Night Train Map with all regularly served night train destinations in Europe

Amsterdam–Berlin takes 6 hours now by day (7 hours from Brussels). Something which might improve to 4 hours eventually. That's OK, but if I have the choice between getting a sleeper and stepping out of Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Tief) at 6:30 or arriving past 14:00, I know which has my preference.

The service is planned to eventually continue to Dresden and Prague by the way, further increasing its usefulness.

Wonderful global Map of all sleeping train ! My god, I Wish I had this map last summer when using my interrail pass.

Why ? : - All sleeper trains are scattered with so many booking Apps or internet service. A real pain.

Thanks for this wonderful MAP!

Ps: If traveling in Europe, I recommend booking really in advance as most sleeping wagons are usually all booked 2 months before departure. ( In one trains only 2 cars are sleepers).

Also do not even think of jumping into a night train with no reservation : you will be kicked out immediately. Security is king.

PPS : After 20 years of scaling back, sleeping trains are making a slow come-back. Hence, new trains lines should arrive during the next 3 years .

PPS: I work for SNCF ( french rail) so you can trust my words

Those sound good on paper but then reality hits you. Last summer we as a family decided to take a night train to reach our vacation destination.

What should have been 6-7 hour car drive was ~12 hour train ride. Sleep was not great, getting to and out of train stations, herding two small kids etc so at the time we've reached our destination we were pretty tired. Much more tired if we just drove.

The route back is where things went south. One of the beds in our cabin fell apart. Then there was some sort of the outage en route back so the train had to skip our station and we landed almost 150km away from our home.

Train company was trying to get us on the bus or train to get us back home but there were no free seats so it looked like we were to spend a night there. In the we've decided to take cab back home. We should have been back home ~10 in the morning. When we got home it was close to 6pm.

On top of that bathrooms were super dirty and there was no running water in the sinks.

We've paid ~700 euros for both ways and additional ~150 euros for the cab. If we just drove the whole round-trip would have cost us under 100 euros including lunch on our way there and back.

I just don't see this as an alternative to driving or flying in Europe — they are too expensive and the level of comfort they offer for the price is just horrible. Even if everything went according to the plan and our route back was without any hiccups driving would have been much more convenient.

Or take a dramamine, which both helps with the motion sickness and knocks you out.

> mountains aren't very high

Yes and no. For example Aonach Beag is 4049 ft above sea level. But it basically begins at sea level. By contrast Mt Cowen, one of the highest local peaks near me here in Montana is 11212ft above sea level, but the bottom of it is roughly 5000ft so not that much higher in terms of actual mountain to climb.