Real nightsleeper has drama, but it’s the scenery
I’m guessing that part of the attraction of BBC1’S new drama Nightsleeper is that most viewers won’t have travelled on a sleeper train.
It’s an intriguing new twist on overnight rail journeys immortalised by Murder on the Orient Express and TS Eliot’s Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat.
But I’ve been trying to work out whether the series in which a Glasgow-london train is “hackjacked” and remotely controlled will make people more or less likely to try out the real-life Caledonian Sleeper, which operates on both that and four other cross-border routes.
I’ve travelled on the service several times, including twice in its new fleet, on which the Nightsleeper’s carriages appear to be based.
While the show was filmed on a set, researchers visited the Caledonian Sleeper to get a feel for its size and layout. The lounge area is reminiscent of the service’s Club Car, which is among the last of its kind serving food on the rail network.
However, the curious thing in the first three of the six episodes I’ve watched so far – all are available on iplayer – is that virtually none of the action has taken place on the part of the train that’s most different from others, and with which people will be least familiar – the sleeping cabins.
These I have had experience of, including that their corridors are far narrower than what you see on screen, forcing you to walk along them at a slight angle.
But thankfully, in stark contrast to the tense atmosphere about the illfated fictional “Heart of Britain” train, among the only perils I’ve encountered aboard have been unable to turn the air conditioning in my cabin cool enough to sleep, and twice failing to get the en-suite shower to work.
Deliberate electronic glitches underpin Nightsleeper’s plot, but Caledonian Sleeper has assured me it has ironed out the many unintentional ones which plagued its new carriages when they were introduced five years ago. They sounded more poltergeist than cybercriminal, such as locked toilets, alarms going off in the middle of the night and the brakes being jammed on.
I was told these were attributed to the new fleet transforming the service from being the oldest and least technically advanced on the railways to becoming the most sophisticated, with staff “pressing the wrong buttons”.
As for the chances of the Nightsleeper scenario being possible in real life, Caledonian Sleeper told me the design of its train made this “extremely unlikely”.
I had thought the fact the carriages are still hauled by 30-year-old locomotives rather than the modern power car at the front of the imaginary train would rule it out.
Caledonian Sleeper said its passengers “can rest assured that the only thing that is dramatic onboard is the Scottish scenery”. I’ve been promised I’ll get a shower on my next trip, too.