Sweden’s night train has a fleet but no operator

Apr 12, 2026

*The fjords near Narvik at dawn — a view passengers wake to on the Stockholm–Narvik route. New trains are coming. An operator is not yet secured. Photo: Oliver Streit via Unsplash.*

COMMENTARY: Trafikverket has signed a EUR 485m contract for new night train rolling stock — and has no operator lined up to run it.

The Spanish manufacturer Talgo will deliver 91 coaches and 10 Siemens Vectron locomotives for services on the Stockholm–Narvik and Stockholm–Umeå corridors from 2030. The contract includes a ten-year maintenance agreement. Trafikverket owns the fleet and will lease it to whichever operator holds the service contract.

That operator does not yet exist. The tender for night train services was cancelled in March after bids exceeded the financial framework — the second successive failure. A new procurement has not been announced.

A state that owns everything but runs nothing

The rolling stock contract is structured around a model with no precedent at this level of Swedish rail. Trafikverket acts as a state-owned leasing company — acquiring the fleet, bearing the asset risk, and making the vehicles available to whoever operates the service. No commercial leasing company is likely to finance specialised arctic night train stock for a route whose public service obligation future is uncertain. So the state stepped in.

That decision solves a real problem. Operators had priced the risk of a 40-year-old fleet into their bids, pushing costs above Trafikverket’s financial framework twice over. By absorbing the asset risk directly, Trafikverket removes the largest single variable that made the route unbiddable.

But the model only works if there is an operator at the other end.

Two deadlines, one window

SJ has operated the route under a direct award since December 2024, when Vy Tåg — the Swedish-registered subsidiary of Norway’s Vy Group — left after contract renewal talks broke down. That direct award expires in December 2026. At the same time, the Swedish government has commissioned a review of its long-term commitment to night train services — also due in December 2026.

The new fleet is built on the Talgo 230 platform — the same family DSB put into service on the Copenhagen–Hamburg corridor in November 2025. DSB’s experience has already included delivery delays, with part of the fleet still outstanding.

Sweden’s arctic operating environment, specified at minus 40 degrees Celsius, adds a technical dimension the platform has not faced in European service. Trafikverket, having taken on the asset risk from operators, now carries the delivery risk from the manufacturer as well.

The logic the rules forbid

The model has an internal logic that leads somewhere uncomfortable. A state agency owns the fleet, bears the asset risk, and is responsible for service continuity.

The natural next step — if the operating market continues to fail — is that a state entity also runs the trains.

The rules that govern infrastructure managers prevent exactly that outcome. Trafikverket is Sweden’s infrastructure manager. It cannot also become the operator.

The more Trafikverket intervenes to save the market model, the more the outcome resembles the system the market model was designed to replace.

What the contract actually buys

Trafikverket has purchased a future for the rolling stock. It has not purchased a future for the service.

The Talgo coaches will be ready in 2030. The operating question will be answered — or deferred again — before the end of 2026. If the answer is another direct award to SJ, the market model on this corridor will have functioned in name only for the better part of a decade.

The Stockholm–Narvik night train is not a commercial proposition. It has not been one for years. The question was never whether the state would pay. It was always how much, and through which structure.

Trafikverket has now answered the rolling stock question with clarity and commitment. The operating question remains exactly where it was before the contract was signed.