france

GoVolta has sent a request to ACM this week for some more(!) plans for international trains. This includes: - (a) The Hague to Luxembourg and Strasbourg via Rotterdam and Brussel-Zuid. On Monday-Friday the morning trains runs to Strasbourg, and the afternoon only to Luxembourg. The weekends only run to Luxembourg. This is scheduled to begin in the 2028 timetable. - (b) The Hague to Cologne via Rotterdam, Utrecht and Arnhem three times a day, from Monday through Friday, and twice a day on weekends. This is scheduled to begin in the 2028 timetable. - (c) Amsterdam to Paris on the high-speed line, three times a day, seven days a week, scheduled to begin in the 2029 timetable. This will be in addition to their currently planned service that will run on the conventional rail network starting this December.

Services (a) and (b) are said to run on loco-hauled carriages or EMU, but for the high-speed service (c) Winkelman has told Treinreiziger.nl that they are looking at old ICE 3M trains.

Today GoVolta has begun selling tickets for their 7 hour service from Amsterdam Centraal to Paris Nord starting on 14 December from 19 Euros.

Thibault Lapers has published an interview with co-founder and co-CEO of GoVolta, Hessel Winkelman. In it they discuss the upcoming launch, plans for the future, changes to stops in Germany, and potential new stations enroute in the Netherlands. There's also commentary on the cancelled service to Hamburg.

GoVolta will lease 10 i10 carriages for the Paris service, this will be in addition to their existing 11, which includes one lounge car. It's nice to see this confirmed (to me), I was having trouble finding a firm source for this when writing my original blog entry.

European Sleeper launched their Paris - Brussels - Berlin night service on 26 March. This is an addition to their existing Brussels - Amsterdam - Berlin -Prague service, which started in May 2023. Thibault Lapers coverage, as always, is extensive, so that's why I'll choose to share that here while adding some of my notes below.

This inaugural trip comes as ÖBB scraps their Nightjet connection between Paris and Berlin, and Paris and Vienna after SNCF stopped subsidising the services starting in 2026. On LinkedIn, Jon Worth uploaded a video of European Sleeper's first departure on their new connection, saying:

ÖBB and SNCF ended the Paris-Berlin night train, saying it was impossible to run it without a subsidy. So private company European Sleeper stepped in instead. The first train departed Paris Nord this evening, and the service will operate 3x a week. Excellent work Elmer van Buuren and team!

The video shows RailPool's Alstom TRAXX MS3 Universal locomotive, number 188 144, departing Paris, to much celebration, pulling eight RDC passenger carriages (a mix of sleepers and couchettes) with stickers from European Sleerp and Train Charter.

Railcolor reports that European Sleeper also leases RailPool's 188 121 locomotive.