Train conductor Wolfgang Kriesel stands beside the door to his Paris-bound sleeper train on platform 9 in Hamburg's Altona station.

Kriesel greets guests and checks their tickets as they arrive. There are increasingly more of them these days, he says.

In fact, night sleeper trains have gained in popularity in recent years as rail passengers have come to recognise that travelling in a "mobile hotel" does not cost the world and are looking for more comfortable travel options.

Night train to Lisbon

Kriesel’s train is owned by the Germany's national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, which offers 29 overnight connections to destinations in nine European countries. His train bears the number 236 and rolls out of the station on time at precisely 8:08 p.m. By 9:14 the next morning, it will be in Paris.

Kriesel, who has worked on the railway for the past 30 years, asks his guests at what time they would like to be woken or what they would like to drink in the morning. He also provides one guest with useful tips and suggestions about his favourite city, Paris.

That guest, Mike Berger, a logistics manager, will leave the French capital in the evening and travel onward to Madrid with another night train.

Berger is a railway enthusiast who prefers to take a train even on journeys where a plane would be much faster.

Madrid is not his final destination. "I'll put my luggage in storage and travel to Lisbon where I'll spend the next two months working," he said.

"There was a direct connection by night train from Paris up until a few years ago but that got cancelled," he added regretfully. "But it does give me time to spend one day in Madrid."

Popular but not so cheap

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