Night Ferry
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The Night Ferry was a sleeper train between London Victoria and Paris Gare du Nord (and later Brussels). It was operated by the SNCF and the Southern Railway then, following nationalisation on 1 January 1948, the Southern Region of British Railways.
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[edit] Rolling stock
Introduced on the night of 5 October 1936, it featured coaches built by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits to the British loading gauge. 12 carriages were built in France. 1936-built Sleeping Car No. 3792 has been preserved in the National Railway Museum in York. In addition to sleeping cars, the train normally included two SNCF Fourgon baggage vans.
The Night Ferry normally departed from and arrived at platform 2 at London Victoria station. Customs checks were carried out at station.
Prior to the Eurostar service on 14 November 1994, the Night Ferry was the only through passenger train between Great Britain and Continental Europe. The carriages of the daytime Golden Arrow train did not cross the Channel.
[edit] Train ferry
Uniquely, a train ferry was used between Dover and Dunkirk to convey passengers as they slept. The train used one of the three Southern Railway train ferries SS Hampton Ferry, SS Twickenham Ferry or SS Shepperton Ferry, also built in the mid-1930s.
The coaches were chained to four parallel tracks on the decks. The train was not a good timekeeper because of the complexity of loading and offloading coaches. It was the only service of the Southern Railway to be regularly double-headed, with a Bulleid Pacific and E1 or L class 4-4-0 locomotives.[1] In later years, the train was usually hauled within England by British Rail Class 71 electric locomotives, Class 33 diesels or Class 73 electro-diesels.
The Second World War stopped services, but they were resurrected on 15 December 1947. Brussels was added in the 1950s.
[edit] Final years
Plans to build the Channel Tunnel were scrapped in the 1970s on cost grounds. The tunnel would have led to the end of passenger carriages by train ferry. This gave the Night Ferry a short reprieve.
By the 1970s the carriages were dated and in need of replacement. The CIWL livery was replaced on some, but not all, carriages by standard SNCF blue sleeper car livery including the SNCF logo. Consideration was given to British Rail Mark 1 sleeper carriages built in the late 1950s, but these too were dated and the idea was never adopted. British Rail Mark 3 sleeping cars introduced in the early 1980s were unsuitable for the Southern Region's loading gauge.
Competition from air services affected the train. The Night Ferry was withdrawn on 31 October 1980.
[edit] The Channel Tunnel
An attempted resurrection of British-Continental sleeper services under the Nightstar (a play on Eurostar) brand after the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 proved expensive and unsuccessful. Competition of airlines in the 1990s meant the service could never be profitable. The coaches ordered for the service were never used in Europe; they were sold to Canada's VIA Rail.
[edit] Timetable
The down journey London-Paris took 11 hours Winter timetable 1959/1960
| down | station | up |
| 21.00 | d London Victoria a | 9.10 |
| 22.44 | a Dover Marine d | ? |
| 5.34 | d Dunkerque a | ? |
| 9.00 | a Paris d | 22.00 |
| 8.44 | a Bruxelles d | 21.15 |
[edit] References
- ^ Kidner, R W (1958). The Southern Railway. South Godstone, Surrey: The Oakwood Press.
