The new generation of night trains snaking their way across Europe

Published

2 years ago

June 3, 2023

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As climate solutions go, this has to be the most restful. Go to sleep in one European capital, wake up in another with a virtuous glow alongside your fresh croissant.

I am on the first of a new generation of night trains spreading across the continent, the motive is reducing air travel.

Fewer people are flying than before COVID, but the trends are rising once again.

Carbon emissions per passenger-mile on the train are about one fifth of those on a plane. That is one of the driving forces for Chris Engelsman, the founder of this crowd funded company: The European Sleeper.

“It’s sustainable and pleasant travelling, and we really believe it will be profitable,” he said. “The night train is very important because you can cover a longer distance – going all the way to Barcelona, Milan, Prague, Copenhagen, and it’s still time efficient.

“So it’s very good competition for aeroplanes. We don’t need to persuade everybody to come by train: just 5% of current air travellers would make us fully booked every day.”

Aiming for affordability

This inaugural service is a strange mix between the luxurious and the spartan.

Night trains inevitably evoke images of retro-glamour, especially if, like me, you’ve watched too many James Bond films or read too many Agatha Christie novels.

The bunk beds are comfortable, the sheets are crisp and there is a revelatory vanity unit, hidden in a corner cabinet, complete with mirrors on three sides. But the rolling stock is decades old, rented from across the continent and, sadly for those hoping for decadent dining room encounters, doesn’t include a restaurant car.

It costs £70 for a bed in a shared compartment, and double that for a room of your own.

The European Sleeper company is tendering for the construction of new carriages, but Mr Engelsman says they’ll aim for affordability rather than top end.

“We decided not to go luxurious as we want this to be for average people, accessible for everybody. We want to have a dining car in the future as we call this the ‘Good Night Train’ and we need to develop a good ‘night club’ alongside.”

Once in a state of seemingly terminal decline after the explosion of budget flights – Europe’s night trains are having a moment.

Fuelled by a demand for greener travel options – new routes are now once again snaking across the continent – including my train from Brussels to Berlin.

‘The greenest way to cross Europe’

The expansion of night trains has support from the EU as part of its mission to cut the continent’s carbon footprint.

France has just banned short haul flights on journeys that take less than two-and-a-half hours by rail. And the Belgian government is promising to subsidise night trains like this. Their deputy PM and transport minister, Georges Gilkinet, was aboard.

“We have just voted in the parliament to help night trains to develop, by paying for the track pass and the energy cost,” he said. “It’s the greenest way to cross Europe and there is a great demand with the trains booked up for months.

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“We want to make Brussels a hub for night trains. We already have one to Vienna, this one to Berlin and a future service to Southern Europe”.

That service is a train which ‘European Sleeper’ are planning to run to Barcelona. It will stop in Lille – an easy link to the UK, as it’s just one hour and 20 minutes from London.

But there are no plans yet for new services direct from the British capital. Different carriage size regulations and the cost and bureaucracy of using the Channel Tunnel make it uneconomic at present.

I knock on my neighbouring compartment door to talk to Mark Smith, founder of the train enthusiasts’ website, “The Man in Seat 61”, to get his view on the attraction of being a night-rider.

“It’s so practical – leave a city centre in the evening, sleep the night away in bed and arrive the following morning in a completely different country,” he said. “It’s nothing like the stresses of getting on a plane. It’s about enjoying the journey as well as the destination”.

This service takes the long way round to Berlin, picking up passengers in Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

My slumber is briefly broken by a few bumps in the night, but I feel well rested as I awake in the outskirts of the German capital.

Bond villains remained confined to my dreams, not lurking in the luggage rack.

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World

Katy Perry floats in space as part of star-studded all-female Blue Origin mission

Published

10 hours ago

April 14, 2025

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Katy Perry floats in space as part of star-studded all-female Blue Origin mission

Katy Perry has blasted off to space along with five other women in the first all-female space crew in over sixty years.

The Firework singer lifted off from West Texas on a Blue Origin rocket before becoming the first artist to sing in space.

Flying alongside Perry were author Lauren Sanchez, the fiancee of Blue Origin owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, journalist and TV presenter Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.

The star-studded crew were supported on the ground by family and friends including Kris Jenner, Khloe Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey, who said she had “never been more proud” of her friend, King.

“There’s only one time all the women are going up for the first time,” Oprah said she told her friend when urging her to go on the flight, telling her she’d regret turning down the opportunity.

Weightlessness

The crew were weightless for just four minutes after passing the Karman line, a 62-mile-high boundary that is internationally recognised as the boundary of space.

They could be heard screaming as they began to feel weightless, and told each other to look at the incredible views of the moon.

As the crew were leaving space, Perry started to sing What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong.

Asked why she chose that song, she said: “It’s not about me or about me singing my songs, it was about a collective energy in there.

“It’s about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it.”

She confirmed she will be writing a song about the experience.

Space missions don’t get any weirder than this

A sassy crew, a billionaire and a celebrity circus in the desert. Space missions don’t get any weirder.

But this is the new world of Blue Origin and its publicity machine.

It brought together six women – all at the top of their game – and dressed them in designer flight suits. One of them, singer Katy Perry, said they “put the ass into astronauts”.

They launched in a rocket called New Shepard, rising to 65 miles above the Earth, where they unbuckled and floated.

Back on planet Earth there was a star-studded gathering. There were a couple of Kardashians. And Oprah Winfrey was there too, covering her eyes, barely able to look.

It was all a little surreal, and maybe it will have attracted an audience who wouldn’t normally watch a space launch.

It’s remarkable that this was the first all-female space mission in more than 60 years.

Read Thomas Moore’s full analysis here.

The descent

Three parachutes on their capsule opened up to bring them safely back down to Earth and just before they landed, an air cushion blew a cloud of dust up in the west Texas desert, giving a dramatic-looking touchdown.

“Excited as I am, I’ll be very glad when we come back down,” said self-confessed nervous flier King before liftoff.

When she exited the shuttle, the presenter kissed the floor and said: “Thank you, Jesus”.

She said it was “oddly quiet” in space, and it reminded her that people needed to “do better and be better” on Earth.

“It was the most incredible experience of my life to be up there and see such vast darkness in space and look down on our planet,” said Flynn, through tears.

“The moon was so beautiful and I feel like that was a special gift just for me,” she said.

World

British father and son drown off Australian coast – reports

Published

10 hours ago

April 14, 2025

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British father and son drown off Australian coast - reports

A British father and son have reportedly drowned after they were swept out to sea off the coast of a popular Australian tourist town.

The 46-year-old man and his 17-year-old son reportedly got into difficulty while swimming at a beach in Seventeen Seventy – named after the year Captain James Cook landed in Queensland.

They were declared dead at the scene after being pulled from the water by a rescue helicopter.

A third man, an Australian who is believed to have tried to rescue the pair, was taken to hospital after suffering head injuries, according to local media.

CapRescue, the emergency service that conducted the operation on Sunday, said it “was a difficult one”.

“At 2.17pm, emergency services were called to 1770 after reports three people had been swept out into the ocean,” they said in a statement on Facebook.

“Multiple crews were tasked to the scene, including CapRescue. Despite the best efforts of all involved, two people tragically lost their lives.

“One patient was transported by air to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in a life-threatening condition.

“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this heartbreaking incident.”

Police confirmed the pair were visiting from the UK and said a report would be prepared for the coroner, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), while 7News reported they were father and son.

The town, at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, draws visitors from around the world and is busy with tourists in the school holidays before Easter.

Surf Life Saving Queensland’s regional operations manager, Darren Everard, told ABC the deaths were “an absolute tragedy”.

“Around any of our creeks and headlands… especially on a high tide when there’s a big swell, it’s chaos in the water and… sadly, that’s where we have coastal fatalities in Australia,” he said.

“I think everyone should just take that little bit of time when they go on holidays, and it doesn’t matter where you are around Australia, seek local knowledge… but you also need to go to where those flags are.”

A foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of two British nationals who have died in Australia and are in contact with the local authorities.”

World

Donald Trump says the US could deport ‘homegrown criminals’ to El Salvador jail

Published

10 hours ago

April 14, 2025

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Donald Trump says the US could deport 'homegrown criminals' to El Salvador jail

Donald Trump has suggested “homegrown criminals” in the US could be deported to jails in El Salvador – saying the US attorney general is “studying the laws right now”.

He made the comment while speaking alongside the Central American nation’s president, Nayib Bukele, in the White House.

The Trump administration has sent hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador, since March.

When asked about the deportations – which were briefly blocked by a US court last month – Mr Trump said: “I’d like to go a step further.

“We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, hit elderly ladies on the back of the head when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters.

“I’d like to include them in people to get out of the country.”

When pressed on the matter by a reporter, he replied: “They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too. I’m all for it.”

US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was present at the meeting, is “studying the laws right now”, the US president added.

“If we can do that, that’s good,” he said. “I’m talking about violent people, really bad people.

“We can do things with the president [of El Salvador] for less money and have great security. He does a great job with that. We have other we’re negotiating with too.”

The ‘world’s coolest dictator’ said all the right things for Trump

Nayib Bukele is a master of optics.

His look was slick – a black suit and long-sleeve black t-shirt beneath – fitting for the man who’s dubbed himself “the world’s coolest dictator”.

And the Salvadorian president said all the right things, aligning his few chosen words with US priorities.

“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” he replied, when asked if he’d be returning a prisoner deported by mistake.

That will have gone down well in the White House.

The Oval Office has become a diplomatic minefield since Donald Trump returned to power.

Sir Keir Starmer’s letter from the King was considered a masterstroke. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s scrutinising of foreign policy, quite the opposite.

Others, like Ireland’s premier Micheal Martin, said as little as possible while seated next to Trump.

Bukele didn’t say much either, opting for a touch of deference to “the leader of the free world”.

He wants to position El Salvador as a key player in the region, not just a small country in Latin America.

His authoritarian leanings back home may appeal to the US president.

And Bukele is savvy enough to milk that for all it’s worth.

The Trump administration has been deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members to the El Salvador jail since mid-March, when the US president signed the Alien Enemies Act.

The law from 1798 has been invoked just three times before, in wartime. It allows the president to detain and deport immigrants living in the US legally if they are from countries seen as “enemies” of the government.

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Lawyers and immigrant rights groups have been unable to contact the men sent to the 40,000 capacity CECOT prison – the largest detention facility in Latin America.

A judge issued a temporary block on the deportations on 17 March, but this was lifted by the Supreme Court last week.