The independent website to help you travel to ski resorts by train.
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A quick guide to snowcarbon
Welcome to snowcarbon. If you're new here, or just want to know your way around better, here's our 60-second guide.
You can use the trains and travel section to get an overview of what your travel options to ski resorts are and see what the trains are like, along with travel guides on booking low fares, travelling overnight, how to change station in Paris easily, and more.
In the resorts and journeys section, you can view hand researched journey schedules from the UK to 32 great ski resorts all over Europe, and book independent travel or rail-inclusive ski packages.
The ski packages is a unique resources for finding package holidays from tour operators with rail travel included. The packages have rail travel and transfers at preferential rates and are fully protected.
The Snow Train, the Eurostar Ski Train and other options
You might have heard of the Snow Train, with its legendary disco carriage, cause of many a hangover. Sadly, it stopped running in 2009. Rail Europe, which had operated the train for the past 20 years, has blamed the decision on “economic uncertainty”. We hope it will be back one day. In the meantime, the good news is that there are many alternative trains to European ski resorts.
If you are heading for the same Tarantaise resorts previously served by the Snow Train, including Les Arcs, Tignes, Val Thorens, Les Menuires, Brides les Bains and Meribel, you can take the Eurostar Direct Ski Train. It runs non-stop from London and Ashford, with both daytime and overnight services. The overnight train has a cafe bar, but only reclining seats rather than couchette accommodation.
If you'd rather travel overnight in comfort, you can take the Corail Lunea sleeper train, which has comfortable couchettes - and no disco carriage. The lack of partying at least allows you to get a decent night's sleep and arrive in time to hit the slopes next morning. Or you can take the City Night Line to resorts in Austria such as Alpbach, Hopfgarten, Soll and Zell am See - Kaprun.
Without the Snow Train, many overnight journeys involve a change of stations in Paris. However, this is easy to navigate by RER, taxi or even on foot. For full details on how to do it, see our guide to changing trains in Paris.
While the Snowtrain served only the Tarantaise area, overnight Corail Lunea trains from Paris can be taken to resorts in other parts of the French Alps such as Serre Chevalier Vallee, Chamonix, Megeve, St Gervais and Montgenevre. You can also reach Italian resorts such as Claviere and even Grandvalira (Pas de la Casa, Soldeu, etc) in Andorra.