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.
After 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.
