Night Ferry

The English train conveyed one of a pair of standard Mark 1 Brake Composite carriages, which had been modified with a French-style gangway connection at one end.

[1] From November 1936, a Pullman Car Company dining carriage was added for the serving of supper and breakfast, operated between Victoria and Dover.

In the winter seasons of 1967/68 and 1968/69, a daily through coach to and from Basel, Switzerland was added, where onward connections to skiing resorts were provided.

[3] Following electrification of the South Eastern Main Line between Sevenoaks and Dover Marine in 1961,[4] the train was usually hauled within England by Class 71 electric locomotives.

[1] Until the Eurostar service began on 14 November 1994, the Night Ferry had been the only through passenger train between the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

This was exacerbated by the chaining of the vehicles to the ship's deck, an activity underneath the sleeping compartments which inevitably woke most passengers up during the middle of the night.

The Night Ferry platform and trains as they were in 1974 featured towards the end of the final Steptoe & Son episode, the 1974 Christmas special.

[6][7] For the commencement of the service, 12 sleeping carriages (numbered 3788-3799) were built by ANF Industrie for the CIWL to an adapted design to fit the British loading gauge in 1935/36.

[1] At Port of Dover and Dunkirk special enclosed docks with sea locks were built so that the train ferry could be kept at a reasonably constant level relative to the railway tracks on the land.

In contrast the train ferries which used to link parts of Denmark and Scandinavia did not have such problems, as the tidal range in the Baltic Sea is far less than at the Strait of Dover.

On some crossings road vehicles were also carried alongside the trains, the decks of the ships being level with the embedded rail tracks.

An attempted resurrection of British–Continental sleeper services under the Nightstar brand after the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 was abandoned after the carriages for it had been built.