Night trains
Night trains of the world
108 sleeper routes · 57 countries · ≈ 132,400 km of sleeper journeys
Open the world railway map →The sleeper is travel's oldest trick: board after dinner, roll through the dark, and step off in a different country before breakfast. This index collects every night train in the World Train Map atlas, from one-night hops to week-long transcontinental runs, each with its distance, published journey duration, operator, rolling stock and the story of the line.
Written off in the 2000s, the night train is back: 22 sleeper routes have launched or returned since 2016. The revival page charts it decade by decade.
Night trains by city
- Night trains from Moscow 7 routes · Russia
- Night trains from Chicago 6 routes · United States
- Night trains from Paris 6 routes · France
- Night trains from Bangkok 4 routes · Thailand
- Night trains from Kyiv 4 routes · Ukraine
- Night trains from New York 4 routes · United States
- Night trains from Stockholm 4 routes · Sweden
- Night trains from Tehran 4 routes · Iran
- Night trains from Vienna 4 routes · Austria
- Night trains from Ankara 3 routes · Türkiye
- Night trains from Brisbane 3 routes · Australia
- Night trains from Bucharest 3 routes · Romania
- Night trains from Prague 3 routes · Czechia
- Night trains from Rome 3 routes · Italy
- Night trains from Ulaanbaatar 3 routes · Mongolia
- Night trains from Zurich 3 routes · Switzerland
- Night trains from Almaty 2 routes · Kazakhstan
- Night trains from Aswan 2 routes · Egypt
- Night trains from Beijing 2 routes · China
- Night trains from Berlin 2 routes · Germany
- Night trains from Hamburg 2 routes · Germany
- Night trains from Hanoi 2 routes · Vietnam
- Night trains from Helsinki 2 routes · Finland
- Night trains from Jakarta 2 routes · Indonesia
- Night trains from Karachi 2 routes · Pakistan
- Night trains from London 2 routes · United Kingdom
- Night trains from Miami 2 routes · United States
- Night trains from Mumbai 2 routes · India
- Night trains from New Delhi 2 routes · India
- Night trains from New Orleans 2 routes · United States
- Night trains from Sydney 2 routes · Australia
- Night trains from Tashkent 2 routes · Uzbekistan
- Night trains from Tbilisi 2 routes · Georgia
- Night trains from Warsaw 2 routes · Poland
All 108 night trains, A–Z
- Al Atlas Night
Morocco’s night train, out of Tangier at 23:25, couchettes rolling south past Asilah and Casablanca to dawn at the foot of the Koutoubia in Marrakech.
- Alexandria–Aswan Express
One seat, the whole of Egypt: from the Mediterranean up Africa’s oldest main line, waking to palms, feluccas and temples along the Nile to Aswan.
- Almaty–Tashkent Talgo
Central Asia’s new international Talgo, daily since December 2025: dinner leaving Almaty under the Tian Shan, lunch next day in Tashkent.
- Arctic Circle Train
Crosses the Arctic Circle bound for the aurora: the Iron Ore Line’s fjord finale into Narvik is pure drama.
- Arktika
Russia’s polar flagship crosses the Arctic Circle on the 1916 Murman railway: 35 hours north to a port where winter trains arrive in round-the-clock night.
- Ashgabat–Türkmenabat Night Train
Down the Tsarist Trans-Caspian mainline of 1886: overnight past Merv’s ruined oasis and the Karakum sands to the Amu Darya’s banks.
Wikipedia ↗ - Auto Train
Cars and motorcycles ride in autoracks behind the sleepers: often the world’s longest passenger train, nonstop Virginia to Florida.
Wikipedia ↗ - AYaM Yakutia Train
23 hours north from the BAM at Tynda across permafrost to Nizhny Bestyakh on the Lena, one river crossing short of Yakutsk — Russia’s newest long-distance railway.
Wikipedia ↗ - Baghdad–Basra Night Train
Iraq back on rails: since 2014 a Chinese-built sleeper DMU hums south past Babylon and the Euphrates towns, Baghdad to Basra by breakfast.
Wikipedia ↗ - Baikal–Amur Mainline
Brezhnev’s ‘Project of the Century’, the Trans-Siberian’s wilder northern twin: 3,800 km of permafrost, seven ranges and towns that exist only for the line.
Wikipedia ↗ - Baku–Tbilisi Night Train
Back after six years in May 2026: factory-fresh Stadler sleepers with showers and a VIP lounge leave the Caspian at night and wake above the Kura in Tbilisi.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bangkok–Vientiane Express
Since July 2024 the sleeper rolls straight across the Mekong Friendship Bridge, asleep past Ayutthaya, awake in Laos: the first through train from Bangkok into central Vientiane.
Wikipedia ↗ - Benguela Railway Express
Atlantic surf to the Congolese border: the Chinese-rebuilt Benguela line’s weekly sleeper climbs 1,344 km through Huambo’s highlands to Luau.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bima
Indonesia’s original air-conditioned night train (1967): the “Biru Malam” still slips out of Jakarta at dusk and glides past Yogyakarta before dawn.
Wikipedia ↗ - Bosfor Express
The overnight heir to the Orient Express, crossing the Thracian plain from Istanbul over the Bulgarian border to Sofia as the berths are made up.
Wikipedia ↗ - Brisbane XPT
The overnight run still books twin sleepers as it corkscrews through the Border Loop spiral, blasted through rainforest ranges in 1932.
Wikipedia ↗ - Caledonian Sleeper
The “Deerstalker Express”: fall asleep at Euston, wake up crossing Rannoch Moor with red deer at the window.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cardinal
Amtrak’s slowest way to Chicago and its prettiest: tri-weekly through Virginia horse country and the whitewater canyons of the New River Gorge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Chiang Mai Express
Thailand’s classic sleeper: dinner past Ayutthaya’s temples, dawn in the teak hills of Lanna.
Wikipedia ↗ - Chopin
The Chopin sleeper has linked Vienna and Warsaw since at least the 1980s, slipping through the Moravian Gate by night and finishing down Poland’s CMK fast line into the capital before six.
Wikipedia ↗ - City of New Orleans
Immortalized in Steve Goodman’s 1971 song: overnight down the Mississippi Delta past Memphis, Yazoo City and the Louisiana bayous.
Wikipedia ↗ - Cox’s Bazar Express
Opened 2023 to the world’s longest natural beach: an overnight glide from Dhaka to a seashell-shaped terminus a rickshaw ride from the surf.
Wikipedia ↗ - Crescent
Heir to the 1925 Crescent Limited. Manhattan to the French Quarter past Blue Ridge foothills, midnight Atlanta and a dawn crawl across Lake Pontchartrain.
Wikipedia ↗ - Dunhuang Sleeper Y667/668
The branded “Dunhuang” sleeper leaves Lanzhou at 18:00 and follows the Hexi Corridor’s Great Wall forts overnight, arriving near the Mogao caves by dawn.
Wikipedia ↗ - Duronto Express
An all-AC, near-non-stop “Duronto” linking India’s two biggest cities across the central heartland in about 27 hours.
Wikipedia ↗ - Ekspres Rakyat Timuran
Malaysia’s last sleeper: the overnight “Jungle Railway” through rainforest, limestone gorges and sleepy kampungs from Johor Bahru to the Thai border.
Wikipedia ↗ - Empire Builder
Two nights tracing the Great Northern’s empire: skirting Glacier National Park along the Montana Rockies.
Wikipedia ↗ - EN Ister
Retraces the original 1883 Orient Express alignment through Transylvania’s castles and the Carpathian passes.
Wikipedia (HU) ↗ - Erdenet Railway
Overnight sleeper north from the capital to the Soviet-built copper city of Erdenet, branching off the Trans-Mongolian near Darkhan.
- EuroNight
Scandinavia’s night-train revival: across the Öresund while you sleep, into Germany by breakfast.
Wikipedia ↗ - EuroNight Praha–Zürich
The Czech–Swiss night link revived in 2023: the Elbe sandstone gorge at dusk, the Rhine plain at dawn, Zurich by breakfast.
Wikipedia ↗ - European Sleeper
Crowdfunded start-up that gave the Low Countries their night train back: via The Hague and Amsterdam to Berlin and the Elbe valley to Prague.
Wikipedia ↗ - European Sleeper
The night train that replaced the lost Nightjet: Paris to Berlin via Brussels three times a week since March 2026, the open-access sleeper’s boldest route yet.
Wikipedia ↗ - Expreso del Sur
Tuesdays and Fridays out of Oruro: past Lake Poopó’s salt shores to Uyuni by night, then down the quebradas to the Argentine border at Villazón.
- Floridian
Born of a 2024 tunnel-works merger of two classic trains: one seat from Lake Michigan over the Alleghenies to Tampa and Miami, nearly two days aboard.
Wikipedia ↗ - Gajayana
KAI’s flagship sleeper since 1999 leaves Jakarta after dark and skirts Java’s southern volcanoes to reach highland Malang in time for breakfast.
Wikipedia ↗ - Golmud–Korla Railway
Opened 2020 across the Altun Shan between Qinghai and Xinjiang: 1,206 km of salt flats, desert and near-total emptiness — one of the loneliest overnight rides on Earth.
Wikipedia ↗ - Green Line Express
Pakistan’s premium flagship since 2015: 22 hours up the Indus valley from Karachi’s sea air to Islamabad’s Margalla foothills, meals and bedding included.
Wikipedia ↗ - Güney Kurtalan Ekspresi
The third of Turkey’s great eastern sleepers: off the Anatolian plateau to Diyarbakır’s black basalt walls and the Tigris, ending at railhead Kurtalan.
Wikipedia (TR) ↗ - Harbin–Mohe Snow Country Train
The “Snow Country Train” heads 17 hours north to China’s northernmost station at Mohe, where −40 °C winters, frost forests and the odd aurora reward the ride.
- Hat Yai Special Express
Thailand’s southern flagship: 945 km down the Kra Isthmus past Hua Hin’s royal station and Surat Thani’s ferry piers, the sleeper gateway to Malaysia.
- Hong Kong–Beijing High-Speed Sleeper
Fuxing sleeper EMUs leave Kowloon’s skyline at dusk and cross five provinces overnight, rolling into Beijing West before seven in the morning.
- Howrah Rajdhani
India’s first Rajdhani (1969): the all-air-conditioned overnight flagship racing the Grand Chord from the capital to Kolkata, dinner and bedrolls at your berth.
Wikipedia ↗ - Hutsulshchyna
Ukraine’s flagship sleeper into Hutsul country: dusk in Kyiv, dawn above the Prut gorge at Yaremche, then Vorokhta’s stone viaduct and the Yablunytsia pass down to Rakhiv.
Wikipedia (UK) ↗ - Intercités de Nuit
The Pyrenean pilgrim night train: out of Austerlitz every evening on the classic line through Poitiers and Dax, waking beneath the mountains at Lourdes.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗ - Intercités de Nuit
Asleep out of Austerlitz, awake on the Côte Vermeille: the sleeper threads Collioure, Port-Vendres and Banyuls to the last stop before Spain.
Wikipedia ↗ - Intercités de Nuit
The Aveyron sleeper: off the Limoges main line at Brive, then Rocamadour, the Lot valley and Rodez by breakfast — Albi through-cars on weekends.
Wikipedia ↗ - Intercités de Nuit Paris–Briançon
France’s southern-Alps sleeper: lights out at Austerlitz, blinds up in the Durance valley, arrival under the Vauban walls of France’s highest city.
Wikipedia ↗ - Intercités de Nuit Paris–Nice
Relaunched in 2021 as heir to the fabled Train Bleu: board at Austerlitz, wake to the red Estérel cliffs and the sea glittering at Saint-Raphaël.
Wikipedia ↗ - Intercity Notte Rome–Palermo
Europe’s last train on a ship: the sleeper is split at Villa San Giovanni and floated across the Strait of Messina before breakfast.
- IRN Corona
Romania’s classic night loop: asleep through Székely Land and the Maramureș foothills, waking at the far northwestern corner of the country.
- Isan Watthana
Thailand’s smartest sleeper: Chinese-built berths glide out of Bangkok at dusk and wake along the Mun River in Ubon Ratchathani, deep in southern Isan.
Wikipedia ↗ - Island Express
Kerala’s workhorse since 1940: overnight from Bengaluru’s plateau down the palm-and-backwater coast to the subcontinent’s southernmost station at Kanniyakumari.
Wikipedia ↗ - İzmir Mavi Treni
One of Turkey’s last classic ’Blue Train’ sleepers: 883 km overnight across western Anatolia via Eskişehir while the parallel high-speed line stays years off.
Wikipedia ↗ - Khyber Mail
Rolling since 1920 and named for the pass beyond Peshawar. Pakistan’s grand old mail train, two nights along the Indus, a lounge diner added in 2024.
Wikipedia ↗ - Kyiv–Chernivtsi
Overnight across western Ukraine: out of Kyiv just before nine, Lviv in the small hours, then Ivano-Frankivsk and Kolomyia to Chernivtsi by breakfast, ending on the Habsburg line of 1866.
- Kyiv–Warsaw Sleeper
Wartime lifeline to the EU: at the Bug border every carriage is jacked up and its bogies swapped from 1,520 to 1,435 mm gauge while passengers doze.
Wikipedia (UK) ↗ - Lake Shore Limited
Heir to the New York Central’s 1897 Water Level Route: up the Hudson at dusk, along Lake Erie by night, into Chicago with morning coffee.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lào Cai Sleeper
Overnight metre-gauge sleeper up the Red River valley to Lào Cai, the mountain gateway to the terraced rice slopes of Sapa.
Wikipedia ↗ - Melbourne XPT
Australia’s InterCity 125 cousin runs the overnight between its two biggest rivals, cricket ashes optional.
Wikipedia ↗ - Moscow–Kazan Double-Decker
Two storeys of berths slip out of Kazansky station at 23:08 and pull in below the Tatar kremlin by breakfast. Russia’s double-deck night-train boom, eastbound.
Wikipedia ↗ - Mumbai Rajdhani
India’s first Rajdhani: the overnight flagship linking the capital with the financial capital, now in bright Tejas livery.
Wikipedia ↗ - Night Express
Ukraine’s overnight hop across the Carpathians: asleep through Lviv, awake for the climb past Skole into the 2018 twin-bore Beskyd tunnel, then down the valley to Uzhhorod.
Wikipedia (UK) ↗ - Night Riviera
Sleeping cars have run west from Paddington since 1877; today’s train hugs Brunel’s storm-lashed Dawlish sea wall to the far tip of Cornwall.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nightjet
The founding route of the Nightjet brand: over the Arlberg while you sleep, Alps at both ends.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nightjet
First route to get ÖBB’s new-generation Nightjets in 2023. Mini Cabin pods for solo travellers and 230 km/h sleeper stock.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nightjet Munich–Rome
Board after dinner in Bavaria, wake to Tuscan hills: mini-cabins and wireless charging on ÖBB’s newest sleepers, crossing the Tauern by night. From Villach south it runs coupled with the Vienna portion — one train into Rome.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nightjet Vienna–Rome
Board in Vienna after dinner, cross the Carinthian Alps and the Venetian plain by night, and wake rolling into Rome, a sleeper between two imperial capitals. From Villach south it runs coupled with the Munich portion — one train.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nightjet Zurich–Amsterdam
Asleep along the Rhine, awake on the IJ: the 2021 revival that re-linked the Alps to the canals, sliding past Cologne’s floodlit cathedral at midnight.
Wikipedia ↗ - Nile Valley Sleeper
Overnight up the Nile past Luxor’s temples: wake to feluccas and the First Cataract at Aswan.
- Ocean
North America’s oldest continuously named train, since 1904: overnight past the Matapédia salmon rivers and Chaleur Bay to the Atlantic.
Wikipedia ↗ - Oran–Béchar Night Train
Algeria’s Sahara sleeper, revived in December 2024: couchettes leave Oran at nightfall and reach Béchar at the Saoura’s edge by sunrise.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗ - Premium
The southern flagship since 1964 — first Ritsa, then Sochi, Premium since 2009 — 1,761 km from Kazansky station to the subtropical Black Sea platforms of Adler in 23 hours.
- Prietenia
Overnight Friendship sleeper whose coaches are jacked up for a bogie swap at Ungheni. Soviet 1,520 mm broad gauge to European standard.
- Raja Tehran–Bandar Abbas
One of Iran’s longest single-train rides: ~1,290 km across the central desert past Yazd to the Strait of Hormuz, completed when the Bafq link opened in 1995.
- Raja Tehran–Tabriz
Iranian leg of the Tehran–Istanbul Trans-Asia Express, whose onward run once floated the whole train across Turkey’s Lake Van on a rail ferry.
- Red Arrow
Departing at 23:55 nightly since 1931 to the strains of ‘Hymn to the Great City’: the crimson Soviet flagship that outlived the state that built it.
Wikipedia ↗ - RegioJet Night Train
Open-access yellow night train since 2015: cheap couchettes out of Prague, over the Jablunkov Pass and under the dark High Tatras to Košice.
Wikipedia ↗ - Reunification Express
Two nights along the South China Sea: the Hải Vân Pass clings to cliffs the road never dared.
Wikipedia ↗ - Sakhalin Night Train
Russia’s island sleeper: 613 km up Sakhalin’s east coast to oil-town Nogliki, on a railway begun under Japanese rule that kept its narrow gauge until regauging in 2019.
Wikipedia ↗ - Santa Claus Express
Rolls out of Helsinki by night and crosses into Lapland by morning: sleepers and car carriers bound for the Arctic Circle.
- Sethu Express (Boat Mail)
Heir to the 1914 Boat Mail that fed the Ceylon ferry, it now reaches Rameswaram island over India’s first vertical-lift sea bridge, opened 2025.
Wikipedia ↗ - Shosholoza Meyl
The last affordable long-distance sleeper in South Africa: an overnight economy train across the Free State Highveld and Stormberg to the Indian Ocean at East London.
Wikipedia ↗ - Silver Meteor
The Seaboard streamliner that opened Florida’s diesel age in 1939: 28 hours from Penn Station to palm-lined Miami, still running nightly.
Wikipedia ↗ - SJ Nattåg
SJ’s sleeper rolls out of Stockholm at night and wakes among the snow-clad fells of Jämtland at the Åre ski resort.
- Snälltåget
A private summer sleeper down through Sweden, over the Öresund bridge past Copenhagen and across Denmark to Berlin, outlasting the state night trains.
Wikipedia ↗ - Southern Xinjiang Railway
All-night sleepers skirt the Tian Shan and the Taklamakan’s rim to Kashgar, the last great Silk Road bazaar before the Pamirs.
Wikipedia ↗ - Spirit of the Outback
Up the coast to Rockhampton, then dead west into Matilda country: sleepers and the Tuckerbox diner, 1,325 km to the stockman’s capital.
Wikipedia ↗ - Sunrise Express
Japan’s last regular sleeper; the Izumo half splits at Okayama and takes the Hakubi Line gorges to the sacred San’in coast by breakfast.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tashkent–Khiva Night Train
Khiva had no railway until 2018: now a sleeper crosses the Kyzylkum desert overnight and draws up beside the mud-walled Itchan Kala at breakfast.
- Tehran–Mashhad Express
Iran’s busiest corridor: five-star Fadak sleepers glide 926 km east past desert caravanserai country to Imam Reza’s shrine city of Mashhad.
Wikipedia (FA) ↗ - Tehran–Shiraz Night Train
Completed only in 2009, the overnight run leaves Tehran at dusk and descends at dawn past Marvdasht, the plain of Persepolis, into Shiraz.
- Texas Eagle
A Missouri Pacific name kept alive from the Loop to the Alamo: with through sleepers to Los Angeles, one of the longest runs on the Amtrak map.
Wikipedia ↗ - The Canadian
Four nights in 1955 stainless-steel dome cars. Ontario lakeland, prairie infinity, then the Rockies at dawn.
Wikipedia ↗ - The Inlander
Queensland’s grand old night train since 1953. Coral Sea to Cloncurry’s red plains and the smokestacks of Mount Isa, 977 unhurried kilometres.
Wikipedia ↗ - The Westlander
Over the Toowoomba range by night and out across the Darling Downs: twice a week until the wheat gives way to mulga at Charleville.
Wikipedia ↗ - Trans-Mongolian
The Trans-Mongolian’s Gobi crossing: gers, camels, and a bogie change at the Chinese border, where every coach is jacked up for the narrower gauge.
Wikipedia ↗ - Trans-Siberian Railway
The longest railway on Earth: 9,289 km, eight time zones and seven nights between Moscow and the Pacific.
Wikipedia ↗ - Transcamerounais
Cameroon’s nightly lifeline: couchettes climb from Yaoundé’s hills to the Adamawa Plateau, railhead for the country’s wild north.
Wikipedia (FR) ↗ - Tren Patagónico
Friday nights out of Viedma: sleeper berths, a dining car and an onboard cinema crawl across the Río Negro steppe to the lakes of Bariloche.
Wikipedia ↗ - Tulpar Talgo
Kazakh-assembled Talgo sets glide low over the steppe, tracking Lake Balkhash’s western shore all night between the old and new capitals.
- Van Gölü Ekspresi
Ends 1,267 km from Ankara at a ferry slip on Lake Van, where wagons bound for Iran are floated across Turkey’s largest lake.
Wikipedia ↗ - Victoria Falls Overnight
Revived in October 2025: the 1904 line to the Falls leaves Bulawayo at dusk, skirts Hwange’s elephant country and arrives with the spray in sight.
- Vorkuta
Two nights up the Stalin-era Pechora mainline to Vorkuta, a coal city beyond the Arctic Circle that no all-year road reaches — train № 41 is its lifeline to Moscow.
Wikipedia (RU) ↗ - VR Night Train
Finland’s northernmost railhead: an overnight car-carrier sleeper above the Arctic Circle to the fells of Ylläs and Levi.
Wikipedia (FI) ↗ - Yantar
Running since 1964, the Yantar threads Moscow to Russia’s Baltic exclave via Minsk and Vilnius — the last corridor where Russian passenger trains still cross the EU.
Wikipedia (RU) ↗ - Yerevan–Tbilisi Night Train
An every-other-night time capsule down the Debed gorge past Alaverdi’s copper smelters: extended each summer through to the beaches of Batumi.
- Zamyn-Üüd Express
The domestic overnight across the Gobi Desert from Ulaanbaatar to the Chinese-border town of Zamyn-Üüd, halting at Choir and Sainshand.
Wikipedia ↗
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Photos via Wikimedia Commons — each route page credits the author & licence