Edinburgh-Paris train: New midnight sleeper service could soon connect Edinburgh and Paris

Don’t like flying but would love to see the City of Lights? A proposed new service could be just the ticket

Edinburghers could soon be saying bonjour to the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysées and Moulin Rouge as a French company looks to rollout a sleeper train service between Edinburgh and Paris.

The proposed train route to the picture-postcard capital of France is perfect for those who don’t like flying, and would look to offer travellers better privacy, catering, and digital tools than current sleeper trains.

The service would be run by French train company Midnight Trains, who are expected to launch their first service from Paris to Milan and Venice next year.

A French company has plans to roll out a sleeper train service between Edinburgh and Paris.

According to reports, Midnight Trains has ambitions plans to create network of over ten European destinations, with plans to launch trains from Paris to Edinburgh, Copenhagen and Berlin, among other destinations.

Romain Payet, co-founder of Midnight Trains, told The National: “We think that travellers are more and more conscious about the ecological impact of air travel and they need an alternative. But when travelling to and from most major European cities, they do not have this alternative.

“Furthermore, transport operators (air or rail) have been focused on reducing prices for the last two decades, totally forgetting the customer experience and associated services.

“We want to create a new standard or sleeper trains. We believe that basic sleeper trains face three major issues: lack of privacy when you share a compartment with strangers, poor catering services while most travellers plan to have dinner onboard, and few digital services to enhance the experience.

“With our ‘hotel on rails’ we want to solve those problems on our fully electric trains.”

The company’s trains are not compatible with the rail infrastructure between Edinburgh and London, but Payet said they would be ordering a different specification of train to get around this.