OVERNIGHT trains will run from Amsterdam to Switzerland from the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022 Netherlands Railways (NS) has confirmed.
Working with partners Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and German Rail (DB), the plan is to run from Amsterdam - Zurich every night, travelling via the Rhine-Ruhr area including Düsseldorf and Cologne, and Basel.
NS says both Basel and Zurich are popular leisure and business destinations and that currently passengers wishing to travel to the Swiss capital must change trains several times. The direct train is also viewed as a way to open up further destinations for passengers, including elsewhere in Switzerland and Italy.
The partners are currently finalising details of the new service, including timetabling, personnel planning and any fleet modifications required.
The continued success of night trains in Europe has been highlighted by ÖBB, which says that since the restart of international night train connections at the end of May, it has recorded increasing bookings for its Nightjet services from week to week.
Almost 50,000 tickets have been booked in the past two weeks, the operator says, and the recent launch of the Vienna/Innsbruck - Amsterdam Nightjet acted as a ”turbo” for the bookings. Since the launch on May 24 there have been 400,000 hits on nightjet.com, ÖBB says.
With the further easing of Covid-19 restrictions in neighbouring countries, ÖBB expects a strong summer for the Nightjets, with those serving Amsterdam, Rome and Venice already proving popular.
