Wagon-Restaurant
« Aubépine », built Ateliers Roubaix 1926
Forty-two covers under étoile-cut lamps. The cellar rides in the kitchen car behind — 340 bottles, racked against the sway. Dress is soft-formal; the maître has seen everything.
Compagnie du Méridien · Est. 1911
Night Express N°9The Midnight Meridian
A legendary sleeper across the winter mountains — Bergfeld Central to the sea at Novi Primor, 917 kilometres of snow, brass and lamplight. Nightly, December through March.
Departs 22:04
Platform 6
Arrives 08:26
Passage 10 h 22 m
Your compartment awaits
Draw Back the Curtain
You are aboard. The lamps are trimmed, the rail is polished, the night country is about to move. Scroll gently — the Meridian will do the travelling, and she will slow at each carriage worth seeing.
Carriage Call
The night is moving. Bergfeld falls away behind you.
km 0 · 22:04 · clear, −11°CDawn soon. The sea air reaches the window first.
Novi Primor · arrival 08:26Mirna Pass · 03:44
The Night Takes the Glass
In the Lantern car the roof lamps are lowered until the mountains appear to be inside the compartment. The moon holds still. The valley moves. Every passenger forgets, for a minute, that rails are doing the work.
Roof glassFrost feathered at the edges
Barometer29.82 and falling
Summit stop47 seconds of silence
The bell waits above the pass.
The consist
Fourteen Carriages
Locomotive « Hekla », her tender, and twelve coaches of the old build — every one riveted before 1938 and kept like a pocket watch.
Drag sideways · hover a carriage to light her windows
Load496 t
Steam heatCar 14 to 1
Attendants31 awake
Dining covers42 at once
Grand Berths
Voiture 7, pearwood & green baize
Eight cabins, each with brass basin, valet bell and a window seat exactly one blanket wide. Made up during dinner; found warm. Berth 14 books out a season ahead.
The Lantern
Observation car, glazed 1931
A glass roof and twenty swivel chairs. Star charts inked for each month of the season. At the summit of the Mirna Pass the brakeman rings the Meridian Bell — once.
Fourgon Postal
Mail, skis & steamer trunks
The quiet car nobody rides: registered post under seal, ski racks for Sankt Velden, and the ice boxes for the kitchen. Your trunk travels here; your porter has the manifest.
Winter passage
Book a Berth
Choose your class and your night. The clerk stamps what the clerk stamps — no two tickets of the Compagnie were ever quite alike.
Class of passage
Night of departure
The clerk has stamped your ticket. Keep the stub.
Grand berths left3
Luggage allowance2 trunks · 1 ski case
Breakfast call07:42 · silver tray
Compagnie du Méridien de Minuit
Midnight Meridian
N° 048713
Series K
From
Bergfeld Central
To
Novi Primor
Train
N°9 · 22:04
Class
Grand Berth
Berth
Berth 14, Voiture 7
Night of
Fri 12 Dec 2026
Valid one passage southbound. Not transferable. The Compagnie is not liable for time gained while asleep.
Retain stub
Midnight Meridian
Fare
ℳ 312
048713 K
Since 1911
She was laid down as a mail express and became a legend by accident. In the winter of 1913 an avalanche closed every line over the mountains except hers, and for eleven nights the Meridian was the only moving thing between the plateau and the sea — carrying mail, diplomats, a circus, and the entire Bergfeld opera chorus, who sang for their passage in the dining car.
The Compagnie never modernised her out of recognition. The lamps are still trimmed by hand, the third-generation brakeman still rings the summit bell, and the timetable is still set by one rule: depart in darkness, arrive with the light.
115
Winters in service
9,206
Crossings of the pass
0
Nights she failed to arrive
“Other trains cross the night. The Meridian keeps it — folds it down around you like a blanket, and hands it back at dawn, pressed.”
— Elsa Varga, Notebooks of the Night Lines, 1938
22:04Guard’s whistlePlatform 6 lamps extinguished one by one after departure.
03:44The BellWhole train silent for 47 seconds at the Mirna summit.
08:11First gullsObserved from the Lantern roof glass before Novi Primor.