Caledonian Sleeper to mainland Europe?

danielhogg2005 · 4 Aug 2026

Working group established to explore Caledonian Sleeper links to mainland Europe | Transport Scotland

A working group has met for the first time to deliver a feasibility study examining the potential for a direct Caledonian Sleeper service to mainland Europe. The group, comprising representatives from Transport Scotland, Scottish Rail Holdings and Caledonian Sleeper, will oversee the development...

www.transport.gov.scot

A working group has been established to deliver a feasibility study of running direct Caledonian Sleeper services from Scotland to Europe.

A working group has met for the first time to deliver a feasibility study examining the potential for a direct Caledonian Sleeper service to mainland Europe.

The group, comprising representatives from Transport Scotland, Scottish Rail Holdings and Caledonian Sleeper, will oversee the development of a high-level feasibility study exploring the technical and commercial opportunities and challenges associated with extending sleeper rail services to the continent.

The work is being progressed as part of the Scottish Government’s manifesto commitment to commission a feasibility study into options for a Caledonian Sleeper service to Europe.

Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport, Stephen Flynn said:

“We committed to exploring the potential for a direct Caledonian Sleeper service to mainland Europe and I am pleased that this work is now underway.

“The establishment of this working group marks an important first step in delivering that commitment and will help ensure the feasibility study is informed by the expertise of our rail partners.

“This is an early-stage exercise and the study will focus on understanding the practical, technical and commercial considerations involved. The findings will provide an evidence base to inform any future decisions.”

The working group is expected to report its findings to Ministers later this year.

RailUK Forums

mcmad · 4 Aug 2026

danielhogg2005 said:
Working group established to explore Caledonian Sleeper links to mainland Europe | Transport Scotland

A working group has met for the first time to deliver a feasibility study examining the potential for a direct Caledonian Sleeper service to mainland Europe. The group, comprising representatives from Transport Scotland, Scottish Rail Holdings and Caledonian Sleeper, will oversee the development...

www.transport.gov.scot

A working group has been established to deliver a feasibility study of running direct Caledonian Sleeper services from Scotland to Europe.

Filed in the same drawer as full borders reopening and internal Scottish High Speed rail.

sh24 · 4 Aug 2026

danielhogg2005 said:
Working group established to explore Caledonian Sleeper links to mainland Europe | Transport Scotland

A working group has met for the first time to deliver a feasibility study examining the potential for a direct Caledonian Sleeper service to mainland Europe. The group, comprising representatives from Transport Scotland, Scottish Rail Holdings and Caledonian Sleeper, will oversee the development...

www.transport.gov.scot

A working group has been established to deliver a feasibility study of running direct Caledonian Sleeper services from Scotland to Europe.

Electrification of the Borders Railway is eyebrow raising, but that idea is truly crackers. The subsidy will be huge.

GordonT · 4 Aug 2026

danielhogg2005 said:
Working group established to explore Caledonian Sleeper links to mainland Europe | Transport Scotland

A working group has met for the first time to deliver a feasibility study examining the potential for a direct Caledonian Sleeper service to mainland Europe. The group, comprising representatives from Transport Scotland, Scottish Rail Holdings and Caledonian Sleeper, will oversee the development...

www.transport.gov.scot

A working group has been established to deliver a feasibility study of running direct Caledonian Sleeper services from Scotland to Europe.

Astonishing how money can be found to fund this type of cloud cuckoo land study.

D6130 · 4 Aug 2026

GordonT said:
Astonishing how money can be found to fund this type of cloud cuckoo land study.

Why not? They found the money for the feasibility study of extending the Borders Line to Hawick and/or Carlisle....which is a total non-starter. Money seems to grow on trees at Holyrood!

dk1 · 4 Aug 2026

GordonT said:
Astonishing how money can be found to fund this type of cloud cuckoo land study.

My sentiments exactly.

Bald Rick · 4 Aug 2026

sh24 said:
I priced the Sleeper for a regular trip to Aberdeen, booking 3 months out. £290 for a Club, £210 for a Classic. Or I can pay BA £80, another £80 for one of the airport hotels, save either £50 or £130 and have a decent nights sleep too. It's not a serious mode of transport for most people travelling on business.

The sleeper is not really on the business market now, except for edge cases where there is a ’no fly’ policy either from the company or the individual.

It doesn’t need to be. The sleeper sells, and sells well, in the leisure market. Especially for people travelling together, where the price is much more attractive than the alternatives.

danielhogg2005 said:
Working group established to explore Caledonian Sleeper links to mainland Europe | Transport Scotland

A working group has met for the first time to deliver a feasibility study examining the potential for a direct Caledonian Sleeper service to mainland Europe. The group, comprising representatives from Transport Scotland, Scottish Rail Holdings and Caledonian Sleeper, will oversee the development...

www.transport.gov.scot

A working group has been established to deliver a feasibility study of running direct Caledonian Sleeper services from Scotland to Europe.

I will happily do that study, for a fee of £20,000 and a case of Glenfarclas 25.

mcmad said:
Filed in the same drawer as full borders reopening and internal Scottish High Speed rail.

the drawer below that.

Falcon1200 · 5 Aug 2026

danielhogg2005 said:
A working group has been established to deliver a feasibility study of running direct Caledonian Sleeper services from Scotland to Europe.

Hopefully someone will ask, very soon;

What stock will be used?
What locomotives?
What will the journey time be?
What will the fares be?
Do you not know what happened to the original planned Channel Tunnel sleeper services, and why?
Who do you think would actually use such a service?

Finally, how much will this nonsense cost - Not the train service, which will never happen, but the (un)feasibility study?

43096 · 5 Aug 2026

Falcon1200 said:
Hopefully someone will ask, very soon;

What locomotives?

The locomotives is the easy bit… Class 92 through from Scotland to Calais. Then something else (Sybic/TRAXX/Vectron) forward.

GordonT · 6 Aug 2026

dk1 said:
My sentiments exactly.

The loopy feasibility study into extending the sleeper service to "the Continent" seems all the more like "fiddling whilst Rome burns" alongside the apparent regularity of the existing resource provision failing to meet the core requirements of the domestic business.

Zomboid · 6 Aug 2026

Falcon1200 said:
Finally, how much will this nonsense cost - Not the train service, which will never happen, but the (un)feasibility study?

Peanuts in the context of rail subsidy and government budgets.

With any luck it'll put a stop to any nonsense chat about this kind of thing for a good few years.

dk1 · 6 Aug 2026

GordonT said:
The loopy feasibility study into extending the sleeper service to "the Continent" seems all the more like "fiddling whilst Rome burns" alongside the apparent regularity of the existing resource provision failing to meet the core requirements of the domestic business.

Is it all a deflecting tactic?

Falcon1200 · 6 Aug 2026

Zomboid said:
Peanuts in the context of rail subsidy and government budgets.

Some of those peanuts are being taken from my pocket! I would rather they went to something useful.

Zomboid · 6 Aug 2026

Falcon1200 said:
Some of those peanuts are being taken from my pocket! I would rather they went to something useful.

Shutting down nonsense so government attention can be focussed somewhere worthwhile is useful in it's way. It's easy to say that it's obviously nonsense, but it needs to be properly proven.

Doing a proper study into the borders extension should kill it off and allow people whose time has to be spent dealing with the nonsense to be spent usefully, for example.

waverley47 · 6 Aug 2026

Zomboid said:
Doing a proper study into the borders extension should kill it off and allow people whose time has to be spent dealing with the nonsense to be spent usefully, for example.

Chance would be a fine thing.

Approximately six months after the line reopened, I had a lovely meeting with an MP, rather rudely asking me exactly why the line hadn't made it to his town.

Two years previously, I'd sat in a meeting with the same gentleman explaining to him that as the Scottish government was funding the borders line, and not Westminster, he wasn't party to the feasibility study, and that his repeated calls to cancel the project as a waste of money were directed at the wrong person.

Krokodil · 6 Aug 2026

waverley47 said:
Two years previously, I'd sat in a meeting with the same gentleman explaining to him that as the Scottish government was funding the borders line, and not Westminster, he wasn't party to the feasibility study, and that his repeated calls to cancel the project as a waste of money were directed at the wrong person.

Did you remind him of this?

styles · 7 Aug 2026

Fort William to Kharkiv here we come!

Clansman · 7 Aug 2026

Is nobody taking into account that the Caledonian Sleeper is self confessed to be loss making and embracingly so, since it has a multiplier effect on the local economies of Highland towns who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it if the service never provided convenience for more wealthy travellers?

That has always been the name of the game for the Scottish Government, more so since Serco-nisation. I suspect this attempt, if genuine, is much in the same vein.

The business case is therefore irrelevant and obsolete if it only considers the economics of the day to day operation of the Sleeper itself. If that was the premise, the service in its current form would not exist at all.

SynthD · 7 Aug 2026

Clansman said:
since it has a multiplier effect on the local economies of Highland towns who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it if the service never provided convenience for more wealthy travellers?

Measuring that for other domestic routes would be very useful for this forum. But for this international route, is that sort of analysis coming soon?

styles · 7 Aug 2026

SynthD said:
Measuring that for other domestic routes would be very useful for this forum. But for this international route, is that sort of analysis coming soon?

One suspects this is what the feasibility study will aim to deliver.

Tetragon213 · 7 Aug 2026

Clansman said:
Is nobody taking into account that the Caledonian Sleeper is self confessed to be loss making and embracingly so, since it has a multiplier effect on the local economies of Highland towns who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it if the service never provided convenience for more wealthy travellers?

That has always been the name of the game for the Scottish Government, more so since Serco-nisation. I suspect this attempt, if genuine, is much in the same vein.

The business case is therefore irrelevant and obsolete if it only considers the economics of the day to day operation of the Sleeper itself. If that was the premise, the service in its current form would not exist at all.

The £1mil question there is, how worthwhile is the subsidy to the sleeper, in comparison to the boost it brings to places like Aberdeen, Inverness, Fort Bill, and the Lowland Cities?

Indeed, should the railway as a whole be expected to make a profit? The systems in China and in France certainly don't to my knowledge, as they are wedded to the idea of rail as a service and investment in the nation as a whole, not as a direct method of making money.

Zomboid · 7 Aug 2026

Tetragon213 said:
Indeed, should the railway as a whole be expected to make a profit?

The fact that we still have a passenger railway is the answer to that.

zwk500 · 7 Aug 2026

Zomboid said:
Shutting down nonsense so government attention can be focussed somewhere worthwhile is useful in it's way. It's easy to say that it's obviously nonsense, but it needs to be properly proven.

Doing a proper study into the borders extension should kill it off and allow people whose time has to be spent dealing with the nonsense to be spent usefully, for example.

If only it actually worked like that. However, to the proponents of the idea it will simply be a failure of the feasibility study to find the benefits they are sure are there.

Tetragon213 said:
Indeed, should the railway as a whole be expected to make a profit? The systems in China and in France certainly don't to my knowledge, as they are wedded to the idea of rail as a service and investment in the nation as a whole, not as a direct method of making money.

Tbf UK rail investement does not need to make an operational profit (as in the train fares/income do not need to cover their operating costs) to get approved. It does, however, usually have to be net beneficial to the public purse.

Tetragon213 · 7 Aug 2026

Zomboid said:
The fact that we still have a passenger railway is the answer to that.

I don't even want to think of the sheer amount of damage that would have been done if the Serpell Report was carried out.

That said, I'm not sure subsidising the sleepers is a better use of money than general investment into daytime services.

Zomboid · 7 Aug 2026

zwk500 said:
only it actually worked like that. However, to the proponents of the idea it will simply be a failure of the feasibility study to find the benefits they are sure are there

They might not shut up, but at least there'll be some good reason to ignore the noise for a while!

lowe1409 · 7 Aug 2026

Clansman said:
Is nobody taking into account that the Caledonian Sleeper is self confessed to be loss making and embracingly so, since it has a multiplier effect on the local economies of Highland towns who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it if the service never provided convenience for more wealthy travellers?

If it's the highland towns keeping it in business, then how come the lowland sleepers are still run? And how come it makes a loss anyway? Fares are relatively high and whenever I've looked, it usually seems to be well booked.

marshlinker · 7 Aug 2026

43096 said:
The locomotives is the easy bit… Class 92 through from Scotland to Calais. Then something else (Sybic/TRAXX/Vectron) forward.

Would have to run via Barking or West London line, 92s don't have KVB as they predate HS1 and St Pancras.

AndrewE · 7 Aug 2026

lowe1409 said:
If it's the highland towns keeping it in business, then how come the lowland sleepers are still run?

Maybe Highland and Lowland MPs use it to and from London? (Plus MSPs and civil servants too...)

lowe1409 said:
And how come it makes a loss anyway? Fares are relatively high and whenever I've looked, it usually seems to be well booked.

because it has all the costs of running a train for just a dozen or so passengers per coach?

popeter45 · 7 Aug 2026

marshlinker said:
Would have to run via Barking or West London line, 92s don't have KVB as they predate HS1 and St Pancras.

lack of KVB also makes the French side tricky as well as nowhere in TVM land that can be used for a loco swap (i believe idea was for some AWS at Calais-Ville to enable that to be used)
if being realistic (as much as you can with such a idea), locomotive + carriages would not be the best option for such a service, either a multiple unit (like the class 79 in Norway) or pseudo Multiple unit (like the CR200J in china) would make more sense for tunnel/HS1 operations

LUYMun · 7 Aug 2026

If the plan is worth pursing it would probably be more worthwhile to have the "Lowland" destinations (Glasgow and Edinburgh) to be connected to the Continent as these being cities would have bigger numbers than the smaller Highland stations.

Caledonian Sleeper to mainland Europe?

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