In 2015 I was writing a book, Night Trains: The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper. This “rise” — the development, in the late 19th century, of a network of sleepers, each with its cargo of wealthy passengers being lulled in lambent cabins — I evoked from historical material. The “fall” I experienced personally.
In attempting to duplicate the original Orient Express route, I got as far as Bucharest on two sleepers, but made the final approach to Istanbul’s fabled Sirkeci station (which was closed) on a rail-replacement bus service. I was more often in a couchette compartment than a sleeper properly so-called. (Couchettes don’t have sinks.) Dining cars were a rarity on my trips: one fellow traveller told me, “The key to using sleeper trains these days is a good Marks and Spencer’s salad.” But I did eat microwaved risotto with a plastic fork on the now defunct Paris-Venice sleeper operated by Thello, an Italian-French company.
The gloomy backdrop to my writing was the announcement by Deutsche Bahn in 2015 that it would be abandoning its City Night Line sleepers, backbone of the European network. I tried to conclude on a positive note by quoting some railfans, including a Swedish man whose faith in the environmental benefits of night trains prompted him to say, quite severely, “You must not end pessimistic.”