The dream ticket: sleeper trains could soon run from London to Europe’s cities

An ambitious plan to take overnight services through the Channel tunnel reflects a growing interest in sustainable travel

It is being hailed as the latest evidence of a new dawn for the European sleeper train. Citing changes in attitude wrought by the two crises of the climate emergency and the Covid pandemic, a new night service in 2022 was announced last week between Brussels and Prague, stopping at Amsterdam, Berlin and Dresden, with tickets expected to cost from €60 one way.

But an even more ambitious project could deliver Britons to continental Europe via surely one of the most romantic modes of transport around, Elmer van Buuren, a co-founder of the European Sleeper cooperative, told the Observer.