Night trains in Europe: what the new timetable actually changed

Most of Europe's rail operators switched to their 2024 timetables on 10 December. Britain's changes were minimal. Poland and the Baltic states waited another week or two. A new high-speed line through Spain's Cantabrian mountains opened in late November, the Guardian reported.

The night train news sits in the gaps that daytime services never filled. Warsaw moved closer to Munich. Berlin nudged towards Paris. Aachen slipped nearer to Salzburg. None of those city pairs had direct daytime trains. The overnight options created connections where the map previously showed nothing. This is not a small tweak to existing routes. It is a redrawing of what is possible without flying. It happened quietly, in the small print of a timetable that most passengers never read.

The Munich to Warsaw run

The Warsaw-bound train that left Munich on the evening of 10 December was the first direct departure from Bavaria to Poland since 2010, according to the Guardian. That single service also opened new city pairs. A Salzburg to Kraków sleeper now takes almost 10 hours.

Cat Jones, chief executive of the flight-free operator Byway Travel, told the Guardian the new trains were "creating a real buzz" at the company. "We're now able to pair places in holidays where direct trains didn't exist before," she said. She pointed to the Salzburg-Kraków link as an opportunity to combine two very different cities.

Not every change adds a train. Aarhus lost its twice-daily direct service to Hamburg. A connecting service every two hours replaced it, with a same-platform change at Kolding. The Guardian notes that the connection gets travellers to Hamburg faster than the direct trains did. Nuremberg, long a jumping-off point for Czech destinations, went from five direct trains a day to the Czech Republic to none.

France, Germany, the Netherlands

France, where Le Monde declared the night train finished in 2016, now runs a Béziers and Montpellier link to Paris on some nights. The Aurillac-Paris service has no competing direct daytime train at all. French night trains carry no sleeping cars. Passengers choose between a reclining seat and a couchette, with fares from €19 and €29 respectively.

Elsewhere, Dresden gained sleeper connections to Budapest, Vienna and Graz. All three already had daytime trains. The Berlin-Amsterdam journey was trimmed by 30 minutes to under six hours. Kraków's direct daytime trains to Vienna and Berlin doubled from one to two. Wrocław acquired a new early-morning direct train to Vienna with a late-afternoon return.

There is a second direct train from Vienna to Ukraine. Alongside the longstanding Euronight service to Kyiv, the morning departure from Vienna to Romania now carries through-carriages to Chop in Ukraine's Transcarpathia region. The Czech private operator RegioJet is said to be exploring a Prague to Chop overnight service from early 2024.

Why cost keeps coming up

New routes do not settle the price question. Separate Rail Delivery Group analysis published in February 2024 found that across the top 100 business travel routes, a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train. A plug-in hybrid produced four times more. A battery electric car produced almost two and a half times more. On Edinburgh to London Kings Cross, the figures were 116kg of CO2 in a diesel car, 31.8kg in a battery car and 12.7kg per person by train.

Campaigners pointed out that the greenest routes were not the cheapest. Single fares on LNER, the main operator on that route, stood at £183 without pre-booking. Average fuel for a small petrol car over the 400 miles came to roughly £50. Michael Solomon Williams of the charity Campaign for Better Transport said rail was "getting even greener as more rail routes are electrified" and "often quicker too". He added that the priority was making it cheaper.

Rail fares across England rose 4.9% the following Sunday.