The Night Trains
A personal history
My dad worked on the railway for 35 years, a lot of that time in a signal box like this.
Sometimes he would let me try to pull the levers, which were heavy and painted in primary colours, red and yellow for the signals, black and blue for the points. There were various maps and charts and dials on the wall, a phone, which was always ringing, and windows all around, so that he could see the trains approaching from a distance.
I thought my dad’s job – pulling the right lever at the right moment to make sure the trains went to the correct places when they were supposed to, and didn’t cause an accident – was pretty cool. I still do, though I also know about the strain that shift work and long anti-social hours without breaks puts on the body and attempts to sustain a happy, balanced life outside the job.
Growing up in a railway family meant we all got free travel, in the UK and across much of continental Europe. Best of all we could just jump on any train, we didn’t have to book unless we wanted seat reservations (which we rarely did) or — if it was an overnight train — couchettes.
Night trains have always held a special place for me. There was something magical about boarding the train in the evening, locating our couchette and getting ready for bed.
In the night I would wake up and, pulling open the blind a crack, gaze out at fields and forests and cityscapes, darkened stations and nameless towns. Often I wouldn’t know what country we were in, and I would try to catch clues via glimpsed road signs or notices hung in the stations we passed through. Then there were the random stops in the middle of night; not at stations but in strange in-between places, where the train would pause for 20 mins, an hour — what were we waiting for? Why had we stopped? Sometimes you would hear the heavy clanking and a clomping of a carriage being decoupled or added. Night trains often had multiple destinations, with sections splitting off enroute. The possibility of ending up in the wrong portion of the train added an extra layer of excitement. You had to make sure you were in the right part.
It was a freedom, an invitation to be spontaneous, that my parents, to their credit, put to enthusiastic use. For several years, every summer we would take at least one overnight train to somewhere warm or mountainous or endowed with Fourteenth Century churches. I didn’t really care about the destinations. For me, the journey was always the thing. Even at the age of six it was the ride that captured my imagination, a value that has stayed with me ever since, and not just in relation to travel.
Earlier this year, one of life’s mysterious acts of serendipity reunited me with one of my closest friends from university. We’d been living on different continents, our paths rarely crossing though we had maintained a sporadic closeness throughout the years.
It was out of this encounter that a scheme so audacious and fun (yet ultimately sensible) was born, and almost immediately I recognised it as one of those irresistible, self-evident ideas that come along maybe once in a decade, and which demand to be taken seriously, appearing as they do uninvited. The sort of idea where once you have thought it, you cannot un-think it, and you either decide to answer the call or you don’t and it becomes one of those 4am regrets.
John and I chose to answer the call. Since then we’ve been working night and day to shepherd this scheme into reality. It is early days but we are making progress.
The Night Trains will be a network of trains transformed into festivals — the junction of indoor and outdoor parties — rolling all over Europe, year round.
Our first ride is scheduled to depart on 23 June 2023, Mid Summer’s Eve.
Seeing my railway roots and my lifelong love of underground clubbing, outdoor parties and the communities these spaces serve come together has been a joy and a privilege. I couldn’t be more excited about sharing this journey with you all in the coming weeks and months as we prepare to blow that train whistle (whistle posse?) and get this party rolling.
You can learn more about The Night Trains at the TNT website, where you can also find out about various ways to get on board.
