What it's really like on board the new ski train to the Alps

“Welcome everyone,” came the voice over the loudspeaker as the doors hissed shut and our Eurostar train powered slowly, without fanfare, out of St Pancras station shortly after 8pm on the final Friday of January.

“This is the very first ski train of the winter, direct to Moûtiers and Bourg-St-Maurice in the French Alps…and we’re finally on our way!” The two towns are the railheads for a stack of famous French ski resorts that include Méribel, Courchevel, La Plagne, Les Arcs, Val d’Isère and Tignes.

The fact that our journey was starting six weeks and a technical 15 minutes behind schedule was of zero consequence to the 310 excited British snow fiends of all ages on board. Most of them were probably unaware that they were present at a momentous landmark in the 159 history of train travel from London to the Alps.

No doubt, many of them also did not know that it had taken a giant dollop of French lift company influence and Gallic expertise to make this happen. We were travelling from London on a French charter train organised by a French tour operator called Travelski Express, a complete newcomer to the embattled British ski market.

159 years? Thomas Cook organised the first train to the Alps back in 1863. Top speed was 12mph with heating, meals, and other facilities in short supply.

Exactly a hundred years later as a teenager, I travelled to Austria on an Erna Low ski charter train with a disco carriage powered by a record player mounted on gimbals designed to counteract the shortcomings of the ancient rolling stock. But each time we crossed a set of points the stylus screeched across the vinyl, drowning out the lyrics of Chubby Checker’s Let’s Twist Again. During the 1980s a consortium of UK operators ran their own charter via Dover and Calais, also with a disco carriage.

But the maiden outing of Travelski Express was an altogether more sleek and subdued affair as we sped at high speed through the dark Kent countryside and slid seamlessly beneath the Channel.

Seats on the weekly charter train come in both Standard class and more expensive Standard First. Standard offers a snack bar. Standard First provides a light dinner and breakfast and has semi-reclining seats. But there’s no escaping the fact that you sit up all night and grab what sleep you can – no couchettes unlike the previous services I’ve travelled on. Tip: bring a pillow.

The unquestionable reward of travelling by train on a ski holiday is the opportunity to carry skis, boots and luggage free of charge and grab a full day’s extra skiing in a week – seven days on snow instead of the six if you go by air. The return journey is by day on Saturday.

The entire experience proved to be hassle-free too: no airport-style queues and immigration delays, no weather and traffic-prone three-hour coach rides – most of the resort transfers from the two rail hubs are 30-45 minutes drive, operated by Travelski and included in the pacakage.

Over the past 25 years, thousands of happy skiers have travelled in this way by scheduled Eurostar.  I was on the first of these services to Moûtiers in winter 1997, when the town’s brass band turned out to greet us on arrival. “I have seen”, I wrote in these pages,  “the future of ski travel, and it’s by train.”

But unexpectedly down the years, train prices have failed to compete with budget flights, severely limiting the rail ski market.  In July 2020, Eurostar shockingly announced that their much-loved scheduled Friday night and Saturday daytime ski trains from and to St Pancras would not be running the following winter.

They blamed the burgeoning pandemic and the difficulty of mask-wearing over such a prolonged period of travel. But the more likely reason centred around Eurostar’s difficult financial situation and the need to focus on more lucrative intercity services.

In the event, British and French travel bans that winter meant that we weren’t able to ski in France at all, and for a while it seemed that, perhaps, direct services to the French Alps had indeed passed into history.

But, meanwhile, what about running a Eurostar charter train like the previous scheduled service from London to Bourg? Four years ago, I was asked by a major French resort to test the waters in this respect. Money, it seemed, was not an issue. I made enquiries at a high level on both sides of the Channel. “Non, imposs-ible,” was the immediate and emphatic response.

Enter Guillaume de Marcillac, the bi-lingual and charming boss of Travelski Express, which is the French tour operator arm of the Compagnie des Alpes (CdA). CdA owns the lift systems in eight of the most important French ski resorts and has a stake holding in at least five others. Perhaps, equally importantly, Travelski was already running successful charter trains from Brussels to the Alps for the European ski market.

Could the French succeed in carrying UK winter guests by train to the Alps when we could not? Resorts such as Val d’Isère rely on Britain for 45 per cent of their winter visitors. The twin consequences of Brexit and Covid have brutally reduced – by up to 80 per cent – the number of ski holidays offered this winter by UK operators. CdA needed to find a way of getting British bottoms back onto their chairlifts and gondolas.

Travelski launched in London last autumn with reasonably-priced rail holidays to an initial seven major French destinations with accommodation, transfers,  and lift pass included. It’s important to point out that you can’t travel on the train unless you have booked your holiday with Travelski – unlike the old direct Eurostar scheduled service or in-direct routes.

Unfortunately for Guillaume de Marcillac, Covid again scuppered ski plans. Travelski should have run its first trains before Christmas. But at the start of this season, France temporarily banned all but essential British visitors.

“We lost six weeks of holidays, but we still have 12 left. It’s not what we wanted, but tonight we’ve made a satisfactory start. So far, so good, we’re very excited. It’s been quite a journey,”  he told me as the first train cruised gently through the night.

“It’s like a pregnancy. It started nine months ago back in April ‘21 and tonight we have over 300 passengers on board, which is quite an amazing number in view of the complexity of organising all this in the middle of the Covid crisis.”

I’d brought along a bottle of Champagne to toast Guillaume and his successful venture. Alas,  I’d failed to read the small print on my ticket. Alcohol is banned on the train. It did seem ironic that the bottle of celebratory French wine was not permitted to return to its country of origin to toast the best of French enterprise and the entente cordiale. I last saw it disappearing into a trash bin at St Pancras security. I hope the cleaning staff pulled the cork.

Perhaps the ban is a wise one. Passengers dozed rather than partied. Shortly before 6am, we alighted clear headed and exhilarated onto the platform at Moûtiers. We were treated to a second inclusive breakfast in the station café (the first had been on board at 4.20am), before being herded aboard our transfer coaches.  Dawn broke to reveal snow-clad peaks on a perfect bluebird day in the Alps.

My destination, half an hour away, was the three-star Belambra Club Le Terra Nova in La Plagne. My room hadn’t yet been cleaned. But a quick change of clothes in a courtesy room, and I was ready for the first lifts to open at 9am. Tired? Yes, but on a day like this in perfect weather, who cares? Sleep can wait.

How to do it

Peter travelled as a guest of Travelski Express, which offers holidays inclusive of accommodation and lift pass to Tignes, La Plagne, Les Arcs, Val d’ Isère, Les Menuires, Méribel and Brides les Bains) with a broad range of accommodation options from self-catered apartments to hotels and chalets. He stayed at the three-star Belambra Club Le Terra Nova, on the piste in Plagne Centre, where one week costs from £833pp half-board with ski train, lift pass and station transfers included (0800 2605082; uk.travelski.com/travelski-express).