Good news on sleeper trains

There’s some good news on night trains for summer, which bodes well for winter. 

NightJet, the network of sleeper trains run diligently by Austrian rail operator OEBB, will reopen on 26th June.  For skiers this winter, the key routes are Brussels and Cologne to the slopes of Austria.  The fact that NightJet reopening for this summer, is always good news for winter too.  The company has told me that they plan to start selling tickets for winter in September, with the exact date to be confirmed.

Meanwhile in France, the Paris – Briancon sleeper train will open for booking from the first weekend in July.  This is thanks to the valiant campaigning of Hautes Alpes deputy, Joël Giraud, who is a huge advocate of rail travel, and other elected officials who battled to save the service.

Six-berth couchettes will have a maximum of four passengers, to help maintain distance between travellers, and the beds arranged top-to-tail so that people don’t need to sleep with masks. Perhaps by winter, family and friend groups of five or six will be allowed to travel together in a six-berth couchette.  Certainly, booking a private couchette with your own group may be a really good way to get to the slopes.
We’ll be monitoring the situation closely, of course, and updating the Snowcarbon site.  (Join our newsletter to be the first to know about this kind of stuff - the link is at the bottom of this page).

You can read more about it on Joël Giraud’s blog post here, in French: http://joelgirauddepute.fr/index.php/2020/06/01/le-train-de-nuit-paris-briancon-circulera-a-nouveau-des-le-premier-week-end-de-juillet/
(If you open the page in Google Chrome, there’s an option on the Chrome browser to translate the article into English).

The Paris-Briancon sleeper train is an excellent way to get to the ski resorts of Montgenèvre and Serre Chevalier.  And by travelling overnight you can get two extra days of the slopes of these excellent resorts.