This year is seeing the glorious resurgence of the sleeper train around Europe, with new routes including Brussels to Prague and Graz, in Austria, to Warsaw. This month a particularly significant overnight train – from Hamburg to Stockholm – starts running. It will be a “gamechanger”, according to the rail travel expert Mark Smith.
But with a summer appointment in Stockholm, I couldn’t afford to wait until September. So I replicated the journey as best I could, to see how night train travel feels now it appears to be back. I travelled with an Interrail pass from London to Hamburg, and then headed to Malmö, from where I boarded the somewhat aged sleeper train rattling north on the same route the new EuroNight service will use.
The service, run by Sweden’s national rail operator SJ, will “get you from London to Stockholm in pretty much 24 hours”, according to Smith, who set up the much consulted Seat61.com website. It will be the “missing link” for travellers from the UK to Sweden, perhaps persuading many to take the train, rather than fly. It starts with the Eurostar from St Pancras to Brussels and then transfers to a high-speed line to Hamburg, after which the speed will drop but comfort will rise.
EuroNight covers the 670 miles from Hamburg to Stockholm in 13 hours, starting at 9pm and, stopping off in Copenhagen, and arriving in Stockholm at 10am.
In truth, such a journey is too short for a sleeper service, but the Malmö to Stockholm sleeper is the best facsimile for the new service. Despite Denmark’s best efforts to derail me (trains were halted throughout Zealand for three hours after an electrical fire at a critical junction box), I made it across the Øresund rail-and-road bridge from Copenhagen just in time to join the night train and its vintage, Swedish-built sleeping carriages.