I’ve only ever taken a proper sleeper train once - from Cologne to Copenhagen and back, though I’ve travelled overnight on numerous Amtrak services. Actually they were all proper sleepers I think I just couldn’t afford a bunk on the Amtrak ones at the time. Our trip on that European CityNightLine train wasn’t great and my family didn’t want to repeat it but I have good memories of the experience all the same. (Besides if you ask my daughter for a memorable holiday moment from her childhood there’s a good chance she’ll tell you about the bit where Daddy threw his sock in the toilet on the train. It isn’t always the parts where everything goes to plan that we hold most dear.)

Martin writes this as a lament (perhaps) to European sleeper services which are fast disappearing. It’s part travelogue, part history book, part literature review and I really enjoyed all the undisguised nerdery and insight as well as finding out that our sub par experience with the night train was actually about par for the course.