Sleeper Services

There is something inherently romantic and fascinating about travelling on an overnight sleeper service. You board a train in one city one evening, perhaps have dinner on board as the train clickety-clacks its way through the darkness, then go to bed in a couchette, waking next morning in a different area, or country, arriving eventually after breakfast in another city. It's a wonderful way to travel and also does away with the need to have an hotel booked for the night. Sleeper services have come a long way since their inception and most services now have cabins with showers as well, making the overnight journey like a travelling hotel. There are many routes in Europe, Canada, the USA and Australia, though not so many in the UK now.

Many parts of mainland Europe are linked by sleeper services, particularly those which travel through germany, which seems to be the hub of overnight services. Our photo shows a sleeper train in the Czech Republic, on its way to Germany. In Canada there is an almost nightly service between Montreal (Quebec) and Halifax (Nova Scotia) – leaving Montreal at 6.30pm the train makes its way across Quebec, through New Brunswick and on into Nova Scotia, arriving in Halifax at 4.30pm the next day, a trip of 21 hours (with a time change). There is also a service between Toronto and Vancouver and several other overnight trains (including Winnipeg-Churchill).

Australia has the Ghan overnight service, actually a bit more than that as it takes 52 hours to travel from Adelaide to Darwin (or vice versa), via Alice Springs. There is also the not-to-be-missed Indian Pacific, running between Sydney and Perth, an impressive journey of over 4,300 kms – including the world's longest stretch of straight track, 478 kms across the Nullarbor desert. Leaving Sydney at 3pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays it travels across NSW, calling in at Adelaide and the gold town Kalgoorlie before arriving in Perth around 9pm (local times) on the following Tuesday or Saturday.

Across continental Europe there are several services, many operating on a nightly basis. Paris seems to be the starting point for many, including services to (and from) Zurich, Milan, Rome, Berlin, Madrid and Barcelona. However, Brussels is also popular, especially the Donau Kurier overnight service to Vienna. Leave Paris at 7pm and arrive in Rome next morning in time for coffee; similar timings for Paris-Madrid; Barcelona-Milan, running along the Riviera via Monte Carlo (though in the middle of the night !); and for Barcelona-Zurich. In Germany DB offers a pretty extensive network of overnight sleepers – Munich to Hamburg, Berlin or Copenhagen; Cologne to Prague; Amsterdam-Zurich, Prague or Berlin.

Back in the UK there is a regular sleeper service on First Great Western between Paddington and Penzance; and also between London Euston and Glasgow/Edinburgh/Aberdeen/Inverness and Fort William with ScotRail.