Europe's night train map keeps growing, but delivery records lag the plans

The December 2023 timetable change brought a run of new direct overnight links across Europe, according to The Guardian's rail coverage published on 14 December 2023. Warsaw moved closer to Munich, Berlin to Paris, and Aachen to Salzburg. None of those city pairs had direct daytime trains at the time, so the sleepers created connections where none existed.

Operators across much of Europe introduced their 2024 schedules on 10 December. There were exceptions. A new high-speed line through Spain's Cantabrian mountains had opened in late November, and Poland and the Baltic states were still a week or two away from their new timetables.

What actually changed on the ground

The Warsaw-bound train that left Munich on the evening of 10 December was the first direct departure from Bavaria to Poland since 2010, the Guardian reported. Paris and Berlin regained a direct night train. That restored a link cut at the start of the pandemic, when the Russian Railways service from Paris to Berlin and Moscow ran for the last time. A Nightjet left Aachen just after 9pm and reached Halle 10 hours later.

Not every change added service. Nuremberg, long a jumping-off point for Czech routes, lost its five daily direct trains to the Czech Republic. Aarhus lost twice-daily direct trains to Hamburg, though it gained an every-two-hours connecting service via a same-platform change at Kolding. That route gets passengers to Hamburg faster than the old direct trains did. Copenhagen, meanwhile, secured more direct services to Hamburg.

Elsewhere the pattern was extra options on routes that already had daytime trains. Dresden gained sleeping-car departures to Budapest, Vienna and Graz. In France, Béziers and Montpellier picked up direct links to Paris on some nights, competing with TGVs that cover Montpellier to Paris in a little over three hours. The new Aurillac-Paris overnight has no daytime competitor. French night trains offer no sleeping cars, only reclining seats or couchettes, with fares from €19 for seats and €29 for couchettes.

Cross-border frequency also improved. Munich to Zürich ran more often, following November improvements that restored direct Stuttgart to Zürich trains. Berlin to Amsterdam was trimmed by 30 minutes to under six hours. Direct daytime trains from Kraków to Vienna and Berlin doubled from one to two, and Wrocław gained an early-morning direct train to Vienna returning late afternoon.

Ukraine connections expanded too. From the weekend before the Guardian piece, a second direct train ran from Vienna to Ukraine, with through-carriages from the morning Vienna to Romania departure to Chop in Transcarpathia. Czech private operator RegioJet was said to be exploring a Prague to Chop overnight service from early 2024.

Cat Jones, CEO of flight-free operator Byway Travel, told the Guardian the new trains were creating a buzz. She cited the new Euronight sleeper linking Salzburg with Kraków, which takes almost 10 hours, as an opportunity to combine two very different cities.

The carbon case, and its catch

Rail's green pitch got harder numbers in February 2024. The Rail Delivery Group published analysis claiming that on average across the top 100 British business travel routes, a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train. A plug-in hybrid was four times more polluting, and a battery electric car almost two and a half times more, according to the RDG.

On Edinburgh to London Kings Cross, the group's figures put emissions at 116kg of CO2 in a diesel car, 31.8kg in a battery car and 12.7kg per person by train. The RDG said certain journeys on the greenest, fullest electric trains produced as little as one-fifteenth of the CO2 per person of a sole-occupancy petrol or diesel car.

Campaigners pointed out that the greenest routes were not the cheapest. Single fares on LNER, the main operator on Edinburgh to London, were £183 without pre-booking, though advance fares were much cheaper. Average fuel for a small petrol car over the 400 miles would be roughly £50, and less for an electric car. Rail fares across England were due to rise 4.9% the following Sunday.

"Travelling by train is always greener than driving, and it's getting even greener as more rail routes are electrified," said Michael Solomon Williams of the charity Campaign for Better Transport. "It is often quicker too, but what we now need to do is to ensure it is also cheaper."

Jacqueline Starr, chief executive of the RDG, said the data would give businesses the most accurate measure of emissions for the 100 most popular business rail journeys, adding: "We all have a responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint, and the data that we have published reveals that rail is the green choice for travel between our towns and cities."

The infrastructure behind those journeys is another matter. In January, the European Court of Auditors reported that costs for eight major Trans-European Transport Network projects had risen by an average of 82% over initial estimates, with an average delay of 17 years across five projects, according to CNN. The EU will not meet its 2030 deadline for completing the core TEN-T network, which covers 10,850 miles of rail corridors.

Nick Brooks, secretary general of rail operator lobby group ALLRAIL, told CNN that mega-projects like the Brenner Base Tunnel, Lyon-Turin and the Fehmarn Belt "can be game-changers for European rail." The Fehmarnbelt tunnel, an 18km immersed road and rail link between Denmark and Germany, has a construction budget of over €7 billion and is due to open in 2029. Femern A/S technical director Jens Ole Kaslund said a Copenhagen to Hamburg train trip that now takes around four and a half hours would take two and a half hours once the tunnel is complete.