The last time I traveled via overnight train was Rome to Paris in 2010 and it was a mess.

I was traveling with my husband, a two-year-old, and an eight-year-old, armed with what I thought was a clever plan: skip the flight, save some money, and turn it into an adventure à la Some Like It Hot. I imagined grungy, old-world charm and a bit of hijinks. My family was probably thinking “glamour”. What we got instead was a standard couchette which included six bunks, strangers, no bathroom and zero privacy plus a long, restless night.

I loved it. But the verdict, for them, was out: overnight trains were not fun.

That didn’t stop me. I kept trying with and without them: Rome to Palermo, Venice to Munich, Rome to Salzburg. I’ll take an overnight train anywhere, I vowed. Fifteen years later, I’m happy to say I told you so, because their judgment wasn’t just myopic, it was outdated.

Overnight Train Travel Revival

For a long time, overnight train travel was a bit of an anachronism= impractical, slow and pointless in these days of budget airlines and maglev trains. Sleeping onboard a train seemed was demoted to a “plan c” and not a choice. But lately, sleeper trains are the sleeper hit of travel, and no longer nostalgia.

Like I said, I’ve always had my eyes on overnights. I am the person on the platform taking photos of Belmond’s Venice Simplon Orient Express, and I’m always ogling OBB’s Nightjet. Across Europe, overnight routes are expanding and better yet modernizing. Some focus on efficient design; others go all-in on elegance and yesteryear glamour. What they share is a philosophy that’s increasingly appealing: board once and sleep through the distance, while avoiding extra hours at the airport and long security lines.

This shift shows up in the numbers, too. According to figures released by Eurostat, Europeans traveled 443 billion kilometers by train in 2024 (a 5.8 percent increase from 2023) and, on average, each EU resident took more than fifteen train journeys last year. Overnight trains may feel niche, but I’ll bet that more than a few hundred thousand of those kilometers were covered while passengers slept.

Bottom line, sleepers aren’t back just because they’re romantic (they are), they’re back because they make sense.

Practical Sleepers and More

Overnight trains now offer travelers real choice on how much comfort, experience and even autonomy they want from a night on rails. At one end of the spectrum is Austria’s ÖBB Nightjet, a modern, quietly efficient reboot of a night train that’s been on the rails for ages. It’s simple, streamlined and definitely upgraded with new-generation features like private “Mini Cabin” berths for solo travelers, compartments with en-suite toilets and showers, and even bicycle storage. Routes linking cities such as Rome, Vienna, and Munich make the sales pitch simple: sleep easy, arrive rested.

Likewise, Scotland’s Caledonian Sleeper takes a similar approach, though it skews more business chic than weekend warrior. The historic service has operated night routes between London and destinations on Scotland’s eastern and western coasts since 1873, and recently enjoyed a spotlight cameo in an episode of Down Cemetery Road – let’s call it Some Like It Scots.

Other routes push the idea even further. Launched in 2025, Poland’s Adriatic Express stretches overnight rail to new extremes with a 20-hour journey from Warsaw to Croatia’s Adriatic coast, crossing four countries while passengers sleep, while Spain’s Al Ándalus, transforms railway into storyline with its 2026 launch of a seven-day Seville-to-Madrid route that winds through UNESCO World Heritage sites (including Cadiz and Cordoba), leaning fully into experience and vintage flair.

Living the Dream, At Last

If you’ve ever meandered around some of Europe’s train stations like Venezia-Santa Lucia, Roma Ostiense, Paris Gare d’Austerlitz, Istanbul’s Sirkeci Station, even Strasbourg Ville, you’ve most likely caught a glimpse of the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, operated by Belmond. Gleaming blue, vintage cars, this is apogee of overnight train travel.

Last October, nearly 15 years to the day that I subjected my family to that fateful Rome-Paris sleeper, my husband and I boarded the Belmond train in Venice for an overnight journey to Paris.

Overnight trains work best when comfort, design, and intention align. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express understands that, and I guess when I do as well. This time, we skipped bunks and shared bathrooms in favor of a private cabin with an en-suite shower, and we didn’t include the kids. Instead we had thirty-six hours of polished charm, hospitality and slow travel all to ourselves.

This isn’t rail journey designed for optimization or efficiency. More than anything else, it is about rhythm, not speed. The journey follows the realities of secondary rail: construction work, border crossings, finicky communications, logistical pauses and, of course, slower locomotives – and never pretends otherwise. Instead of reacting to those interruptions, the experience absorbs them. Dinner still arrives. Cocktails still appear. And, yes, time stretches.

So do its seventeen historic carriages. Built between the 1920s and late 1940s by Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, each of the carriages has been meticulously restored and preserved at their original scale and glory- in other words, slightly more compact than today’s traveler might expect and divinely luxurious. You don’t feel constraints, you feel history: in the original Art Deco design and especially in the efficiency of every detail like the weighted salt and pepper shakers.

By the time we arrived in Paris, we were a few hours later than our projected arrival time, unbothered, and happily incredulous. It felt like we’d been on the train for days, not hours.

Fifteen years after my first attempt, I was finally living the dream. Overnight train travel is having a revival, and, as usual, I’m all aboard.