Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be any more new train services launching in Europe, another comes along. But looking at the plans from this new Dutch operator, we certainly aren’t complaining.
Rail company GoVolta, described by its founders Hessel Winkelman and Maarten Bastian as the ‘easyJet of the rails’, is set to start a handful of new services from Amsterdam in spring next year.
According to The Man in Seat 61, GoVolta has plans for a daily Amsterdam-Berlin and a daily Amsterdam-Copenhagen service, plus a Amsterdam-Basel service three times a week. Railtech.com says the company aims to launch trains to these in May, June and July 2025 respectively. There are plans for a route to Paris, too, but those have been postponed until at least 2026.
However, it isn’t just the destinations we’re excited about – these services are set to be super budget-friendly. Unlike the high-speed services from major rail companies like Eurostar, GoVolta’s fleet will run at a regular speed.
While that obviously means the journey times will be longer (the Amsterdam-Berlin trip is estimated to take around eight hours compared to Deutsche Bahn’s six) it also means this’ll be a much cheaper option. A standard second-class seat could cost less than €10 (£8.56, $10.70), meaning it’s around 70 percent cheaper than a Eurostar ticket.
What’s more, there’ll be plenty of those cheap seats available. Originally there were going to be 55 under-€10 tickets per train; now, there will be 110.
GoVolta has plans to start selling tickets this October. Stay tuned for more updates! And in the meantime, why not have a look at this list of all the European sleeper trains we’re most excited to try this year?
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