Night Ferry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Night Ferry was a sleeper train that ran between London Victoria and Paris Gare du Nord (and later Brussels) of the Southern Railway and British Railways.
Introduced in 1936, it featured coaches built by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits to the British loading gauge. Uniquely, a train ferry was used between Dover and Dunkirk to convey passengers as they slept.
The Second World War stopped services, but they were resurrected after the war. Brussels was added as a destination in the 1950s. The last night Ferry was withdrawn on 31 October 1980.
1936-built Sleeping Car No. 3792 has been preserved in the National Railway Museum in York.
An attempted resurrection of British-Continental sleeper services under the Nightstar (evidently a play on Eurostar) brand after the opening of the Channel Tunnel in the 1990s proved an expensive and unsuccessful venture. The coaches ordered for the service were sold to Canada's Via Rail.
