The sleeper trains from the Netherlands to other parts of Europe are packed this summer. Due to the climate or the chaos at Schiphol, more people are opting for the international train. But the network of sleeper trains will find it difficult to grow in the coming years due to a huge shortage of equipment.
After decades of aviation growth, there seemed to be no future for the sleeper train. Why take a long train ride when you could fly to the sun for a few bucks? After Deutsche Bahn stopped with its last night trains in 2016, not a single sleeping car drove through the Netherlands for five years. Across the EU, two thirds of all night trains disappeared this century.
But the number of international train passengers is growing strongly again, because more people want to travel in a climate-friendly way. If you don’t want to spend the whole day on a train, you can hop on the night train in the evening and wake up a thousand kilometers away.
This year, the chaos at European airports is causing extra congestion on international trains, including the Nightjet sleeper trains that have been running from Amsterdam again since 2021 to destinations such as Vienna and Zurich. They are regularly fully booked this summer.
But because the night train was the neglected child of the railway companies for decades, there is now suddenly a considerable shortage of carriages. Most sleeper cars in use today are decades old. For the first time in many years, the Austrian railways will start using new sleeping cars next year, but that will not solve the European shortage of equipment.
Prefer a little more privacy
For GreenCityTrip, which has been offering sleeper trains to various European cities since last year, it was a long search for a train that is still suitable for the modern traveler. “We’ve looked a lot at what is on a shunting yard somewhere in Poland, for example, but that doesn’t make you happy,” says co-founder Hessel Winkelman. In the end, the company managed to rent carriages in Germany. They are still quite old.
“It is of course crazy that we, as a newcomer to the market, have to launch a concept with train stock that is decades old,” says Winkelman.
The trainsets that GreenCityTrip now uses are arranged in such a way that often four or six passengers sleep in a small compartment. Nowadays, there is more demand for private compartments for two people. “People have become a bit more individualistic in recent decades, they attach more value to their privacy,” says Winkelman.
Hundreds of millions of euros needed
Time to build new trains, you might think. But that takes a lot of time and money. It will take you at least five years before they run, and to make the order interesting for the manufacturer, hundreds of wagons have to be ordered at once, for many hundreds of millions of euros.
Such an investment is really only possible for the largest European rail companies. But they don’t stand in line: giants like Deutsche Bahn focus mainly on new high-speed trains that run during the day and show little interest in reviving the night trains.
“The big guys who could do it don’t want to. And the little ones want to, but can’t,” is the summary of British blogger Jon Worth, who co-authored the site. Trains for Europe campaigns for investments in night trains.
Is consortium the solution?
That is why Worth argues in favor of setting up a consortium that will jointly order sleeper trains. This can consist of the smaller national railway companies, but also start-ups such as GreenCityTrip. “Even a company like NS can’t do anything with 300 sleeping cars. But they might want fifty,” says Worth.
Utrecht-based European Sleeper hoped to run its first sleeper trains to Prague this summer, but it was unable to secure the necessary carriages in time. A new start date is not yet known, because the start-up is still looking for a train.
“That is a fairly vulnerable process,” says co-founder Elmer van Buuren. There is little supply, and many other privateers on the coast. “We are hopeful that it will work.”
Ultimately, European Sleeper also hopes to be able to purchase new trains. “If we want to continue to grow, it is absolutely necessary that we also invest in new trains, or in the renovation of trains that are not yet night trains,” says Van Buuren. But for the small business it is still impossible to find financing for such plans.
Brussels also wants to see growth
The European Commission wants to expand the range of international (night) trains and is also making loans available for this through the European Investment Bank (EIB). But those are still out of reach for European Sleeper, says Van Buuren.
“The EIB is looking for a very low risk profile,” he says. “They are looking for certain securities and guarantees.” As a result, according to him, only the established rail companies are eligible.
Worth hopes an international collaboration can break the deadlock. Now nighttime train connections to Austria and Switzerland are improving, but other European regions are lagging behind. “The Austrians cannot solve this problem for all of Europe.”