Night Trains Are Back: Europe's Sleeper Routes Are Selling Out Again

The timetable reads like a nostalgia tour: cities that lost their sleeper links a decade ago are getting them back, and passengers are booking them the way they once booked flights — months ahead.

Operators credit a simple shift: new carriages with real beds, locks that work, and a dining car that serves actual breakfast. One route has started selling standing dinner tickets to non-passengers in cities along the way.

The bottlenecks are track access and old depots, not demand. One operator's waiting list for its flagship route is now longer than the train itself, which is a sentence nobody has written since 1987.

“Nine new overnight routes opened this year. Six of them report occupancy above 90% — and the dining car has become the destination.”