Four decades after Europe began dismantling its sleeper network, the timetable is thickening again. Forty new night routes enter service this summer — Lisbon to Milan, Stockholm to Zagreb, Amsterdam to Barcelona among them — operated by an unlikely coalition of state railways, start-ups and rolling-stock lessors betting that the economics have finally turned.
Three forces converged. Aviation's short-haul climate levies narrowed the price gap; new EU track-access rules cut the fees that once made a sleeper's fifteen-hour journey pay track charges in six countries; and a generation of travellers demonstrated they will pay a premium to arrive rested in a city centre rather than at dawn in a distant airport.
Bottlenecks remain — rolling stock above all. Every operational sleeper carriage on the continent is booked, waiting lists for new builds run to 2029, and refurbishers are pulling forty-year-old stock out of sidings. Rail executives call it the healthiest problem the sector has had in living memory.