From an email by Nicolas Forien via Back on Track:
“During his speech for the French national day, on July 14th, president Emmanuel Macron announced his priorities for the coming years. Among them, a "massive plan" for rail freight, for the redevelopment of overnight trains and for small rural railway lines.
”Later, the French transport minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari announced that, as a first step, two night train routes will be relaunched by 2022: these will be Paris to Nice and Paris to Tarbes (in the South-West). In the meanwhile, the rolling stock for the remaining lines from Paris to Briançon and Rodez/Toulouse/Latour-de-Carol/Portbou will be refurbished. For the moment, we do not have any precise informations about the restart of Paris-Nice and Paris-Tarbes, so we do not know which rolling stock will be used, if the trains will be daily, which operator will run these trains, if they will run attached to the already existing night trains, or if completely new trains will be created (which, for Paris-Tarbes, would allow for more capacity)... etc.
”We will soon know more about all these details, when the French government will publish its report about the development of night trains, wich is expected to be released at the end of the summer.”
This in a country that until very recently was doing everything it could to shut down night train routes.
Times change, huh?
In another email, from Per Eric Rosén:
“Good news! Today just a few hours ago the Swedish government has ordered Trafikverket to start the (direct) tender process for daily departing night trains Malmö-Brussels, and also Stockholm-Hamburg.”
Night trains ftw. Ryanair: Go suck on a soggy biscuit.
On that cheery note, here’s a video for the kids. Choo Choo! You’re very welcome.