‘It's not our aim to become rich’: Inside European Sleeper’s turbulent first season of night trains

03.11.2023 - 23:49 / euronews.com / Angela Symons

Sarah and Sonia pile out of a rain-smattered train at Berlin Central Station, surprised they feel so rested after sleeping on Europe's newest night train service, but also over an hour late.

"When you see the beds, they don't look like the most comfortable ones," says Sarah, a midwifery student from Belgium. But, pulling on their rucksacks after their journey from Brussels, the friends feel ready for a weekend of sightseeing.

They travelled with European Sleeper, a Dutch-Belgian startup whose launch in May is part of a renaissance of night train travel.

The company says there's demand for such services, which offer a lower-emissions alternative to airplanes for climate-conscious travellers, while bringing back some of the romance of an older and slower form of travel.

But the revival faces many obstacles, from securing funding and profits amid cut-throat competition from low-cost airlines, to running reliable services on Europe's overcrowded and ageing rail network.

Sarah and Sonia's train is a case in point. European Sleeper said it endured a time-consuming back and forth with national train operators to agree on timetables for its Brussels-to-Berlin service.

"It's very bureaucratic and complicated," Chris Engelsman, European Sleeper's co-founder, told news agency Reuters.

The company also spent a year-and-a-half scouring Europe for second-hand sleeper train coaches to rent. The refurbished couchettes in off-white and faded red had cases of faulty power sockets and broken toilets as they transported more than 20,000 people over European Sleeper's first summer season.

In extreme cases, last-minute technical faults forced the company to downgrade some passengers to overnight seats or cancel their tickets altogether.

"The main investment that we are looking for at the moment is in the rolling stock, because that is such a critical part of the whole business," Engelsman said.

The company is hoping to raise €40-60 million to buy its own coaches, 10 times the amount it has raised so far from investors and crowdfunding.

Other operators are backed by government money, with Austria's OBB leading the charge.

It is expanding its Nightjet network, which transported 1.5 million passengers last year, with sleeper carriages often booked out weeks in advance. Two new routes connecting Berlin with Paris and Brussels start from December.

OBB spent €720 million on 33 next-generation night trains, developed with Siemens Mobility.

"There is higher demand," said Alberto Mazzola, executive director of the CER lobby representing European rail companies.

"But the main challenge is the business plan."

Years of decline in Europe's night train network coincided with the rise of low-cost airlines.

Today, a night train from Berlin to Zurich costs