There is a specific happiness in being handed a folded blanket and a dining car menu at ten in the evening, with three hundred kilometres of darkness ahead and a good novel in your bag.
The overnight train is enjoying a revival, and we rode four of the best new routes — each chosen for a dining car worth waking up for and a berth that actually sleeps.
Our advice is practical: book the lower berth, board hungry, and bring a book you have been saving. The rhythm of the rails does the rest, rocking you into the kind of sleep that hotels charge extra for.
You arrive at dawn, somewhere new, already part of the place.