Fall asleep in Vienna, wake up in Paris: sleeper trains on track for European comeback

Overnight rail journeys will help cut continent’s carbon emissions

Paris is one of the few major European cities to avoid a total lockdown over Christmas. AFP

Europe is gearing up for sleeper-train revival after four major railway companies promised several new cross-country routes.

Passengers will soon be able to drop off to sleep in Vienna and wake up in Paris. Sunseekers could also decide to trade the snow for the sea by setting off from Zurich and after an overnight journey ending up in Barcelona.

They are among several new routes linking 13 major cities that will be phased in from December next year. The €500 million ($605m) investment was announced by the state railways of Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland.

From next winter, sleepers will run from Vienna to Paris via Munich, and from Zurich to Amsterdam via Cologne. Two years later, Berlin to Brussels and Paris, and Zurich to Barcelona will be added to the network.

The new routes sound a blast from the past for rail enthusiasts after western Europe's sleeper network shrunk, partly because of the popularity of no-frills flying. Night trains are still widely used in eastern Europe, however, where routes such as St Petersburg to Moscow are popular.

The announcement comes at a time when governments across Europe are trying to cut carbon emissions – last year Germany declared rail travel central to those plans.

The services will be operated by Austria's OeBB using 20 new trains and potentially transporting 1.4 million night passengers each year.

Even though ministers from the four countries involved billed the announcement as a return to the 1960s glory days of the Trans-Europ Express, the service will be modest in scale.

"Board the train in Munich or Berlin in the evening and arrive refreshed in Brussels or Paris the next morning," said German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer. "We'll be travelling in a more climate and environment-friendly way." Dreams of a resurrected Orient Express are premature, however, with no plans to revive the route.

The 20 new trains ordered are a "drop in the ocean" compared with the many hundreds of high-speed ICE and TGV trains operated by Germany's Deutsche Bahn and France's SNCF, transport blogger Jon Worth wrote on Twitter.

Back on Track, a group that promotes pan-European rail services, said there was still work to do. "Despite our joy at the good intentions and strong ambitions demonstrated at today's press conference, there is a strong need for the initiative to grow in volume and spread to more regions in Europe," it said.