Hallo Everyone,
Recently I come across very interesting article about International
Night trains rolling across Switzerland 🇨🇭 in past century or so.
Article is in German language but for English speaking forum members I personally advise to use Google translate service or
DeepL Translate App.
Article gives interesting view on sleeping cars / night trains rolling through Switzerland. From first sleeping coaches of 1900 through Luxury CIWL Belle Époque , post war Tee to modern day Night Jets
Overnight service declined in late 90 early 2000 due to cheap airline flights but nowadays post epidemic times it’s getting popular again.
Go to following link:
You may have to copy link to your browser window!

https://www.google.com/a...n-der-schweiz-ld.1635120

Enjoy…
Märklineisenbahn

Hi Mike C.
Sorry I did not test it so one more time - hopefully this time you will be able to see whole thing. Duh..

https://www.google.com/a...n-der-schweiz-ld.1635120

Under this link the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" asks me to subscribe to be able to read the article.

Hallo ,
Sorry I just realized that you must subscribe to get to the whole article:
Meanwhile I did some “rush translation “
so Please do not flame me out for no syntax or stylistic errors - corrects were not made due to lack of time on hand. Pictures/ illustrations were obmited …
Full credit goes to author Ignaz Civelli

Adventure, Luxury, Crime scene: The history of sleeping car traffic in Switzerland is long and has undergone many changes, And it's not over yet.

Ignaz Civelli
July 13th, 2021, 5.30 a.m.

In 1970 the legendary Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky visited Switzerland. The journey took place in a sleeping car with a scheduled night train. After arriving at Zurich's main train station, the visibly relaxed Chancellor said:
"….I traveled very well and slept well…."
And everyone was happy.

When Democratic President Myriam Sommaruga

[ Simonetta Myriam Sommaruga is a Swiss politician who has served as a Member of the Swiss Federal Council since 2010. A member of the Social Democratic Party, she was President of the Swiss Confederation in 2015 and 2020]

traveled by night train to Vienna 50 years later on a working visit, she received some harsh criticism for such trip. Such long train journeys are not appropriate for top executives or politicians with tight deadlines. Business people and tourists have long been using airplanes for long-distance journeys.

But for environmental reasons, night trains have recently become a means of transport with a bright future again. After a pandemic-related break, they have been back in this country since Pentecost Holiday. ( post Easter Holliday)
From December, a night train will also run from Switzerland to Amsterdam, Rome, Barcelona and other European cities are to follow. Great reason enough to take a look at the eventful history of night train traffic from, to and through Switzerland.

The pioneer from Belgium:

The first railroad cars, which were also set up for sleeping, ran in the USA from the early 1830s. In Europe, developments of sleeping cars in America were closely followed, but the “patchy” European rail network and the different technical standards of the individual railway companies throughout Europe hampered international rail traffic. In 1872, the year before the Franco-German War had ended, the resourceful Belgian entrepreneur Georges Nagelmackers ( after short visit to US ) saw his chance and founded the International Sleeping Car Company (CIWL). The company initially had five two-axle sleeping cars built, each with three compartments, each compartment with two lower and two upper beds.

Ready to board: a passenger is waiting with a baggage porter on the platform in Lucerne, ( photo from early 1960 )

SBB Historic:
The first scheduled sleeping car in Europe was available from the early summer of 1873 on the railroad between Ostend and Cologne. Further connections followed in the same year, for example from Paris to Vienna and Cologne. Since the CIWL was in financial difficulties, Nagelmackers had to team up with a majority partner - the American William d’Alton Mann - and the sleeping cars were labeled “Mann Boudoir Sleeping Car”. In 1874 further European connections were added, including two to Basel, one from Ostend and one from Cologne. Both led through Alsace. Thus, Switzerland could be reached in a sleeping car for the first time. In the meantime, CIWL sleeping car fleet had grown to 42 wagons. After Mann's withdrawal from the sleeping car business, Nagelmackers founded CIWL for the second time in 1875.

Asleep through the Gotthard:

The Gotthard tunnel was opened in May 1882. The Gotthard Railway, together with the CIWL, soon set up a direct sleeper connection from Basel (but not from Zurich) to Milan. When cholera broke out in Italy in 1883, the southbound sleeping car race ended at the Chiasso border station.
Also , the two-axle sleeping cars did not meet the expectations placed on them in terms of smoothness and comfort of ride and were therefore replaced by four-axle wagons as early as 1890, which were now also accessible to second-class travelers. In 1888, an express train connection with sleeping cars was set up from Vienna through the Arlberg Tunnel, completed four years earlier, to Zurich and on to Paris. With that, the sleeping cars had reached Zurich.

Until 1883, sleeping cars were only included in regular express trains. But this particular year the CIWL created a new train category with the introduction of Orient Express: The Luxury train. As far as these trains ran at night, they always brought sleeping cars with them. More luxury trains were added in quick succession. From the summer of 1891, just in time for the 600th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation, the “Suisse Express “ operated with British tourists between Calais and Lucerne. It was the first luxury train with a sleeping car to reach Switzerland. From 1901 the “Engadin Express” brought tourists from Paris to Chur. The names and routes of these trains illustrate their main function as feeders of foreign tourist/holiday-makers in to Switzerland.

Of the 56 CIWL express train lines with sleeping cars that ran in Europe between 1882 and 1913, 15 ran through or to Switzerland. This high number illustrates the important position of the country for European sleeping car traffic. With the opening of the Gotthard Tunnel and, in 1898, the Simplon Tunnel, important new transit axes were created for European traffic flows, which were also used by international express trains and which not only made it easier for international travelers to travel to Switzerland, but also to pass through it without to get off.

Via Switzerland into the wide world:
advertising poster for the Simplon Orient Express around 1930.
Heritage / Hulton / Getty

In the years before the First World War, sleeping car travel experienced its first heyday. From Switzerland there were sleeping car connections to Paris, Nice, Boulogne, Milan, Genoa, Vienna, Berlin and Brussels. Basel and - with some distance - Zurich had established themselves as the most important departure stations for night connections from Switzerland.

Between two world wars:

The First World War led to the drying up of tourist traffic to Switzerland. Until 1916 there were still sleeper connections to Paris and Nice as well as to Vienna and Berlin. The night connections were only used by diplomats and occasionally by relatives of foreigners ( soldiers) interned in Switzerland who had been granted the right to visit. From 1917 sleeper traffic with Switzerland was completely stopped.

International rail traffic initially only recovered slowly after the war. Some luxury express trains were running again, but they had lost their importance. In the 1920s and 1930s, a close-knit network of coordinated day and night trains was created across Europe. This made it possible to drive directly from Zurich or Basel to major European metropolises such as Paris, Berlin or Vienna and also to reach almost every medium-sized European city with just one or two changes and to use a sleeping car for the night.

In the summer of 1934, a time represents second heyday of sleeping car traffic, 7 luxury express trains ran abroad from Switzerland, 5 of them with sleeping cars. In addition, 447 through cars were in international traffic, 25 percent of which were sleeping cars. However, the through-car system “transferring instead of changing” had its price: in Switzerland alone, hundreds of additional maneuvering and coupling operations were necessary every day. Delayed through coaches that had to be reassigned led to repeated delays for connecting trains, and passengers sometimes did not have to change trains at stations, but instead had to change cars on the moving train.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the tried and tested system of through car runs was abandoned.

The Second World War again led to a collapse in international travel. The sleeping car routes have been drastically reduced. In 1941 there was another sleeping car from Geneva through the Simplon to Trieste, and in 1943 there was a sleeping car between Bern and Rome. From 1944 there was no longer any sleeper traffic to or from Switzerland.
In 1940 a “deployment train “ was made available for the Army General Command in Erstfeld. The train also contained a CIWL sleeping car.

Nostalgia trip in a luxury train:

Orient Express with the logo of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL), photo from Perrache train station in Lyon, 2019.
Robert Deyrail / Gamma-Rapho / Getty



Smuggling, theft, murder:

The quality and design of the sleeping cars made rapid progress. The cars became bigger and smoother, the interior was improved and comfort increased. Thanks to modern wagon construction technology, one woke up to 600 to 700 kilometers in a sleeping car without noticing it, enthused an SBB copywriter in 1929. At the destination you arrive “rested, toileted, in a good mood”.
However, minor mishaps could occur, for example if a clogged washbasin overflowed, the compartment heating failed or the conductor failed to wake the passenger in time.

Very rarely it happened that sleeping cars running as through cars were wrongly reassigned. Unforgettable is the incident when, in August 2010, the two train parts of a train from Barcelona were mixed up in Lyon - with the result that 105 passengers woke up in Modane on the Italian border instead of shortly before Zurich and 135 more passengers arrived in Zurich instead of in Milan.

Occasionally, sleeping cars have been the scene of crimes, even if not as often as suggested by literature and film. Sleeping cars were popular with smugglers because they felt less controlled when driving across the border at night. A spectacular case of foreign exchange smuggling caused a sensation in 1945. During the customs inspection, British pounds and US dollars worth several million Swiss francs were found in the bellows of the crossing between a sleeping car Paris – Bern. Although the travelers had been questioned by the authorities for four hours and the train had been held back at the border for so long, the money could not be assigned to any person and owner never came forward.

Since more affluent people traveled in sleeping cars, who also carried valuables and large amounts of cash with them, thefts were sometimes spectacular. In 1932, for example, two fake detectives stole a suitcase that contained $ 35,000 US Dollars from a traveler on the Budapest – Zurich night train. Sleeping cars and couchette cars in particular in southern traffic fell into disrepute again and again because of the frequent thefts by well-organized gangs.

Although they were extremely rare, there were also murders in the sleeping car. For example, the mayor of Annemasse near Geneva was murdered by robbery in 1906 while on a sleeper trip from Paris to Orange.
A relationship / flirt ( lovers crime of passion) caused horror in Switzerland in May 1964: At that time, a German sleeping car attendant killed a Danish nurse in a sleeping car going from Chur to Copenhagen and threw her body off the moving train in a tunnel near Mühlehorn on Lake Walen.

Cost pressure and competition:

Far fewer passengers can be accommodated in sleeping cars than in normal passenger cars. Ever since sleeping cars have existed, the challenge has been to make optimal use of the available space. As early as 1890, a German study showed that in a luxury sleeping car train there was a ratio between car weight and passenger load of 126: 1, while in a passenger car with all three car classes it was 30: 1 and was therefore around four times as advantageous. In 1883, a first-class ticket for the journey from Lucerne to Milan cost around 25 francs, plus a sleeping car surcharge of 12 francs.

These prices were quite high: in the same year, a better room in a Swiss mid-range hotel - including breakfast and dinner, light and heating - cost between 7 and 10 francs. ( as a comparison) However, as long as there were enough passengers who could afford the exclusivity of the sleeping car trip, there was no great pressure on the operators to optimize costs.

With the economic boom in the post-war period, not just a few, but large sections of the population wanted to enjoy new life style. This often included holidays in the south. From 1951 the Italy – Scandinavia Express ran, which also carried a Stockholm – Basel – Rome sleeping cars. In the mid-1950s, around 200,000 passengers a year used a sleeping cars, 55 percent of them in transit (Gotthard, Simplon and Basel-Buchs) and 45 percent from and to Switzerland.

Shave fresh and then get off:

Passenger on the SBB Zurich-Geneva night train, 1952.

Comet / ETHZ / CC BY-SA 4.0


Sleeping cars ran on distances from 700 to 2000 kilometers. The night rail connections were now confronted with two competitors: for medium distances by car, for longer distances by airplane. In 1953 the newspaper «Die Tat», when comparing trips with a sleeping car and traveling by plane, came to the conclusion that both modes of transport were about the same price, but that the plane performed better because there were more comfortable seats and you were not bothered every 20 minutes by a ticket inspection and conductor.

The SBB were aware of the competition and the changing usage behavior of customers, but saw sleeping cars in particular as an effective means of asserting themselves. One measure was the Zurich Altstetten – Avignon car train, introduced in 1960, which, in addition to car transporters, also carried sleeping and couchette cars. The travelers arrived in their holiday region well rested in the morning and from there enjoyed the individual freedom of movement that only the own auto could offer them.

Budget instead of comfort

The period from the mid-1950s was characterized by great dynamics in the sleeping car business. Every few years new trains, types, classes and systems were introduced / appeared. It all started with the “Komet”, a comfortable train with one and two-bed compartments as well as a toilet and shower that ran between Zurich and Hamburg. The train only existed as a single unit , was prone to failure and, in the event of failure, had to be run with a conventional replacement composition. That is why train was taken out of service in 1958.

When the SBB decided to purchase 30 couchette cars in 1959, this meant a fundamental change in strategy, because until now they had only focused on comfort in night traffic. The SBB announced that the wagons should also enable “travelers with a small purse” to take a night trip “in a quiet slumber ”.

In the vernacular, however, this was expressed a little more succinctly: " It’s called couchette coach because you can't sleep in it." The first cars were used from 1960 on the Basel – Zurich – Vienna and Zurich – Milan – Rome and Genoa routes. Other destinations soon followed. The compartments could accommodate eight people during the day and six at night.

In contrast to the sleeping car, where bedding, pillows and a towel were available and you slept in pajamas, there was only a pillow and a blanket with a sheet-like cover in the couchette instead and passengers slept in their clothes. After outbreak of staphylococcus were detected in the blankets in 1986, [ … It is the leading cause of skin and soft tissue infections such as abscesses (boils), furuncles, and cellulitis. Although most staph infections are not serious, S. aureus can cause serious infections such as bloodstream infections, pneumonia, or bone and joint infections …]

The SBB management decided to dry-clean the blankets after every 20 uses/ runs. Until then, they had been disinfected once a year only. ( quite frankly unbelievable)

Mysterious Soviet sleeping car:

Train journeys to the east ( behind iron curtain ) were an special adventure. While sleeping car connections were usually geared to the needs of business and leisure travelers, the slipping cars to the Soviet Union were mainly based on political considerations / demand. It was established not till 1974 before when a sleeping car route was created from Moscow to Switzerland, first to Basel, and from 1977 to Bern and from 1988 to Geneva. The Soviet slipping wagons, which run twice a week, immediately caught the eye ( aroused great interest ) in Swiss train stations because of their shape and color, the distinctive decorative stripes and the emblem of the Soviet state railways with hammer and sickle on the side of each car.

The partially Cyrillic lettering and the tight curtains on the car windows, which made it impossible to peek inside the wagon , gave the car something mysterious. The sleeping cars were also used to carry diplomatic mail, and western consumer goods were transported on the return journey back to Moscow. In 1994, after the collapse of the USSR, the sleeper connection was discontinued for the time being, only to be reactivated in 2007 for a further six years.

Driving in a group:

The night train boom in Switzerland from the 1960s onwards was mainly due to couchette cars and hardly to popular earlier sleeping cars. The introduction of the Interrail ticket for young people in 1972 made the couchette even more popular. At the same time, however, the operators of sleeping and couchette cars struggled with growing cost and competitive pressure from airlines. That is why nine western European railway companies, including SBB and the two sleeping car companies CIWL and DSG, which are active in international traffic, ( their German counterpart) formed a sleeping car pool in 1971 under the name TEN - for Trans Euro Night. The aim was to standardize tariffs and modernize the rolling stock in overnight train business In order to ensure the good night's sleep, the trains should not stop between midnight and 5 a.m. to get on or off.


Assembly plant in Schlieren for the “Trans Euro Night” sleeping car pool, 1975.
Christof Sonderegger / ETHZ / CC BY-SA 4.0

In 1995 the TEN network disbanded due to different interests. As early as 1991, the SBB, together with its Austrian and German partners, ÖBB and DB, decided to develop their own train that would meet the needs of wealthy business people with a high demand for comfort as well as those of families with limited budgets. The result was the City Night Line (CNL), which started running in 1995, with - as a novelty in European railway history - double-decker sleeping cars. The second-class version of the car had 20 compartments with a total of 44 beds, which allowed for economical operation, but also meant that these compartments were very small. In order to be able to attract bus travelers to the train, so-called sleeperette cars with reclining reclining chairs were also used from 1993 (initially on the Basel – Zurich – Vienna route).

In the mid-1990s, a large number of different night trains ran from and to Switzerland with a variety of offers that was almost impossible to keep track of.

Final end or new bloom?

In 1999 the SBB withdrew from the CNL business, and in 2009 they withdrew entirely from the night train business. The decline of night train connections was primarily caused by the low-cost airline tickets. But the European railway companies themselves also contributed to the loss of attractiveness of night trains with the introduction of high-speed trains like ICE or JET. After all, it was society itself that for decades saw the airplane as the “natural continuation” of the car and no longer considered traveling in sleeping and couchette cars feasible.

The once extensive night train network has now shrunk to three Euro Night connections operated by national providers (to Prague, Budapest and Zagreb) and four Nightjet services operated by ÖBB (to Vienna, Graz, Berlin and Hamburg). There are no longer any night trains to France and Italy, which were once extremely important for sleeping car runs.

The history of night trains in Switzerland experienced three heydays, as can be seen: the first in the years 1901–1913, which was characterized by the international express trains with luxury sleeping cars. The second lasted from around 1920–1938, with the sleeping cars as through car runs. The third flowering phase from 1960–1995 belonged to couchette coaches. And after years of decline, the climate debate now seems to be leading to a revival: The SBB are currently in the process of opening a fourth chapter of night trains.

Ignaz Civelli is a historian and researches the history of traffic. Until 2018 he was the state archivist of the canton of Zug.


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