Caledonian Sleeper to Europe under consideration

Transport Scotland announced on 4 August that a working group has met for the first time to look at running the Caledonian Sleeper into mainland Europe. The group brings together Transport Scotland, Scottish Rail Holdings and Caledonian Sleeper itself. It will produce a high-level feasibility study covering the technical and commercial side of extending the service to the continent, and the challenges that come with it.

Findings go to ministers later this year. The sleeper currently runs five routes, six nights a week, linking Aberdeen, Inverness, Fort William, Glasgow and Edinburgh with London Euston. Birmingham International was added in January, the first new stop on the network in three decades. Stephen Flynn, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport, called it an early-stage exercise and said the study would provide an evidence base for any future decisions.

Which is about as far from a promise as you can get while still issuing a press release. There is history here. A Channel Tunnel sleeper serving Scotland was planned once before, under the Nightstar project in the 1990s. The carriages were built. They were sold to Canada.