EXCLUSIVE: 'I went on the Caledonian Sleeper - it was romantic until we saw the ensuite bathroom'
The Caledonian Sleeper offers an overnight service to and from stations including London Euston, Glasgow Central, Edinburgh Waverley, Aberdeen, Fort William and Inverness
Milo Boyd is the Mirror's deputy travel editor. He covers aviation news, the environment, the cruise industry, train travel and much else. Milo's favourite places he's visited include Stockholm, Mendoza, Salina, Luca and Edinburgh.
There is something immensely romantic about a sleeper train.
"It's going to be a long night," Eva Marie Saint seductively says to Cary Grant in North by Northwest as they begin their journey. Less steamily but just as enticingly, Sweet Sue's Society Syncopators party outrageously in a carriage in Some Like it Hot, while death and intrigue play second fiddle to the train in the iconic Murder on the Orient Express.
If there is one part of the country's rail network that is likely to get the pulses of locomotive fans going and recreate some of this Hollywood glamour, then it is the Caledonian Sleeper - the most romantic train the UK has left to offer, and one of just two sleepers left on our tracks.
A new dawn and a new start for the Caledonian Sleeper was in need after a disastrous relaunch several years ago led to malfunctioning trains and delays. While the Scottish Government is yet to say what they'll do with the service in the future after taking it off Serco's hands early and renationalising it this summer, right now it clearly has quite an asset.
READ MORE: Seaside resort frozen in time - with incredible attraction - voted as one of the best in the UKAfter a long day's travel over the seas from the Inner Hebrides and then down an unbelievably (even by Scottish standards) rain-soaked landscape, my partner and I found ourselves at Glasgow Central Station, happily fed and watered at nearby Mikaku, a Japanese restaurant styled like downtown Tokyo.
An hour and a quarter before the 11.15pm departure time staff let passengers board the train, a man dressed in light tweed ticked our names off with a pencil as we dragged our bags along the platform. There are four tiers to chose from on the Sleeper. If you're feeling particularly flush, the double room provides a large bed for two with an en-suite bathroom, breakfast and access to the club car. It'll cost you around £400 for a single trip from Glasgow to London in mid-October.
At the other end of the scale is the humble 'seat', which does come with an adjustable head and footrest, as well as a fold out table and reading light. It can be yours for £33 with a railcard, but friends who have made the journey have warned of the seat's limited reclining capabilities and how difficult it can be to sleep during an eight-hour ride that would take less than five on a typical train.
We found ourselves in the second most luxurious offering, the club en-suite - the same as a classic, except you get a bathroom, access to the club car and free breakfast. Walking alongside the famous deep-green livery adorned with the brand's white-stag logo and then through the narrow but moodily lit corridors to our bunk, it was not difficult to feel like a glimmer of the peak-train era glamour had remained.
Our set up was bunk beds on the right-hand side of the room next to a patch of floor large enough for two average sized adults to manoeuvre bags and peel off their clothes after a day's travelling. Hooks on the walls offered a space for coats and a sturdy electric switch a way to bring the lighted ambience down in line with our mood.
It would be untrue to call the room spacious, but it sufficed. The beds were the star of the show. If you are in need of getting down most of the country in the space of a night but to arrive well rested, the Sleeper is the only way to go. In our warm little cabin the dark and lashing rain of the Scottish countryside was kept firmly outside, allowing me to drift off into a dreamland of crushed velvet upholstery and silver service buffet cars. We threw back our bedclothes at 6.30am to the sound of the train intercom, our driver explaining that we'd arrived at Euston 35 minutes early. I was at my desk an hour and a half later, remarkably refreshed and ready for a day's work.
Split between two, a bed on the Sleeper from Glasgow to London can be yours for around £100. Once a hotel room either end is taken into account, the price competes very well with a day time train fare or a plane ticket. Compared to the latter, going by rail is much, much more environmentally friendly.
That isn't to say that the service could not be improved. The room's are small and bare more of a resemblance design wise to standard Avanti West Coast stock - with their grey metal interiors - than to the grand sleeper trains of my dreams. The buffet car was out of veggie options by the time I got there at 6.45am. This wasn't too much of a bother as the prospect of eating a plant sausage while gazing at a London station platform was less romantic than it would've been on the north-bound services, with a mountain range and loch in view.
I would also advise against the en-suite bathroom option. The shower room doubles as a lavatory, a heavy, workmen like lid covering up the toilet and doubling as a place to perch beneath the stream. There was something a little alarming about sleeping so close to a mechanical seeming, suction powered WC. I felt no compulsion to take a shower.
That didn't stop the water flowing however. During the night my partner awoke and stepped into the toilet to grab something from her bag, which we'd stacked up on the toilet seat thanks to a lack of other storage space. I was yanked from my reverie by her yelps and frantic attempts to hurl the bags onto the bottom bunk as the accidentally-activated shower soaked our belongings.