Night train renaissance: For a greener trip, Europe’s rolling back to the past [Video]

It’s 11 p.m., and in the palatial central train station in Bologna, Italy, one platform is becoming a gathering point for bleary-eyed passengers, neck pillows and luggage in tow.

Among them is four-year-old Dyuthi Mantaih and her father, Nagendra. 

“We are from India, actually, so we are used to travelling on night trains,” he said. 

But it will be their first time on board a NightJet, a new generation of sleeper trains from the Austrian national railway company ÖBB.

For the better part of 20 years, trains like the NightJet have become harder to find in Europe, as national railways have gradually abandoned the idea of running a hotel on rails.

But in an age of climate anxiety, replacing planes with trains — which can save hundreds of kilograms of CO2 emissions over the course of a single journey — looks increasingly like the way of the future. All of …