sure others offer them to at a price! They are sold out fast though.

All involve bunks.

The Brussel/Amsterdam/Berlin train will get them eventually but for now as I said are using old rolling stock which is less than optimal.

Most don't have a dining car but do serve snacks and drinks, and breakfast (in your room in Deluxe.) Pack a picnic and enjoy the ride.

Thank you so much everyone. We are happy to pay extra for comfort and don't want to share facilities so appreciate the feedback. Will start to go through all the advice and see if anything fits. Otherwise will look at some nice long day trips where you can stay on the train for the length of the trip. Really appreciate the help.

Not sure about whether there's a night night train for this route, but I recently took the train from Barcelona to Paris during the day and the scenery was lovely (cute little French towns and lavender fields could be seen from the window!) It was a long train ride though.

That's a great suggestion. The longer ride the better! Thank you.

Hello Jinz and everybody. You don't mind where your ride starts or finishes, but imo it would be great to connect two fantastic cities as Vienna and Paris or Amsterdam. I never traveled with night trains in recent times but I have good memories from my youngness and I researched a bit to take my family on this experience concluding that I would go for the ÖBB Nightjets. Home - Nightjet

In the meantime, we work around this idea playing the amazing board game "Ticket to ride Europe"! Ticket to Ride Europe – a board game by Alan R. Moon, published by Days of Wonder

Be aware that there are very few night train compartments with showers.

We'll take the NightJet train from Ancona (Italy) to Vienna in a a few weeks. This is a temporary route, which ends on 10 September. The normal route is from Rome to Vienna.

Apparently some of the private compartments on this route have showers; none were available when I booked, but mine was a last-minute booking. All of the private compartments have sinks, but the toilets are in the hall. The couchettes have sinks and toilets, but none have showers. In one direction, we've reserved an entire couchette for ourselves. This costs a little more than a private compartment, but has the advantage that neither of us has to sleep in the upper bunk. In the other direction, this option wasn't available.

I'll try to remember to report back after the trip.

Apparently night trains are becoming more popular as many people try to avoid air travel, and railways are implementing new services.

This for the future-supposedly launching service in 2025, but I have been following this start up in France called Midnight Trains and thought it might interest others here:

https://www.midnight-trains.com/en/home

Nice to see that the Paris - Rome overnight train will reappear after a very long pause.

Thank you for this helpful info and the tip about booking a whole couchette. I look forward to reading your report.

The trains look very luxurious, so I have a feeling they be rather pricey. If they cost a lot more than the budget airlines, they won't succeed.

My coming trip to Vienna cost €330 round trip per person. When you consider that we saved the cost of two nights in a hotel, it's quite reasonable.

There is no Nightjet (and I think no other night train) from Paris to Rome, so I can't make a comparison.

As an example though, at the moment, a one-way trip on the Nightjet from Bologna to Vienna costs €67, for just a seat, without a cuccette or cabin. Ryanair has a direct one-way flight from Bologna to Vienna around the same date for €16! (The Ryanair prices vary greatly from day to day.) Considering the convenience and cost saving of a center city to center city journey, I consider the Nightjet price to be fairly competitive.

The Midnight train is projected to have only private "rooms". There will be no cheap seats. If the cheapest ride on the Midnight train costs 20 times more than a budget air trip, I think most people would opt for 1.5 hours of misery in Ryanair's economy class, carbon be damned.

Anyway, if the first service is planned for 2025, it's obvious that Midnight is now seeking investors, not passengers. Looking at their website, I get the feeling that their squad has too many generals. Let's see how much the plan changes in the next two years, if it comes off at all.

Actually, the only "overnight" connections are
Paris Lyon dp 15.16 - Rome ar 5.43; change to sleeping car at Turin;
Paris Est dp 15.55 - Rome ar 12.00; change to sleeping car at Stuttgart and to Freccia Rossa at Mestre.

The other problems with Ryanair (and other low cost airlines) is also the add-ons to the price. The free carry on luggage size is now reduced to about the size of a handbag on Ryanair, so you need pre-book and pay for luggage, plus you have to allow for transfer times and costs, 2-3 hours to check in beforehand, etc. so if you add that to the cost of 1 night’s hotel accommodation, the gap in price closes noticeably.

For me, at least, another factor is the experience. I think taking the night train is a unique and memorable experience -- I still remember taking a night train with my sister in 1968 from Switzerland to Spain, and again in the 1980s from Germany to Paris. For neither one did we have a private suite (well... of course not!), but I remember the chocolate we shared, the giggling, the reading, the talking, and watching the world roll by. Really so much more memorable than an airport, which could literally be anywhere in the world.

Yeah, I'd pay more for the experience.

s

I've traveled by Ryanair and know all the drawbacks and the extra costs. I myself enjoy train travel and have taken a fair number of overnight trains in my life. When I was young, I traveled in couchette carriages. In the 1980s, some couchette cars had no privacy at all, so you slept in your clothes. They also had no sheets or pillow cases, so I made myself a sleep sack with an attached pillowcase out of an old sheet. (I still have it, and use it for guests who end up sleeping on the sofa when we run out of beds.)

Now that I am old, and less penniless than I was 40 years ago, I get a private compartment, mainly because my husband wouldn't consider a couchette.

However, I really think that an all-luxury overnight train won't find a big enough market to stay afloat.The competition is budget airlines, and most people will choose will not pay hundreds of dollars for a train trip.

This is a very interesting and helpful thread. I too am at the fortunate stage of life where we can splurge and it is the experience that is important. I am afraid of flying at the best of times, (such a long flight from New Zealand ), therefore another reason to use trains. I have many happy childhood memories of boarding the train in our pyjamas and after a packed supper, snuggling down on the most uncomfortable bunks but with so much thrill. Waking up the next morning to be met by our father who had driven overnight in our mini minor car packed up with our luggage was always exciting. After our holiday we would repeat the whole process for the return journey.

One thing we are saw a month or so when we booked our Air France tickets using "miles" is that many of the options now have a partnership with the rail company. We typically have our final destination as either Bordeaux or somewhere in the south like Toulouse or Montpellier. So for Bordeaux in particular we can connect out of CDG either by plane or train with about the same arrival time at our final destination.

As many here know, France has an enacted a flight ban between cities that have a high-speed rail alternative that makes it possible to travel between the two cities in less than two-and-a-half hours. So I think that the partnerships between the major airlines and the rail systems will help support more low cost train travel and then hopefully some company like Midnight Trains can offer a more premium offering.

Here's a couple of links from May 2023 on the topic:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/p...een%20progress.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/f...lights-climate

Earlier this year, I wanted to meet a friend in Paris and catch up with some former colleagues who I had not seen since Covid. My dates were flexible, so I started looking at so-called cheap flights and was surprised at the prices regardless of the London airports or the north east. I did a x-check with Eurostar and got a much better deal including the hotel…. Plus I felt great when I got off Paris in Gare du Nord.

My husband and I have just returned from our brief trip by NightJet from Le Marche, Italy, to Vienna. As promised I'm reporting back about the experience.

As I said above, this is a temporary route. This train usually travels between Rome and Vienna, but has been rerouted because of track work on the usual route.

In August we always have visiting friends and relatives who come to beautiful Le Marche to relax, and escape the city heat. Our calendar was full this year, so we could only go away for a few days. The trip was a last-minute decision; I reserved the train just two weeks in advance. There were not many places left on the trains, so I had to play around with the dates. This temporary routing ends on the 10th of September.

​​​​The NightJet is operated by the ÖBB, the Austrian railway. There are three classes of service: seats, couchettes, and private compartments. The couchettes can sleep either 4 or 6, in bunks, and the private compartments can sleep from 1 to 3. You can rent an entire couchette compartment for privacy.

We reserved an entire couchette compartment for the trip to Vienna, because that was our only option for the dates that worked for us. On the way back, we reserved a private compartment.

Couchette
One advantage of the couchette compartment is that we had two lower bunks, so no one needed to climb a ladder. This was the only advantage. I said in my earlier post that these couchette compartments were furnished with a toilet and sink, but that was a misunderstanding on my part. The website (in Italian) said that these were available, but it meant they were available in the hallway.There were also showers in the hallway.

At night the seats convert into two narrow "beds". The upper bunks are above them. We were in a four-person compartment. I'm not sure how it works with a six-person compartment.

Each person is furnished with a single worn-out sheet, a mini pillow, and a small blanket. There is no way to tuck the sheet in. I wrapped the sheet around me like a hot dog bun, but during the night I often found myself sleeping on the bare seat upholstery.
​​​​​​
Each bunk had a night light and a little mesh bag on the wall where you could put things you needed to keep close at hand.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...5a9f0b12ad.jpg
​​​​​​
The bed sloped and had a hump in the middle. On my side, there was a metal hook on the wall that kept stabbing me in the back.

There were two bathrooms in the hallway, at each end of the car, but one wasn't working. Despite that, we never had to wait to use the one bathroom. It was clean and had a toilet and small sink. The water was not potable, so I would suggest using bottled water to brush your teeth.

Several bottles of water were provided in the compartment. In the morning, the attendant removed the bedding and turned the beds back into not-very-comfortable seats. A light breakfast was served: a choice of coffee or tea, two bread rolls, butter and jam.

The biggest problem is that the latch to lock the door from the inside was very difficult to close and even more difficult to open. We decided not to lock it, because in an emergency we might be trapped inside. The next day, my husband discovered all his cash, and a pair of sunglasses, were missing. We can't be sure it happened on the train, but that's our suspicion.

The train arrived in Vienna two hours late, so our plans for the morning were shot.
​​​
I recommend taking the couchette only if you enjoy wilderness camping. There were several families with small children on the train, and the kids seemed to be thrilled with the adventure.

Reserving an entire couchette compartment for two people costs a little more than a private compartment for two. Unless you really can't deal with a ladder, the private compartment is the hands-down best option.

Private compartment

On the way back, we had a private compartment, and the experience was decidedly better. The seats were comfortable, and when you were ready to turn in, the attendant came and converted the seats into beds. The three seats folded down flat, and a bed was lowered over them. The second bed, a bunk, folded down above that. There was a third bunk bed if you needed that.

Opposite the bunks was a little table, and in the corner, in a little cabinet, there was a washbasin and mirror, along with an electrical outlet (one of two in the compartment).
​​​​
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...f39bfd3c13.jpg

The door locked and unlocked easily from the inside, and a little electronic key was provided to lock and unlock it from outside.

There were two toilets, one at each end of the hallway, with a washbasin and a decent-sized shower. Both were working, and we never had to wait for a toilet.

There was a ladder to reach the second bunk, and a sort of screen to keep you from falling out of bed. I'm not as agile as I was 20 years ago, but I managed to get the screen attached to a bar above the bed.

The beds were already made up when they folded down, with a tucked-in sheet, a duvet, and a decent pillow. Each bed had a night light and a little pouch to hold belongings. They were quite comfortable, and we slept well.

Each of us got a hospitality bag, with slippers, a washcloth, eye mask, earplugs, and a pen. Plenty of water bottles were provided. We were given a menu to choose our breakfast. You could choose six items. I chose coffee, yogurt, a glass of milk (choice of hot or cold), two rolls (counts as one item), butter, and jam. Other possibilities included cold cuts and cheese.

All in all, pure luxury compared with the couchette compartment. The only criticism I could make is that it was a little crowded in the compartment. Changing in and out of pajamas required that one of us remain seated on the bed, well out of the way of the other.

I packed everything we needed for the night in a little backpack, so we wouldn't have to open our suitcase. I highly recommend this.

The Nightjet website mentions deluxe compartments, with en suite toilet and shower. I don't know if these are available on every route. It was not an option when I booked. Maybe they were already fully booked, or maybe they aren't available on this route.

Six berth couchettes have three berths per side. If I'm doing night trains I travel with a silk sleep sack, but the bed "linens" are usually better than those you describe.

The four-berth compartments have two per side, and in our compartment the upper berths were permanently folded down, with enough space to sit upright beneath the upper bunks. My perplexity about the 6-berth compartments was because I didn't see how they could fit another row above the second one. In the private compartment, there were three berths, but the second was not that far above the lower one, so that you couldn't sit up straight on the lower berth unless the second berth was folded away.

As I said, I used to have a sleep sack that I used for overnight train travel. Actually, I had three, so that my daughters and I each had one. I only have one now, and we don't travel enough now to acquire more sleep sacks.

Photo of six berth couchette here: https://www.seat61.com/european-trai....htm#overnight

Thank you for this interesting and helpful report. The photos really help to get an idea. Your tips are appreciated as they help get a sense of the different experiences. Thank you.

This link was to a general page about overnight trains. Searching for "NightJet" I found a photo of a four-berth couchette compartment, but not a six-berth compartment. In the photo, the upper berth is high enough above the lower that one can sit comfortably beneath it, but it doesn't look as though a third berth would fit above it. Also, in our compartment, the upper berth was already lowered when we arrived, and I didn't see any possibility of raising it.

I was just wondering if the second berth was much lower in a six-berth compartment, and if it was still possible to sit beneath it, and, if not, could it be raised to allow seating on the bottom berth.

If you click on the link in page I posted you get more detailed info. Specifically:

"On many routes you get a choice of a couchette in a 6-berth compartment or a 4-berth compartment. The compartments are identical, but in 4-berth compartments the top two bunks remain folded away and the middle bunks are folded out in their alternative slightly higher position."

Thank you, Thursdayd! That answers my question. I was expecting a photo and didn't read the text carefully enough. Sorry for my confusion.

Yes - you have to page way down . . . but after I finally got to the photo, I found that link amazing (as is most of the info on Seat 61) so much important detail.

The styles /comfort level have not changed much in over 60 years, although sadly some of the restaurant cars have disappeared.

New overnight train, well back again I should say, Paris - Berlin, starting this winter. OBB Nightjet.

I think as it becomes more popular, and therefore earns the train companies more money they will improve the rolling stock. Currently much of it is quite old, coming from mothballed old night trains.

The private compartments with bathroom always sell out fast.

That would be interesting!

The Nightjet website (part of the OBB or Austrian national railways) is a great place to begin planning for this kind of trip. They are really promoting overnight train travel so Vienna has lots of options and makes for a great base. I did Vienna to Venice and found it be truly magical, waking up in the middle of the night to look out of my window to see alpine villages whizzing by under moonlight. SO much better than flying and a welcome return to slow travel!

Night train from Krakow to Budapest was very uncomfortable. Don't recommend. Maybe take a cheap flight to your next destination?