Transportation
End of the Line for France's Night Trains?
Half the country’s domestic night routes will be scrapped this autumn.
This autumn, France will wave goodbye to fully half of its night train service. According to an announcement from SNCF, four of France’s eight overnight rail services will cease service on October 1. The four remaining lines will continue for now, but two of them are only being granted a reprieve until mid-to-late 2017. It’s beginning to look a lot the end of an era.
Once a signature experience of European travel, nights spent drowsily resting in a rattling couchette could soon be just a memory people bore their grandchildren with. This might sound somewhat sad but, given how much travel has changed has changed across much of Europe, it’s arguably inevitable.