New night train connects Brussels to Milan

A new night train between Brussels and Milan has begun launched by Dutch-Belgian railway company European Sleeper.

The first train on the new route departed from Milan at 16.45 last Wednesday and arrived in Brussels shortly before midday on Thursday. 

The route currently includes stops at Como (Italy), Lugano, Aarau (Switzerland), Cologne (Germany) and Verviers (Belgium). 

For its return, the train departs Brussels at 19.10 and arrives in Milan the following day at 11.40. The train will run three times a week in each direction.

The plan is to adjust the route between Brussels and Cologne from mid-December, running instead from Brussels to Antwerp and the Dutch cities of Breda and Eindhoven, then on to Cologne. This means the train will no longer pass through Verviers and Aachen.

European Sleeper also operates night trains from Brussels via Amsterdam to destinations including Berlin, Dresden and Prague, and from Paris via Brussels to Hamburg and Berlin. 

Austrian railway company ÖBB also operates night trains between Brussels and the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Demand for night trains has increased in recent years. From mid-December to the end of March, Travelski, a subsidiary of Compagnie des Alpes, will run a weekly night train from the Netherlands, via Antwerp and Brussels, to the French Alps and back. Compagnie des Alpes is the parent company of the Bellewaerde and Walibi theme parks.

European Sleeper previously stated that it hoped to launch a night train service in 2028 from Brussels and Amsterdam to Copenhagen (Denmark) and Malmö (Sweden). It is also looking at the Barcelona as a potential destination.

Although new night train services have been introduced to meet demand, advocate group Back on Track said that the network was still far from being as extensive or user-friendly as it used to be. 

“This [Milan-Brussels] night train used to run every day,” said Back on Track. 

The daily night train between Brussels and Milan ran from 1989 to 2002 and was a collaboration between various national railway companies. Now, the service runs three times a week and the journey time is considerably longer than it used to be.

“The train now follows a different route,” added Back on Track. 

“It used to go via Luxembourg and Alsace, but now it goes via Germany. As a result, the journey no longer takes 12 hours, but about 17 hours.”

Furthermore, the train does not depart from the centrally located Milano Centrale, but from Milano Porta Garibaldi. The station is slightly further from the city centre, meaning passengers have to set off early in the afternoon.

Back on Track is calling on politicians, and European policymakers in particular, to work towards a European plan for a fully-fledged continental night train network.