A German startup wants to make the airport redundant on one of the country's busiest domestic routes. Nox Mobility will run its first premium sleeper train between Hamburg and Munich from 23 March 2027, with one-way fares starting at €65 (about £55) — and instead of a shared compartment, every passenger gets a private room.
The trains run three nights a week in each direction. Leaving Hamburg on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9.22pm, you roll through Bremen at 10.30pm and arrive in Munich at 8.14am, with a stop in Augsburg at 7.35am. The southbound departure from Munich (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays at 9.20pm) gets you into Hamburg at 8.27am — in time for a proper breakfast before work or sightseeing.
The pitch is less "night train", more "boutique hotel on rails". Each ticket includes a "Nox Suite": a large seat, a table for working or eating, space for big luggage, power sockets and two metres of stretching-out room beside a window. Nox frames it as a workspace by day and a lounge by night, meaning the fare doubles as your hotel bed and your transport. A step up — private "Nox Rooms" for one or two people — is planned by 2029.
There's a reason this feels fresh: European night trains have been in steep decline, falling from roughly 1,200 services a week in 2001 to about 450 by 2019. Nox Mobility, which raised €2m in pre-seed funding, is betting that the problem was the shared-cabin format rather than the concept. Its answer is a single overnight journey that replaces both a short-haul flight and a night's accommodation, departing city centre to city centre with no security queues or airport transfers.
The longer game is ambitious: the company wants to link 100 European cities by 2035, starting with the Hamburg–Munich corridor, one of Germany's most frequently flown routes. For travellers, the maths is easy to like — a €65 fare covering travel and a night's sleep is competitive with a cheap flight plus a hotel, and the time cost is close to zero since you travel while you sleep. Book early for the first spring 2027 departures if you want to be among the first on board.
