Midnight Trains is dead

[StephenHunter]

Confirmed in their weekly email today, this sleeper start-up has failed and shut down. By their own admission, they didn't get the investment that they needed and probably should have stopped a lot earlier when they missed their initial fundraising goal by quite some margin.

Where the night dies

Midnight Trains died today, surrounded by family and friends.

www.midnight-trains.com

It is with great sadness that we must announce the death of a dream. The death of european teleportation. It’s moving on to a better world.

Midnight Trains died today, surrounded by family and friends.

We have done everything in our power to succeed in making the shared dream of a 21st century night train come true. It was a beautiful, worthwhile night train that had the power to make sustainable travel between Europe’s major cities a reality.

Today is the end of an ambitious project launched by a bold trio. For four years, we’ve put all our energy into reinventing the night train to make it a mode of transport that’s in tune with our times, able to compete with medium-haul aviation and offers a desirable alternative to all those who wish to continue travelling, without trashing the planet.

 

[popeter45]

contrast it to European sleeper in seeing what they did wrong
Midnight Trains sound like they wanted to go in the deep end with all the most expensive options, new bespoke rolling stock thats channel tunnel rated to launch there new routes in full from day 1. could have seen it being a tech nightmare even if they got the funding and stock
European sleeper in contrast went with a far more tepid and realistic approch looking at easy wins such as used rolling stock, single train a day and initially a truncated route until they could extend further, thats let them be way more sucessful to the point of looking at expansions such as adding in a dining car and even them on loan to reduce risk for now

 

[StephenHunter]

They tried to be a modern CIWL, but the original CIWL got really big backing from Day One, like King of the Belgians Leopold II. Yes, the man responsible for why the DRC is a mess.

They never had that.

CIWL also operated catering cars on day trains; Newrest Wagons-Lits still does.

 

[popeter45]

They tried to be a modern CIWL, but the original CIWL got big backing from Day One, like King of the Belgians Leopold II. Yes, that man.

also CIWL didnt run its own trains, they worked with other state operators who they attached sleeper carriages too

 

[danshrimp]

A pity. It's been interesting reading their travails on their blog over the past year or so - really gives you a first hand view of the challenges this kind of operation will face (and the reality behind the warm words from SNCF, EU etc). There may be no train service coming out of this, but frankly there's room for a book deal... https://www.midnight-trains.com/blog-subcategories-en/confidences

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Jun 2024 ==

This thread is harsh, but frankly fair: https://x.com/trainlagged/status/1796953766626828344?t=VyKlcnS5cSyGyWAP-Bw1-A&s=19

And perhaps put best by this person quoted by The Man in Seat 61:

Somehow no surprise. The 4 factors:
- start up
- new vehicles
- night train
- France
are simply too difficult. Two of them would probably be the maximum.

As @popeter45 says, European Sleeper did two and have only narrowly made it work. (Now they've got the ball rolling they're taking on a third, France, for their route to Barcelona supposedly next year. Sounds like they're having the expected experience...)

 

[StephenHunter]

also CIWL didnt run its own trains, they worked with other state operators who they attached sleeper carriages too

Well, there were actually some big private operators at the time they started, especially in France. Germany was operating on regional-level railways i.e. Prussia and Bavaria.