Let the train take the strain – and the car

Dinah Hatch and her family found a novel way to travel with their car to Italy, without the need for motorway and hotel stops.

"Is dad going to be alright up there?" My six-year-old son Charlie was squinting into the hot Dutch sun and sucking hard on the straw of a carton of apple juice as he watched my husband Ben carefully drive our Passat up a narrow ramp and onto a rail transporter before carefully clambering down along with all the other drivers doing the same.

We had arrived at Den Bosch train station in Holland an hour earlier in order to catch the 4pm Autoslaap car-train to Alessandria in Italy and the kids were beyond excited about the prospect of spending the next 18 hours on a train ("with a bed and everything!") at the start of our Italian holiday.

From an adult perspective, the deal was pretty sweet too.

We wanted to take the car with us on holiday so we could explore the area but just couldn’t face the days-long drive from the UK all the way to Tuscany, shelling out for hotels along the way. A friend had mentioned motorail UK agent Railsavers to us – the company offers two motorail services to Italy (Livorno and Alessandria) and one to Slovenia, all from Den Bosch, so all you have to do to jump on a ferry to Calais and drive the two and a half hours to the Dutch station just over the Belgian border and the rest of the journey is taken care of.

Ben safely back on terra firma and the kids clutching their overnight teddies, enough sweets to put Haribo out of business, an ipad and a pack of cards, we climbed aboard the train to find our couchette,  Charlie and his sister Phoebe racing ahead shouting about who would get the top bunks.

Walking along the corridor peering into other people’s couchettes, I felt a bit like Hercule Poirot inspecting my fellow guests on the Orient Express only I was less worried about anyone being murdered and more concerned about how near we were compared to everyone else to the communal toilets.

"Madame, can I get you a drink of something fizzy to start the journey?" a pleasant uniformed young man asked me, making me feel more than ever as if I was in a period whodunit scene. I didn’t need asking twice and as the train glided out of Den Bosch the kids gulped cold orange juice from the handy couchette-length folding table while Ben and I smiled about all the motorway madness we had avoided.

Three hours later, spent mainly gazing at the alternating scenes of geranium-smothered apartment balconies, fields of waving corn, crumbling castles and silent kirks, we were called to the restaurant for our steak and chips with a bottle of red, served, if you please, on white linen table cloths.

I never thought I would write this sentence but the steak I ate on this train is one of the best I have ever tasted. I think this was rail karma for the thousands of soggy tuna sandwiches I have consumed on commuter trains in the UK in the past 25 years.

After dinner, the restaurant transforms into a late-night bar where passengers chat about their holiday plans while sipping on a Pinot or two before retiring to their bunks to watch the Rhinelands whizz by as they drift off to sleep.

Ever the thoughtful wife, I left Ben in the bar, getting on famously with a pair of bikers from Essex, to put the kids to bed while he forged ahead on a bottle of chianti.

The morning was heralded by our attendant knocking on the door to serve us our breakfast – there was some suspicious-looking cream cheese we all discarded immediately but the bread was fresh and the tea hot. By 9.30am we’d packed up and by 10am we were at Alessandria station, bright and ready for our Tuscan holiday.

Talking to fellow passengers, many of whom had been doing this trip every summer for years, we wondered why on earth more people don’t know about this service. For the lack of airport stress, ability to take as much luggage as your car can hold (and as much wine on the way home too), hotel-bill savings and even the facility to take the family dog, the price (which compares favourably with flights and car hire for a family of four even in high season) is well worth it. A mystery even Poirot might puzzle over….

Prices vary very much by berth and season. Check them on http://railsavers.com/2014-PRICE-CARD.pdf.