European Sleeper: Europe’s New Night Train
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- Опубликовано: 7 июн 2024
- On May 25, 2023, the first "European Sleeper" night train between Berlin and Brussels departed from the German capital. This route will travel through the Netherlands, and in the future they hope to extend service to Dresden and Prague. In this video, we take a brief look at the history of European Sleeper.
The European Sleeper website: www.europeansleeper.eu/en
Footage Generously Provided by:
Nonstop Eurotrip: / nonstopeurotrip
Jeroen Vogel: / travelvogel
sanderbin: sanderbin?...
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The revival of night train and appearance budget high speeds train will revolutionize train travel all over Europe. I so excited for the future of long distance railroading in Europe!
Hopefully fares and timetables will be further integrated
@@Thom-TRA Hey Thom! Do you think they could go through the Channel Tunnel and to St. Pancras?
I lived in Berlin and we (2 parents & 2 small children) do all our holidays by train. Although we are an early investor in European Sleeper-third funding round starting this week!-the route for us is not super helpful. If we were to travel to Amsterdam we would just take the direct 7-hour day train. What really excites me is possibility to go Amsterdam-Barcelona by night train. That would be a fantastic way to travel with kids. We have used NightJet alot for holidays in Italy. Go Berlin-Munich by ICE (4 hours) and NightJet to Verona or Rome. From Rome it's easy to catch a fast train down south-and given the kids have slept on the train-you just need an espresso and some breakfast in Rome and then hop on a train for further travel. This year we are going on a NightJet from Munich to Genoa-which I think is the first time this has been offered-which will simplify travel a lot for us.
An important plus with night trains is that they don't only allow night travel, but that they allow cross-border travel throughout Europe. Last year we went from Finale Liguria (a smallish holiday town an hour from Genoa) to Berlin in a day (10am-2am), but that required changing trains three times (Italian, Swiss, German) with the risk that any delay would be a major hassle.
Thanks for contributing financially to the travels of others! I hope they will introduce a service more beneficial to you in the future.
Whow, you're so quick by posting this video. I just took the European Sleeper (and not only me, some other guys where on the train as well).
I’m glad you weren’t the only person on the train lol
Amazing video mate! Well researched and super informative as usual ❤🎉
Thank you so much!
Just a little note but afaik their deal with Regiojet fell through and the 2 companies are no longer partnered with eachother, hence why they've needed to get rolling stock from various other sources. In this case primarily from leasing firms in Germany (Train Rental International) for the 2 sleeper cars, and then various leasing firms for the other coaches. The Couchettes for instance come from a firm called "GfF Crailsheim" with the inscription "Optima Express" on them. These coaches are usually used for this specific train. The Optima Express being a seasonal train across the Balkans between Austria and Turkey to allow Turkish people in the Germanic countries to travel back to Turkey for traditions during a specific time of year and taking their cars with them too.
Will the optima expres still operate, if the cars are on the European Sleeper?
@@Thom-TRA Honestly I don't know. But there are 5 cars on the train and the leasing firm owns 12 such couchette cars so there should still be enough for the optima express, at least to some extent.
I am in fact riding this train in August - it’ll be my first sleeper.
I hope you have a great trip! Let me know how it goes
I’d absolutely use this! Combining travel time with the overnight hours is a win-win. It basically serves as my hotel for the night. However, I’d really prefer a private sleeping car, as I’m a light sleeper and always have trouble sharing sleeping rooms with others (I can’t do hostel dorm rooms either).
This looks great and I really hope they're succesful. As a Copenhagener I can only say the more sleeper trains the better. We currently only have 1 night train serving the city, called the "Berlin Night express". That it another open access train operated by Snälltåget from Sweden between Malmö and Berlin+Dresden with throughcarriages to Stockholm, alongside some seasonal trains to the Austrian alps for tourists.
We actually did have plans for a government subsidised night train between Malmö/Copenhagen and Brussels to be supported by the Danish and Swedish states. It was to be tendered alongside a Stockholm to Hamburg overnight service which would pass through Copenhagen in the middle of the night. But due to German laws, any long distance trains going through there cannot operate with any government subsidy on German territory, vastly hurting the economic viability of these trains. As such the Stockholm to Hamburg train only received a single bid, while the Malmö to Brussels train received ZERO bids and as such got cancelled. If it had gotten a bit it would've started operating in August 2022, alongside the Stockholm to Hamburg train, which SJ bid on as the sole bidder. Their reason being that the stretch from the Danish border to Hamburg was small enough for them to take on the loss of operating through Germany for such a short stretch.
Finally more international trains!
Wonderful video!!! How awesome that the sleepers are back!!!
Thom, thank you for another interesting video.
You’re welcome! Got another one from the Netherlands lined up for next week.
Thank you for the video Thom! It's always great to see competition. I still have yet to try the NightJet. The timetable looks good with decent journey times. I would travel with the European Sleeper to Berlin, Prague and Barcelona (when it's operational). It's good to see there is a Eurostar connection to/from London in Brussels. Here in the UK - the Caledonian Sleeper will be nationalised by the Scottish Government next month. Hopefully fares will reduce!
When I travel to Europe for my holiday, I always try to use the Nightjet from Amsterdam (it is cheaper to get a ferry from Newcastle to Ijmuiden than use the Eurostar to get to Amsterdam - Eurostar's timetable makes it impossible to get there from the north of England without an overnight stay in London). The biggest problem is the shortage of sleeper compartments on any sleeper train - even with Nightjet you have to book them at least three months in advance! More overnight trains please with more sleeper compartments. Interesting point - a UK consumer magazine recently published a survey comparing the cost of travelling from London to Wien by plane or by train. The choice was either Eurostar to Paris then Nightjet to Wien in a sleeping compartment, or a direct flight to Wien and a night in an Air bnb. The cheaper option was the train - and it was more eco-friendly!
I think we have an exciting future ahead of us.
That’s unfortunate that the Eurostar schedule does not cater to the northern UK.
@@Thom-TRA Originally, Eurostar had plans to run north of London, including sleeper trains - the stock was built and delivered but eventually sold to VIA Rail in Canada who now use it on the Ocean. Unfortunately, the plan was to rout trains via the West Coast mainline but someone got the dimensions wrong when passing them to Railtrack (he company then responsible for the upkeep of Britain's railways0 and the result was that, when Railtrack upgraded the line for the coming Pendolino stock and faster running, some station platforms were built too narrow to cater for the bigger loading gauge of Eurostar stock. Result - no European trains north of London!
I enjoyed that video👍👍
I’m glad you did!
Very good news indeed! You are right: Trains are awsome !
Thank you! Night trains are a good idea!
I lived in the Netherlands for 5 years, but it was right during the period where they were getting rid of night trains 😭 glad they’ll be there when I come back someday
@@Thom-TRA I live in a country which relies heavily on trains and where night trains are still quite popular...
Thank you for this very interesting video. Good to see the return of a night service from Bruxelles and The Netherlands to Berlin, and I hope it’s very successful.
I hope it's successful too! Maybe one day there will be modern stock, if it makes enough money
Better use a DBAG class 101 and then a SNCB 27 class for trains to Brussels and a NS 1700 class for trains to Amsterdam.
@@rdrogel or how about they stick with a multi-system TRAXX, so they don’t have to switch locomotives at each border?
Would be nice if there was a service like this from London St. Pancras Intl. to Berlin or other places.
Let’s see the Channel Tunnel lower their crazy high access fees
I wonder why they couldn't around it via HSL 2 Brussel Zuid Leuven Luik HSL 3 Luik Aken Aachen Hbf. The section in West Germany section is Aachen-Köln-Dusseldorf-Duisburg-Essen Bochum Dortmund Minden Hannover Braunschweig Helmstedt . Where you cross the former inner German border using this route Helmstedt Marienborn Magdeburg Potsdam Griebnitzsee Berlin Wannsee Berlin Hbf. Which turns out to be the exact routing for a 1980s Brussels to Berlin sleeper.
Because the whole purpose of the train is to serve the Netherlands
You're more than welcome!
Appreciate it
Certainly will use this one when it reaches Prague. What a journey 🥰
Very impressed at your speed in posting this development.
From what I've read part of the delay in commencement resulted in difficulty in sourcing sleeper rolling stock. The second-hand, albeit refurbished cars are far from ideal when compared to the Nightjet offering for example. Nevertheless I wish them every success in the venture and hope for expansion of the European night train network(s).
I do wonder whether Amtrak should be looking at similar service provision i.e. overnight services between specific city pairs as opposed to the multi-night long distance tourist services that it currently offers.
There is a private company planning something similar between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Hoping they will actually be able to go to SFO instead of on the other side of the bay.
Hi Thom! It’s nice to see the European Sleeper finally enter service! Looks like this train and your video are both (pun intended, of course!) on the right track! (Ba dum tss!)
I just wish they could do a sleeper through the Channel Tunnel. The night star would have been exciting, but too bad it didn’t go through! But maybe what if we modified the Caledonian Sleeper for the job!
That Electric locomotive cab giving me Americana vibe 🇺🇸 0:04, ALSO actually what type of Rolling Stock was built from?
I just recently saw that I could take (a normal daytime service) without any transfers from my city of Frankfurt to Milano. From there I would have access to the whole Italian High speed network. I consider taking a vacation down there’s some day.
For a even longer time I consider visiting Lissabon by train. I know there is a öbb nightjet service proposed from Zurich to Barcelona. But there also is the occasional TGV from Frankfurt to southern France where I could interchange to Barcelona. Than continue on the Madrid and Lissabon.
Good to see this finally come true. Now let's hope they'll be able to build/buy/lease new modern rolling stock. As a kid i loved taking the night train... then it stopped... 23 years later, i rode one again in France (Paris-french riviera) a few weeks ago, I couldn't sleep, my wife neither, only our 6-year old got to sleep well. I guess it works well for young people, not so well for more mature adults, at least when the rolling stock is as old as them.
Newer rolling stock would offer a smoother ride, less noise, and i guess more sleep ?? :)
Hoping they’ll get newer trains someday!
Hi I saw you at the classy whale stream yesterday
I wish that the company is jointly operated by the European railway companies like DBAG and SNCB. They can use their motive power and if so they can swapped at their border crossings/stations just like the old days.
I wonder if this will eventually get bought out by Nightjet or Dutch Railways. Nightjet would put it under a nationalized service which also has more experience with night train services and which at least I've *heard* good things from, and while I've read that Dutch Railways has its issues, if that was gotten under control it would be nice for it to be integrated with the national system.
In the US commercial train services are acceptable because often the other option is, well, *no* services, but Europe is not in such a dire situation with regard to public transit and therefore having a unified service network run as a public service really seems like the only acceptable option.
I think you’re getting stuff mixed up. Almost every train in the US is public, not commercial, because there’s so little demand, governments have to ensure alternative options. In the EU, commercialized parties thrive because there is so much demand.
And this service will never become NS. And that’s a good thing. If NS monopolizes on night trains the fares will go up. This is an affordable alternative to NS and there should be more like it.
In the past, we could travel across Europe using any national operator for the international journey on one ticket. If we were delayed, we could take the next train without any stress.
With a multitude of competing companies, we are stuck with one operator, on specific train, if we miss that we then have to make a new booking at much higher fares.
It all makes travel stressful.
Having said that, I wish the ES company good luck and success.
The challenge of this generation will be to develop a platform that unifies all ticket sales. It’s not impossible, we just need to have all companies understand the true value of rail travel.
The concept of charter sleeper trains like Green City trips are nothing new. SNCF's London, Manchester and Glasgow office used to use spare Sleeper, Couchette, Reclining Seat carriages over the Ski season to run from Calais Maritime and Lille direct to the French Alps (Moutiers and Bourg St Maurice) and to Sankt Anton Im Arlberg, Austria.
The train was wholesale sold to tour companies so whether ran empty or full we had the revenue.
The St Anton was great as due to the distance it included a Disco car (basically a second bar car with a dance floor) it was always fun to travel on. As you passed through Lille and Strasbourg and other cities dancing the night away whilst locals waiting on TER and (S)S-Bahn stations looked somewhat bemused as to what the party train was.
Maybe Colorado and Upstate NY should try it Metro-North or RTD Disco carriages.
I wonder if the nightstar could have been a hit in these times
@@Thom-TRA not post the stupidity of the right and Brexit.
One of the reasons SNCF/NMBS-SNCB/SBB-CFF-FFS set up retail and wholesale promotion units for Eurostar and Nightstar services was to promote regional connectivity. There was even EU funding but the Home Office and Department for Transport insisted on customs and security sealed trains and the smaller loading gauge put limits on Nightstar. Add to the list was the start of direct sell airlines.
Operators are looking at potentially starting London services but the demand has yet to be proven.
I personally see Eurostar or other High Speed operators (Deutsche Bahn especially) running feeders from London to Hubs like Lille, Bruxelles Midi- Brussel Zuid, Koln to then connect into sleeper services. Especially if the hubs have business or welcome lounges freshen up before or after the night journey. Something that Penzans-Penzance has for the Night Riviera Sleeper.
1:16 and 5:06 I guess the Price would be 6 1/4 of 20 euros
Thanks for sharing. I hope someday we could see this potential in the U.S. and offer the right subsidies and infrasctructure improvements so we could have night trains on more routes with better OTP and much more affordable fares. I think its an attractive offering "go by night, sieze the day," but at fares more comparable to a generic cookie-cutter suburban interstate side roadsize mid-range hotel instead of a cruise ship. It just makes too much sense not to do and would make so much sense from both an economic and environmental standpoint. I don't know how much Americans would go for couchettes but why not do them as you could market them to families, friends, co-workers, students or groups like church groups traveling on a budget.
There are some great corridors that are the perfect length for a service like this!
There's a new privately run overnight service from LA to SF. It's not cheap though...about $300.
Cool to see a flix train now that we have flux buses running in the us.
Edit for question: why does open access seem to work well but British rail has struggling private operators? Maybe I’m wrong that they are struggling but that was my impression.
Flixtrain runs in Germany and Sweden. They wanted to go to France as well but France charges exorbitantly high access fees.
I don’t know about the British rail thing. I believe it has to do with how the system was franchised.
I think in Germany most of the trains are a service that the government buys at a predetermined fee from private operators, so the fares are set by the government. On top of this there are the open access operators that can run any train they want at their own expense. I don't really know how it works in the UK, but I believe the govenment doesn't pay the operators to run the trains, so they have to set high fares, and there are a lot less operators that are bidding on the routes, so the government can't always choose reliable operators.
Hi George. I'm a British citizen who travels across the UK by train regularly. Hopefully I can give you and others some clarity. Private operators have run many of the UK's rail line's for years since the privatisation of British Rail in the 1990's. Over the years many of these private train operating companies or franchises have collapsed. This becomes a 'Operator of Last Resort' - a business that operates a railway franchise on behalf of the government. Example - Virgin Train East Coast became Intercity East Coast then LNER. We have 5 operators who are currently run in this way with 2 more on the way (Transpennine Express and the Caledonian Sleeper). To finish, the current franchising system is to be replaced by a new stated owned body called Great British Railways. I hope this helps.
@@CameronLandels it does thank you for the good explanation .
I like the idea of night trains and wish we had something similar in the US. Never been to Europe but those routes don't sound very popular. I would think like Spain to Austria would be nice and people can get off at their destinations. Maybe more luxury options like Japan offers but it's a step in the right direction. We don't have anything similar.
Amsterdam Berlin is a very popular route that the official national railways have been fumbling for years now. This competition may finally wake them up.
Not very popular?! Brussels-A'dam-Berlin-Dresden-Prague is a highly popular route. Wake up, guy! But, OK, as you say you're American, I assume you know next to nothing about European geography. Obviously...
I always took and saw sleeper trains leave from italy too why do you focus on the Nederlands?
Because maybe, he is DUTCH?
What Stefan said, and because European Sleeper doesn’t run to Italy…?
Why only to Berlin? The trainset will sit there while continuing to Prague would add passengers while no more costs for rolling stock would arise, only for the track usage...
Engineering work between Berlin and Prague limiting capacity.
I mentioned that there are capacity issues
@@Thom-TRA - I thought you were talking about the capacity of the train, about the availability of enough sleeper cars...
What if Flixbus started an airline?
Don’t give them any ideas
Yeah no...
Yes it is a good idea, but I don't think a very big success will come soon.
The problem is, that most rolling stock for night trains, especially the privat owned is very old.
Deutsche Bahn runned some nigh D-Züge (D-Zug was the class under an InterCity and became less famous during the 90s due to expansion of InterCity and ICE network) untill the early 2000s. Mostly they runned in the nights form friday and from sunday. A lot of soldiers used this services in the seating cars to get home for weekend holiday. Those trains often had couchette and sleeping cars with them for travellers who wanted some more comfort.
But also back then this cars were old and not up to date. Most stock from the private operators is part from this old stock or is part from the old stock of holiday trains.
This stock was old even 20 years ago and can't keep up with modern expectation.
If they want to be succsessfull they have to spend millions of euros in new up to date cars.
For me a compartment with own toilet is a must have on long night jouneys.
I think this provides people more options. People who are willing to pay extra for comfort take the night jet, while people who are traveling on a budget take the cheaper options.
He pronounced the European cities names right ❤
It’s almost like he’s a European himself…
@@Thom-TRA Yeah i always forget about that. But still, I always cringe when a RUclipsrs says Zurich or really anything german with a Z in it wrong. It's nice to see anyone doing it right. (As a part Hungarian European myself)
Great news for savvy time poor travellers who need to cover long distances overnight without the hassle of air travel and want to save on accommodation costs.
There was no information about what riding this service is actually like. May be great or just awful.
That’s because I didn’t ride it
There is certainly a market for overnight travel as loads of overnight buses trundle across Europe overnight.A train is much more comfortable than a bus even if you have to sit up all night.I haven't done any overnight trips this year unless i count my two overnight stargazing trips on foot but I use to do loads of the overnight buses as no overnight trains ran from the places i was going to/from.
Hmm, comparing to Indian trains…it’s a downgrade but of course it will be more hygienic.
Everyone I’ve ever spoken to has had terrible experiences on Indian trains
@@Thom-TRA Yeah, it’s not hygenic by European standards I admit. But if I look at cabins and comfort I will choose an Indian train. Maybe because this sleeper train are from 1950s. Can you order restaurant food, domino’s from train itself there in Europe?