About this website

In 1984 I sat in a night train for the first time. I was a child, my father had the tickets, and somewhere between two countries I fell asleep. In the morning everything had changed — the language, the light, the lettering on the signs. Forty years later that still hasn't worn off.

Twelve years after that I started writing down what I knew. Not as a business, but because nothing was online: anyone wondering whether you could still reach Istanbul from Bucharest in a sleeper needed a printed timetable, a station noticeboard and a lot of patience.

Forty years, briefly

1. 1984The first night on a train. With my father, in a couchette, across Europe.
2. 1990sInterrail. Three weeks, one printed timetable, many nights on trains — and every time the same trouble finding out what actually runs.
3. 1996My first site goes online: interrail.net. For one reason only — there was nothing on the web.
4. 2000sIt becomes rail.cc — timetables and Interrail in more than thirty languages. Alongside it raildude.com, a forum for everyone with the same questions.
5. 2019nachtzug.net. Night trains only, nothing else — because this one subject deserves its own site.
6. 2026Everything moves together under rail.world: timetables, maps, stations and the raildude community. Plus railnest.net for sleeping by the station and kupe.social for the people on board.
7. todayIt keeps growing. New services, photos and texts go in every week.

One site has turned into several, and one tinkerer into a team. That is why it says "we" from here on.

Why night trains in particular

Because they are the only way to travel where the distance costs you no day. You lie down, and you get up in a different city. One night on a train replaces both a flight and a hotel night — at a fraction of the CO₂.

And because they are hard to find. Every operator sells on its own, the timetables sit scattered across the web, and railway journey planners often don't show a night train at all when something faster runs by day. So nachtzug.net collects exactly one thing: which night trains exist, when they run, what cabins they have, and where you book them most easily.

How we work

nachtzug.net is run by Railworld AB in Sweden. We maintain the timetables by hand and check them against the operators; the maps and station records come from our own railway database. We are not an agency that picked up the subject last year — we have been doing this since the web began.

nachtzug.net has been running since 2019 in nine languages and keeps growing. Where a country is still thin, we say so.

How we make money

We don't sell tickets. Some booking links are affiliate links: if you buy through one, we earn a commission, and the price stays the same for you. It doesn't affect which connection we recommend. There are no paid placements and no advertising inside the text.

What we can't do

Bookings, reservations, refunds, delays: for those we have to send you to the railway company or the booking provider — we have no access to your ticket.

Mistakes on this site are another matter. A stop that isn't served, an outdated departure time, a train that no longer runs: tell us.

Have a good journey — and greetings from Sweden.