Advertisement London: In their heyday, hundreds of sleeper trains rattled across Europe and infiltrated popular culture along the way. In TS Eliotâs Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, Skimble saunters into view just as the train is due to depart London for Glasgow before midnight. Alfred Hitchcockâs 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes is set on a night train crossing the Continent. So is Agathaâs Christieâs Murder on the Orient Express. And James Bond gets into a spot of bother on board the same train in From Russia With Love. But the rise of high-speed rail and budget airlines derailed sleeper carriages in the 1980s and 1990s, and governments across western Europe slowly wound back services.