Night Trains Return to Europe's Timetables, but the Tunnels Are Late

Warsaw moved closer to Munich. Berlin nudged towards Paris, and Aachen slipped nearer to Salzburg. All three city pairs gained direct night trains in the December 2023 timetable change, the Guardian reported on 14 December 2023. None of them had direct daytime trains at the time.

Operators across Europe introduced their 2024 schedules on 10 December 2023, with exceptions in Spain, Poland and the Baltic states. Britain's changes were minor: a few extra weekday trains between Nottingham and Birmingham, and further thinning of TransPennine Express services.

What actually opened

The Munich to Warsaw night train left Bavaria on the evening of 10 December 2023. According to the Guardian, it was the first direct departure from Bavaria to Poland since 2010. The same report describes a new Euronight sleeper linking Salzburg with Kraków that takes almost 10 hours. Cat Jones, chief executive of the travel operator Byway, told the Guardian the new trains were creating a buzz at her company: "We're now able to pair places in holidays where direct trains didn't exist before."

Paris and Berlin regained a direct night train. The link had been severed at the start of the pandemic, when the Russian Railways service from Paris to Berlin and Moscow ran for the last time. A Nightjet now leaves Aachen just after 9pm and reaches Halle 10 hours later. Dresden gained sleeping-car services to Budapest, Vienna and Graz. In France, Béziers and Montpellier got direct overnight links to Paris on some nights, and an Aurillac to Paris service was added on a route with no competing daytime trains. French night trains offer no sleeping cars, only reclining seats from €19 and couchettes from €29, the Guardian reported.

Not every change was an addition. Aarhus lost its twice-daily direct trains to Hamburg. A connecting service every two hours now covers the route, with a same-platform change at Kolding. Nuremberg lost its five daily direct trains to the Czech Republic.

Carbon data, and the fare problem

The rail industry's own emissions analysis, published by the Rail Delivery Group on 27 February 2024, claims trains on Britain's busiest business routes generate less than half the carbon of a battery electric car. Across the top 100 business travel routes, the RDG said a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train, a plug-in hybrid four times more, and a battery electric car almost two and a half times more.

Edinburgh to London Kings Cross emits 116kg of CO2 in a diesel car, 31.8kg in a battery car and 12.7kg per person by train, according to the RDG data. But the Guardian noted that single fares on LNER, the main operator on that route, were £183 without pre-booking at the time. Average fuel costs for a small petrol car over the 400 miles came to roughly £50. Michael Solomon Williams of the Campaign for Better Transport told the paper: "Travelling by train is always greener than driving, and it's getting even greener as more rail routes are electrified. It is often quicker too, but what we now need to do is to ensure it is also cheaper."

Jacqueline Starr, the RDG's chief executive, said the data would let businesses measure emissions accurately on the 100 most popular business rail journeys. She said: "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 tunnels behind the timetables

The capacity for more night trains depends on infrastructure that is running late. CNN reported on 26 May 2026 that the European Court of Auditors found in January that costs on eight major Trans-European Transport Network projects had risen by an average of 82% over initial estimates. Five of those projects are running an average of 17 years late. The EU will not meet its 2030 deadline for upgrading 10,850 miles of rail corridors.

Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel opened in 2016 at a cost of $11.3 billion. It cut Zürich to Milan journey times to two and a half hours from four hours via the old route. At its deepest point, its twin tunnels run more than 7,500 feet below the Alpine peaks. The Fehmarnbelt Tunnel under the Baltic Sea is an 18 kilometre immersed link between Denmark and Germany. It has a construction budget of over €7 billion ($7.1 billion) and is due to open in 2029, according to CNN. Its technical director, Jens Ole Kaslund, has said the Copenhagen to Hamburg trip will fall from around four and a half hours to two and a half hours.

Nick Brooks, secretary general of the rail operator lobby group ALLRAIL, told CNN: "Mega-projects like the Brenner Base Tunnel, Lyon-Turin and the Fehmarn Belt can be game-changers for European rail."

Away from the big corridors, state subsidy is doing some of the work. Croatia's government confirmed it would keep free public rail transport for children, school pupils, full-time students, pensioners and citizens over 65. From 1 January 2026 it extended the scheme to holders of a National or European Disability Card eligible for train travel, Croatia Week reported. Eligible residents of Istria County can also travel free on direct Pula to Zagreb services, reintroduced on 20 June 2025. Those trains run through Slovenia on Fridays towards Pula and Sundays towards Zagreb.

None of this fixes the arithmetic that matters most to a traveller choosing between a seat and a car. New routes and lower-carbon trains exist. Whether the fare makes the choice easy is a separate question, and one the timetables do not answer.