A Night Train Switzerland Lost Is Coming Back

Twenty years ago European operators were quietly retiring sleeper trains on the reasoning that nobody would pay for a berth when a budget airline sold the same journey for the price of lunch. That judgement is being revised. Swiss Federal Railways hopes to launch a EuroNight service linking Basel with Malmö and Copenhagen from 15 April, restoring an overnight connection between Switzerland and Scandinavia that had disappeared from the timetable entirely.

The economics that killed the sleeper are the ones now reviving it. A night train converts travel time into accommodation, which means the comparison is not ticket versus airfare but ticket versus airfare plus a hotel night plus two airport transfers. Add carbon-conscious corporate travel policies, rising short-haul flight costs and a generation of travellers who find the whole airport experience actively unpleasant, and the maths looks different than it did in 2005.

The route sits within a wider redrawing of the European rail map. Paris–Berlin via Brussels resumed on 26 March, gaining a Hamburg stop on 13 July. A direct Prague–Copenhagen daytime service via Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin launched on 1 May, taking around eleven hours end to end. Austria’s Koralmbahn between Graz and Klagenfurt has opened fully, and Deutsche Bahn and SNCF plan a high-speed Paris–Munich service before the year is out.

If you have not booked a sleeper before, three things are worth knowing. Accommodation tiers vary enormously — a seat, a six-berth couchette and a private single compartment with a washbasin are radically different experiences at radically different prices, and the cheap fare quoted online is usually the seat. Berths sell out months ahead on popular dates. And bring earplugs, an eye mask and a small bag you can keep with you; the romance survives contact with reality much better when you have slept.

Sources: European Rail Timetable, Forbes