The new generation of night trains snaking their way across Europe
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”.
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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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The fast-moving developments on Trump’s Ukraine peace deal are dominating the G20 summit in South Africa, as European leaders scramble to put together a counter-proposal to the US-Russia 28-point plan and reinsert Ukraine into these discussions.
European countries are now working up proposals to put to President Trump ahead of his deadline of Thursday to agree a deal.
Ukraine is in a tight spot. It cannot reject Washington outright – it relies on US military support to continue this war – but neither can it accept the terms of a deal that is acutely favourable to Russia, requiring Ukraine to give up territory not even occupied by Moscow and reducing its army.
Overnight, the UK government has reiterated its position that any deal must deliver a “just and lasting peace”.
Ukraine war latest: Kyiv to discuss ending war in talks in Switzerland
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Keir Starmer calls for growth plan at G20
The prime minister, who spoke with E3 allies President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine on the phone on Friday, is having more conversations today with key partners as they work out how to handle Trump and improve this deal for Ukraine.
One diplomatic source told me allies are being very careful not to criticise Trump or his approach for fear of exacerbating an already delicate situation.
Instead, the prime minister is directing his attacks at Russia.
Read more:
Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan in full
Analysis: We could all pay if Europe doesn’t guarantee Ukraine’s security
Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a plenary session on the first day of the G20 Leaders’ Summit. Pic: Reuters
“There is only one country around the G20 table that is not calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and one country that is deploying a barrage of drones and missiles to destroy livelihoods and murder innocent civilians,” he said on Friday evening.
“Time and again, Russia pretends to be serious about peace, but its actions never live up to its words.”
Pic: AP
On the Trump plan, the prime minister said allies are meetin on Saturday “to discuss the current proposal on the table, and in support of Trump’s push for peace, look at how we can strengthen this plan for the next phase of negotiations”.
Strengthening the plan really means that they want to rebalance it towards Ukraine’s position and make it tougher on Russia.
“Ukraine has been ready to negotiate for months, while Russia has stalled and continued its murderous rampage. That is why we must all work together with both the US and Ukraine, to secure a just and lasting peace once and for all,” said the prime minister.
“We will continue to coordinate closely with Washington and Kyiv to achieve that. However, we cannot simply wait for peace.
“We must strain every sinew to secure it. We must cut off Putin’s finance flows by ending our reliance on Russian gas. It won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Pic: AP
Europeans hadn’t even seen this deal earlier in the week, in a sign that the US is cutting other allies out of negotiations – for now at least.
Starmer and other European leaders want to get to a position where Ukraine and Europe are at least at the table.
There is some discussion about whether European leaders such as Macron and Meloni might travel to Washington to speak to Trump early next week in order to persuade him of the European and Ukrainian perspective, as leaders did last August following the US-Russian summit in Alaska.
But Sky News understands there are no discussions about the PM travelling to Washington next week ahead of the budget.
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