TRAVEL BY RAIL IN EUROPE: Changes for 2025

On 15 December 2024, the annual major timetable revision by European railway operators was announced. This is when new routes and schedules for 2025 are published, essential knowledge for planning rail travel in Europe in speed and comfort.

Mark Dudgeon, the Blue Guides rail correspondent, highlights the main changes and new services introduced for the coming year.

New international InterCity Express services

The capital cities of the European Union’s two largest economies have a new rail link. A German ICE service now provides a daytime train between Paris and Berlin for the first time in many years. Trains depart Paris Est daily at 09:55 and are routed via Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt (South station). In the reverse direction, trains depart from Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 11:54. Journey time between Paris and Berlin is a little over 8 hours in each direction. (Deutsche Bahn»)

Amsterdam and Munich are also connected by a new daily ICE service. The train departs Amsterdam Centraal at 08:30 with the return service from Munich Hauptbahnhof at 16:29. Routing is via Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, with an end-to-end journey time of about 7 hours. Previously, in the 1980s, the Trans Europ Express train named Erasmus operated between Amsterdam and Munich. This became part of the EuroCity network in 1987, but the section to Munich was discontinued in 1991, since when there has been no direct daytime service between the two cities.

New EuroCity routes and increased international frequencies

• Four daily EuroCity services have been introduced from Prague through western Poland to Gdansk and Gdynia on the Polish North Sea Coast. Unusually, this service includes an overnight train (without sleeping accommodation) in each direction. Journey time for the whole distance is scheduled for just over 9 hours, with the overnight trains (leaving Prague at 18:51 and Gdynia at 23:12) taking an hour or so longer.

• Between Berlin and Krakow, EuroCity trains have increased from two to three a day in each direction.

• On the Munich to Zurich route, there is an increase of six to seven trains per day. From Zurich, trains depart at 05:33 then every two hours until 19:33 (the first train not running on Sundays). From Munich, the first train departs at 06:54 and the last at 20:55 (the last train not running on Saturdays). Journey time is around three-and-a-half hours.

• New EuroCity direct trains now serve the route between Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Frequency is hourly between Brussels and Amsterdam, and half-hourly between Brussels and Rotterdam. Somewhat unfortunately in Amsterdam the trains call at Zuid (South) station, which is rather less conveniently located than Centraal station.

• A new International InterCity service has been introduced between Brussels and Paris via Mons. This is an alternative to the fast but expensive Eurostar (previously Thalys) trains on the high-speed line. Preliminary scheduling indicates three trains a day in each direction, and the trains will be second class only with compulsory reservation.

Eurostar

Eurostar services between London and Amsterdam (Eurostar»)are currently operating in one direction only; from Amsterdam to London, a change of trains is necessary and immigration and security controls take place in Brussels. This is because of significant remodelling work of the Eurostar boarding area at Amsterdam Centraal station in order to accommodate greater passenger demand. Direct services are currently expected to resume in February 2025.

While more operators – for example, Evolyn of Spain and Britain’s Virgin – have expressed serious interest in starting new services through the Channel Tunnel to compete with Eurostar, nothing concrete is expected to happen for several years. Getlink, the Channel Tunnel operator, believes that complexities in introducing new services have been reduced and the approvals process streamlined; in practice, however, this still means a lead time of probably at least five years between concept and realisation of a new service.

Night services

News for night trains, important for rail travel in Europe, in the new timetable year is mixed. (The Man in Seat 61»)

European Sleeper will add (briefly) a service from Brussels and Cologne to Innsbruck and Venice, but only on seven dates in February and March 2025. Good news is that this train will convey a restaurant car, which is sadly missing from most current night services.

The Nightjet service from Amsterdam to Innsbruck and Vienna will be diverted in the Netherlands and take a different route through Germany, meaning that Cologne will no longer be served by this train.

During the period of the Tauern tunnel closure (see below), until July 2025, the Nightjet services from Munich to Rome and Stuttgart to Venice will be cancelled, and the Zurich to Zagreb sleeper will be diverted via Graz.

Introduction of Nightjet’s next-generation Sleeper trainsets has slowed somewhat. These are currently used on the Vienna/Innsbruck to Hamburg, Vienna to Rome, and the Austrian domestic route between Vienna and Bregenz. In Italy, however, certification issues mean that the new trains cannot use the high-speed line between Florence and Rome; instead, a reversal is required at Santa Maria Novella station in Florence, from where routing is along the original line via Arezzo and Orvieto to Rome, resulting in extended journey times.

OeBB (the Austrian national rail operator) has indicated that its Nightjet network will now go through a period of consolidation, with route expansion unlikely in the short to medium term. 

Tauern tunnel closure

The Tauern tunnel, built in 1909, is the only major trans-alpine rail tunnel wholly within Austria. It lies on the Tauern railway, between Salzburg and Villach: an important artery for both passenger and freight traffic linking Germany and northern Europe with the Balkans and south-east Europe. Last renovated twenty years ago, the tunnel closed in mid-November and will remain out of action until early July 2025 because of major modernisation work. This will disrupt rail travel in Europe.

The tunnel is unusual in that the railway does not run adjacent to a major road route, the Tauern road tunnel lying some 35 km to the east. The only “road” link between Böckstein at the northern tunnel portal (a few kilometres above the spa resort of Bad Gastein) and Mallnitz (close to the southern tunnel portal) has been for the past 100 years or so an hourly, 12-minute duration, vehicle-carrying rail shuttle service through the 8.3 km-long tunnel. This has now ceased and will not operate for several months, leaving the citizens of Mallnitz wishing to travel the short distance north to Bad Gastein no alternative to a 170 km, two-and-a-half hour, road journey.

Rail passengers travelling between Salzburg and Villach will instead be transported by bus on the section between Bischofshofen and Spittal-Millstättersee. With most of this road journey being on the A10 autobahn, journey times should only be extended by 30 minutes or so.

Private operators

The private train operator Westbahn has widened its network from the December timetable change. Two of its five services between Vienna and Munich are extended to and from Augsburg and Stuttgart. Westbahn has also added a second daily service between Vienna and Bregenz on the shores of Lake Constance, close to the Swiss and German borders.

In other good news for private operators, OeBB and the Czech national operator CD have been fined by the European Commission for apparently colluding to prevent RegioJet from obtaining second-hand passenger coaches. RegioJet, which operates trains on routes including Prague to Vienna and Budapest, had been unable to increase the number of train services it offers because of the lack of availability of rolling-stock. Hopefully, this constraint on growth will now be eased.

The luxury train operator Belmond, owner of the Venice-Simplon Orient Express in Europe and the Eastern & Oriental Express in south-east Asia, will introduce a new train in Britain to add to its existing portfolio there. The Britannic Explorer is planned to start operating in July 2025, and Belmond claims it will be the first ever luxury sleeping-car train service in Britain. Three- and four-day itineraries from London will include Wales; Yorkshire and the Lake District; and Somerset and Cornwall.

Other news for Rail TRAVEL IN EUROPE

• The morning service from Paris to Barcelona now leaves two hours earlier, at 07:42, making it a difficult proposition for passengers transferring trains in Paris. In the other direction, the afternoon service from Barcelona to Paris leaves three hours later at 16:25, meaning an arrival in Paris at the inconvenient time of 23:18.

• Despite the planned introduction of a new service between Barcelona and Toulouse in summer 2025, this high-speed international route remains woefully under-served.

• The main Bratislava to Vienna line (via Marchegg), which has been closed for several months to allow the completion of electrification, was due to reopen with the start of the new timetable. However, the reopening has been postponed indefinitely at short notice. This means that the only rail link between Europe’s two closest capital cities will remain, for the time being, the southern route via Parndorf, which departs from the awkwardly-located Petrzalka station in Bratislava’s southern suburbs.