Press release: One night train to Berlin is no more. The Nightjet has disappeared like a thief in the night

Unnoticed on Monday evening, the last NightJet night train Brussels-Berlin departed from Brussels South. Normally it would leave tonight (Wednesday 26 March) but due to the strike of a rail union, tonight's departure has been shifted to Cologne. Passengers for the overnight train will be sent along on the high-speed ICE train and will have to change in Cologne.

This farewell could not be more typical of a train that has been so plagued by cancellations and delays throughout its short existence.

The reason the train got there in the first place is also more of a coincidence. To save costs, the plan was to have the Brussels-Vienna and Paris-Vienna trains run in coupled form from Mannheim, and because the Austrian train operator ÖBB also wanted a Paris-Berliner to run in coupled form with the Paris-Vienna between Paris and Mannheim, a Brussels-Berliner was also possible at no extra cost. That train did take a large diversions past Mannheim and thus even passed Frankfurt am Main twice in the same night, but in itself that is not such a problem: on a night train, passengers sleep anyway so a slightly longer journey time is no problem at all.

The Brussels-Berlin train started running on 10th December 2023 but it was immediately plagued by a shortage of rolling stock. Limited compositions, sleeping cars were replaced by older sleeping cars and sleeping cars by sitting cars and often the train was plagued by unforeseen works or problems in Germany resulting in delays. For a while, the Brussels-Berlin service was completely cancelled due to lack of rolling stock. The initially promised daily night train did not materialise, although with the delivery of new night train rolling stock on other ÖBB lines, some more rolling stock is now available for Brussels - Berlin.