Heading south to Innsbruck
On Tuesday 11 February before travelling on Friday 14th I receive the email from the operator. All it amounts to is a change to the car we are in, all other details remain constant.
(‘Update for Train Brussels – Venice
We would like to inform you of some significant changes to your booking for European Sleeper train ES 1277 from Brussels - Innsbruck.
Your carriage, compartment and/or place number(s) changed due to a rearrangement of the composition of our train departing Fri 14 February 2025.
The occupancy (private or shared or women only) will remain the same.
Please check the timetable and your booking details below.’)
No mention of the train not proceeding on beyond Innsbruck but this time it doesn’t matter - we’re only going that far (although onwards to Bressanone/Brixen wouldn’t have hurt because that’s where we alight to turn eastwards up the Pustertal line). My ES ticket is only good to Innsbruck.
I believe that the Friday service on the 14th is only the second time it’s run or attempted to run, so maybe the bugs are still being worked out.
I had forgotten/don’t care which couchette compartment we are in, so long as it remains what we booked for - private two person occupancy of a five bed compartment. For that reason only I don’t regard the news as ‘significant’.
When I found some time, I see that we've gone
from Carriage 21, Place 32, 35
to Coach 9: Place 51, 52 – which is at least a change from standard (6-bed) to comfort (5-bed). We booked comfort at the start and I never noticed that our original allocation was standard.
On following a link in this thread here I found three pages of updates on the ES website which partially explains the cause and fully explains the outcome and alternative arrangements for this coming weekend for pax venturing beyond Innsbruck.
The EuroSTAR leg
St Pancras. Short queue, French queue jumpers. Take the side line for a quicker bag search.
Come this way out of the passport French manual control into the no-queue e-gates line - any passport can go, but not the passport you just showed me, for that you have step back to the queue from which I just removed you, for queue stares.
In the departure lounge no seats at all, standing room only. Can I suggest that you redevelop the undercroft so that the station adopts a bit more of a station atmosphere and utility rather than a shopping centre with trains.
I had forgotten what level of seating we have. Turns out we are mid class with free grub, free tea, free beer and wine hurray.
A check on
https://www.b-europe.com/EN/Real-time shows our onward ES service is booked 18:06, not delayed yet, and going to Venice- but we know better.
My personal ratings following are 1-10, with 1 disaster and 10 superb.
In Bruxelles as close as D-30 no platform indicated. The small repeater screens throughout do not show our train or our spoor 5/10. The big main screen does, 20 minutes before time 8/10.
No platform assistance visible at all. The overall boarding process is
no advance knowledge of where to stand,
is the train numbering high to low or what,
no platform assistance,
in to platform only just on time,
away promptly,
people with bags up and down corridors looking for compartments.
Not a crisis but could be a little smoother. 5/10.
Double booked?
A party in coach nine was trying to find their cabin and saying that their number was already occupied and seeking help. It must have been given because they evaporated and it's none of my business.
Timely departure from Bruxelles one minute late. 10/10
On board
Staff are uniformed, competent, knowledgeable, cheerful. In car nine Valerie offered help on request and help later unprompted. Positive 10/10.
Breda on time. 10/10
After the half hour wait before Breda for locomotive change, we ran along at 79 mph (gps checked). Who cares? 10/10.
Coach nine is clean, quiet, full, tidy, fully equipped, signposted, smooth ride, no bumps, no jolts. It’s old and a little careworn but who cares? Blankets 2 x 2, sheet sleeping bag 2 x 2. Positive 10/10.
Outside of coach 8 is filthy. Coachwork and windows unaddressed for a long time. 3/10 for appearance and housekeeping.
Coach nine clean inside and out. 10/10.
No ticket check until underway. Our tickets match Valerie’s paper expectation. 10/10.
I didn't bother with the Bar.
Water bottles ready. 10/10
Lavatory and two washrooms clean, tidy and presentable. 10/10.
Heating back to too hot 21:06. 4/10
Labelling for windows
They do open, but they need all of my 96kg to do so, and there’s no instruction label. Valerie told us how. 2/10 for the problem, 10/10 for the fix.
Heating 1
The buttons for heat control seem ineffective but the steward noted complaints from other pax, told us so, said that she’d tell the engineer to spanner it, and by 21:00 gmt +1 the heating radiator has gone from too hot to just enough. 6/10 veering 3/10.
Heating 2
The radiator below the window has two settings - cool to warm, and roast. We opened the window for a while to heat the sky, but then had to close it again and fiddle with it during the night, seeking a compromise between warm enough to sleep, fresh air to breathe, and quiet enough for slumber. For effectiveness 7/10, for utility 3/10.
Other passengers
We had quiet company on each neighbouring compartment so okay. You can just about hear voices but not speech. 8/10
At closing time it was a joy to listen to the drunken dolts crashing and banging and shouting their way back home but after that, quite quiet. Not ES fault.
At 0200, there were several short successive halts, presumably for signals, and the driver had not mastered the art of feathering his brakes, so jolt-stop-go x three. 3/10.
There is ductwork in the cabin. It contains liquid. Which tinkles and gurgles all night long somewhere between a large cistern never filling up and a piazza fountain never emptying. 3/10
There’s also a large square flat box mounted on the ceiling which looks just like an air conditioner but which serves only to decorate and deceive.
We left Munich twenty minutes late who cares. We’d had to wait outside before the station waiting on a platform.
I was aware that we can use the first class Lounge at Innsbruck (thanks Mark61) (but when I reported to him my northbound he says that he was surprised that I could get in there at all), and I was wondering whether all the Venice passengers would try to pile in there.
I arranged my journey in October and with cabin alterations and booking changes and ticket pricing halving I was as excited as an excited thing. Nothing about the actualite has disappointed me. It is what I expected. It’s not the Orient Express with flunkeys at every juncture- it’s a cheaply priced, modern, innovative service using recycled stock and brand new people on a new route. 9/10
It’s a success.
Heading home
At Innsbruck the ÖBB lounge door lock was broken, leaving the door shut but insecure. Many looked at it, but were put off from entering due to its signing. Taking Mark61s advice I went in and had a break. Good supply of chocolate and other snacks and many soft drinks.
However, the wall mounted train display is limited. It only shows ÖBB trains departing, not all trains - but it doesn't
say so. It doesn’t say that not all trains are on it. 1/10
My ES train had been booked away for 21:00 and I watched in warm comfort as successive trains were shown, but not my retimed 19:25. I thought that maybe the station staff had not allocated a platform for the ES outlier and that it would pop up and be interleaved later but before time. NOT SO. 1/10
I asked a member of station staff where it was. His response – ‘this Lounge is a lounge for ÖBB customers only, so this departure board is for ÖBB trains only'. Plus, ‘what are you doing in here with your ES ticket?’. Another passenger chimed in with ‘platform 6 – it's up there now, but locked up’, so I wandered up there. 2/10
In complete fairness, the main station display tellies do have this and other trains up, but none of those displays are visible from inside the Lounge.
The man shrugged and said that it was unreliable, and anyway, if I was travelling on ES, what was I doing there. I told him about my sleeper ticket but not interested. He would have to make enquiries with elsewhere. I quit before finding out the answer. Lounge lizard life.
My retimed train left 85 minutes early, allowing for a one hour wait in Munich. We were on a platform and advised to take care of our luggage.
Overall bed length
The couchette beds are all about 6 feet long. They are firm and comfortable.
Noise from adjoining compartments full of family fun intrude.
Curtains – utterly useless
They don't join with Velcro. They admit light from both sides and the bottom.
In my room (car 10, beds 51, 53) one of the corridor side curtains has a lining up hole on the rail for the curtain hook runners, through which they all fall. To achieve privacy and darkness on that side, I had to fashion a coat and my shirt across the gap.
I will try to put a video clip of how the set up doesn't work.
Heating
There's a range of heating levels, and on this service, I had it turned down from roasting to least, based on the heat on entry and my experience from a week ago. In fact it did seem to work so that adjusting it from lowest to middle brought a comfortable level of heat. 6/10
On the other hand the little red ‘steward’ light did nothing but blink all night and day. Pressing it for ‘on’ – nothing’ and likewise trying to press it for ‘off’. Pretty, useless. 1/10
The bedding from a previous trip was left on top of the over-corridor luggage rack, uncollected. The rack has a downwards facing mirror which is excellent for checking for leftover items but not for last night’s laundry. 3/10
The sheet blanket and pillow case for my bed was fine and in good order.
Two compartments at the end of my car were locked all night. One of them is jammed with laundry waiting for Bruxelles. I understand that it has to go somewhere, and that an empty room is an empty room but the curtains needed securing so that the behind the scenes bit stays there.
The washroom in car 10 was locked all night. The lavatory was open all night and still flushed correctly in the morning. Worn but clean.
Stopping starting
Many times during the night, the train would slow somewhat sharply, sometimes stopping and then restarting very quickly. This does not matter if we are sitting up, but lying down transversely means that each stop and re-acceleration rolls us first one way and then the other. Data graph of speed here – speed in green.
Likewise rail camber, which no doubt work for trains at the right speed but when the train pauses on them, tilts us headwards or footwards. Sitting up doesn't matter but it disturbs sleep.
On one stop the guard told us all that we were stopped on a main line, not at a platform – so please don't open the doors.
Lighting - good
Cleanliness
As we left Innsbruck a Turkish gent went down the corridor hoovering. Could that not have been done in the day-long layover?
I had no bottled water but it was supplied on request.
U shaped safety rail
For the upper bunks, there is a collapsible U shaped safety rail against which my side or arse kept touching. It's cold and it wakes one, remining one of the minute risk of rolling out of bed.
The arm rests by the end of the seats move and serve to move the lowest back cushions in and out for day or night settings. It's a nice, helpful analogue touch.
The train side window does move, if you apply all your weight, but you have a choice of noise or ventilation.
After the Venlo locomotive change – which was carried out with complete stillness and quiet, the house electrical power did not resume for five minutes. Two members of platform staff and two train-twitchers – at 08:45.
Into Bruxelles 6 minutes early.
Conclusion
I was engaged by the idea of the sleeper – adventure, romance, night train, long distance, works for me, value, train-hotel, past trips in UK and EU.
The reality? Yes, all those still work. It delivered me safely and quickly to and from my ski holiday. Maybe the rough edges will work themselves out. Maybe I'm getting old and less tolerant of under-delivery. Maybe I'm comparing easyJet apples with ES pears which is always going to be an unfair match.
European Sleeper did what it advertised, successfully. The niggles really all are quite minor and more a symptom of my age and expectations than actual faults. Overall, 8/10.
Thank you.
I have some pictures and if I find time will upload.
