My power station was ready to roll – the night train wasn’t
10.7.2026
Translation: Veronica Bielawski
Pictures: Ramon Schneider
I was planning to use a power station to safeguard my sleep apnoea machine against power cuts on the night train. Instead, the journey turned into an odyssey because of a communication failure. In the end, I never even got to test the power station.
The EcoFlow River 3 is in my luggage, fully charged. It’s a 3.55-kilogramme battery that I packed to solve a night-train problem I really shouldn’t have: failing sockets.
I have sleep apnoea. At night, I rely on a CPAP machine to keep my airways open. CPAP stands for «continuous positive airway pressure», which prevents breathing pauses. Without power, it becomes a rather useless box with a tube. On my last night-train journey from Zurich to Vienna, the socket kept cutting out. And not just for minutes. I’m talking hours, especially during longer stops. For my phone, that was annoying. For my CPAP, it was a genuine problem – and dangerous for my health.
The solution weighs 3.55 kilogrammes
So, for my next trip, I buy a power station. The plan: plug the CPAP into the power station, and plug the power station into the socket. That way, if the train has a power outage, the battery will take over, and my CPAP shouldn’t notice a thing.
No train at platform 18
The Nightjet from Zurich to Hamburg is scheduled to depart on Sunday, 28 June 2026, at 7:15 p.m. I use a wheelchair and have booked assistance to board the train, which means I need to be on the platform 20 minutes before departure.
So there I am at Zurich main station on platform 18, on the tick, luggage, CPAP machine and power station in tow, and 30 degrees beating down on my neck. As if the journey wasn’t complicated enough already.
Then the announcement comes: the train isn’t ready yet. Departure is delayed indefinitely. While annoying, it’s not the end of the world. Night trains have a reputation for being a bad idea when you’re on a tight schedule. So I wait.
The one carriage I needed
Then it becomes clear that the problem isn’t just a delay. There’s a problem with my carriage specifically. Carriage 416 – where the accessible sleeper compartment I’ve booked is located. What’s more, it’s the only accessible compartment on the entire train.
The problem with carriage 416 isn’t a minor one. As the train pulls in, I’m informed that the air conditioning doesn’t work, the doors don’t open, and the toilet is out of service. The entire electronics system has broken down, making the accessible compartment – in an ironic twist – inaccessible for the journey.
As an alternative, I’m given a seat in a standard 2nd-class carriage. Without a wheelchair-accessible toilet.
That’s no «alternative». Not for an overnight journey. Not in a wheelchair. Not if I’ve reserved a spot in an accessible sleeper compartment. And certainly not when I’ve built my entire travel setup around it.
So I reject the alternative provided. The lack of a wheelchair-accessible toilet alone makes it unusable. Later, I learn that although the train did depart in the end – with an 85-minute delay – it only made it to Basel. There, a further technical issue brought the entire train to a final halt.
At this point, I’m still at Zurich main station. Perfectly prepared for a night-train journey. And now in a pretty bad mood.
I was «informed in advance»
At the SBB ticket counter, I ask what my options are. The man at the counter checks the system and tells me that according to the ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways, the Nightjet operator), they had already informed me about the faulty carriage the day before.
That’s not true.
I received no text message. No e-mail. No call. Nothing. If ÖBB really had informed me the day before, I wouldn’t have travelled to the station in this heat, only to find out that the only carriage I could actually use was out of service.
The SBB employee says there’s nothing he can do for me, since I bought the ticket directly from ÖBB, not from SBB. He gives me two options: I can buy a new ticket for the next day and try to reclaim the money from ÖBB later. Or I can contact ÖBB customer service directly.
I opt for the latter.
So, I head back home. Drenched in sweat, annoyed to no end and with luggage that suddenly no longer reads «well-prepared traveller», but as a bad punchline.
Three people ahead of me
At 9:50 p.m., I call the ÖBB hotline. An automated voice tells me there are three people ahead of me in the queue. Three people – sounds doable.
Cue the hold music.
It’s not just bad. It’s the kind that has me questioning my life choices after ten minutes. Twenty minutes pass, and no one has picked up. Forty minutes pass, and still no one has picked up. After 60 minutes, I start to wonder whether the three people ahead of me also couldn’t take the night train to Hamburg.
After 75 minutes, I hang up without having spoken to a single person.
My phone bill later comes in with a charge of 30.73 francs for the international call. I paid just to listen to the ÖBB jingle. I didn’t get any information.
The plane it is, then
That’s when I give in and book a flight to Hamburg.
Flying this route – when there’s a train connection – feels wrong. That’s exactly why I’d booked the night train in the first place. Why I’d worked out how to run my CPAP reliably on the train. And why I had a power station in my luggage.
The next day, I’m on the plane. Without the EcoFlow. The battery is too powerful to fly with: Swiss allows portable batteries in hand luggage only up to 100 watt-hours without approval and up to 160 watt-hours with approval. At 245 watt-hours, the EcoFlow is significantly above that.
What SBB and ÖBB say
According to SBB, the cause of carriage 416’s failure was a fault in the power supply. As a result, the carriage with the barrier-free compartment had to be closed from Zurich onwards.
When asked, both SBB and ÖBB confirmed that I should have been informed on Saturday, the day before my departure. But due to a coordination error between the two railway operators, that information never reached me. Both companies have apologised for this and intend to review the incident.
Source: ÖBB / Harald Eisenberger
SBB also confirmed that the alternative offered – a seat in 2nd class without a wheelchair-accessible toilet – wasn’t equivalent. It went on to explain that there was no better solution available on the same train, since it had one single barrier-free compartment.
If this compartment fails, affected passengers can, according to SBB, cancel the journey or apply for a refund afterwards. At present, there’s no equivalent alternative solution on the same train.
ÖBB refunded me the full ticket price and gave me a voucher worth 49.90 euros.
I was the only one ready
I never got to test the power station on the train. Not because it failed me, but because I never even made it onto the train. That’s the real punchline of this trip: I had a solution for the unreliable socket. But no one had a solution for the only accessible compartment being out of order.
If the aim is to get people off planes and onto trains, good intentions and pictures of fancy-looking night-trains aren’t enough. For me, it’s not enough for an accessible compartment to exist somewhere on the train. It has to actually work. And if it doesn’t, there needs to be a better alternative than a seat in a standard carriage without a wheelchair-accessible toilet.
My power station was ready. My CPAP was ready. I was ready.
The night train wasn’t.
Header image: Ramon Schneider
I get paid to play with toys all day.
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