IN PRAISE OF GEORGE MORTIMER PULLMAN.

The overnight sleeping car train returns.  The Night Owl, these days the prosaic Numbers 66 and 65 or 67 under the Northeast Regional banner, has its sleeping car back between Boston and Washington.  Still no setout sleeper for or from New York, and Philadelphians have to rough it.  "Although travelers may use the first-class lounges at Boston and Washington before and after the trip, the Philadelphia lounge will be unavailable and New York passengers will need to board through New York’s Penn Station, since the Moynihan Train Hall and its Metropolitan Lounge are closed overnight."  There's still work to be done, and yet, the work is beginning.

The overnighters are back in Europe as well.  "However, a major shift in awareness of the environmental effects of how we travel has led to a turn-around in the fortunes of night trains."  In the place of the Le Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits et des grands express européens are a host of new operators. You're on your own for Russian spies or international high-rollers.  One observer suggests the new offerings are not yet ambitious enough.  "[A]t the moment the players in the market who could massively scale up night services do not want to, while those who do have the will nevertheless lack the means."  Tell me about it, the Superliner sleepers on Amtrak's western lines are well into middle age.

We're still making do with fewer overnight trains for Scotland, although there still are a few.  (I was on hand, purely by accident, in Bristol for the last departure of the Night Scot.)

There might even be a sleeping car train linking Auckland and Wellington.  "The only passenger train to run between the cities since 2012 is the Northern Explorer, which is marketed as a premium tourist offering, focused more on scenic views than travel."  That route is really best enjoyed by day (imagine a convex combination of modern stock and Colorado narrow gauge) although at least one manager understands the formula.  "In order for a passenger train along the route to be viable, it would need to run at least daily and possibly twice a day, [Transdevchief executive Greg Pollock] estimated."