Travelers will be able to reserve a seat, a couchette or a sleeping car.
UA night train will connect Brussels to Amsterdam and Berlin from next May. The first train will depart from the German capital, the Dutch-Belgian rail initiative European Sleeper has announced. The night train will go back and forth three times a week. This is the second night train departing from Belgium.
The first trip of the new night train is scheduled for May 25, with an overnight trip to the Netherlands. Those leaving Berlin at 10.56 p.m. will arrive at the Brussels-Midi terminus at 9.27 a.m. the next day, or at 8.47 a.m. in Antwerp. Departing from Berlin, the “ES 452” will run on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Conversely, the “ES 453” night train will leave Brussels-Midi at 7:22 p.m. (8:01 p.m. in Antwerp) on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with a very first journey on 26 May. This train will arrive at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof platform at 6:48 a.m. It will also serve the stations of Roosendaal, Rotterdam Centraal, Den Haag HS, Amsterdam Centraal, Amersfoort, Deventer, Bad Bentheim and Hannover Hbf. On the route from Berlin to Brussels, the stops at Amersfoort and Den Haag (The Hague) are abolished.
The night train, which has ten cars, offers passengers seats, couchettes and sleeping cars, from 49 euros for a seat, 79 euros for a couchette and 109 euros for a sleeping car . Tickets can be reserved from February 20. Breakfast is included in couchette cars and sleeping cars. The couchettes (four or six beds) and sleeping cars (three beds) can be reserved completely privately. Bicycles and pets are accepted when the compartment is privatized.
There are plans to extend rail service beyond Berlin to Dresden and the Czech capital Prague from December 2023, as originally planned. If possible, the promoters also want to switch from three trips a week to a daily train from 2024. For the announced plans, “everything is in place”, specifies co-initiator Chris Engelsman. “The ambition is still to extend the line to Dresden and Prague, but also to scale up to a daily train service. »
“An exceptional east-west connection between three European capitals”, can we also read in a press release. “Finally, a direct rail link between Berlin and Brussels is again offered. With just one change, you can travel to Paris, London, Prague and Warsaw. »
European Sleeper is starting the connection with hired wagons and plans to invest in its own wagons in the shorter term. “By renovating existing second-hand cars and transforming them into sleeping cars, we hope to have around 30 sleeping cars within two to three years, offering more comfort, more privacy options and a modern look. We are also working on ordering completely new sleeping cars, but the delivery time for these is much longer,” Mr. Engelsman said. Finding the necessary carriages is the hardest part of starting a new night train service, it seems.
This will be the second night train in Belgium, after the NightJet of the Austrian railway company ÖBB bound for Vienna. European Sleeper has previously announced plans for overnight trains to French ski resorts and Barcelona, but no details are yet known.
