New high-speed sleeper train service connects Hong Kong with Beijing and Shanghai

Hong Kong CNN —

Interested in capping off your trip to Hong Kong with a long weekend in Beijing or Shanghai? A new high-speed sleeper train service is making that possibility easier than ever.

Two new overnight routes connecting the city with Beijing and Shanghai entered into service on June 15.

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Both trains depart Hong Kong West Kowloon Station in the evening and arrive in Beijing at 6.53 a.m. and Shanghai at 6.45 a.m., making the journeys around 12.5 hours and 11 hours respectively. Return trips depart from Beijing and Shanghai at around 8 p.m. and arrive in Hong Kong at 8.47 a.m. and 7.29 a.m. These routes run four days a week, departing all three stations every evening from Friday to Monday.

“It will be more comfortable and faster, reducing the travel time by about half, and will cover a wider range of destinations, including popular tourist attraction cities,” John Lee, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said in a press statement, referring to the previous overnight train routes that connected Hong Kong with China’s two biggest cities.

Those intercity railway services, Beijing-Kowloon and Shanghai-Kowloon, launched in 1997. The train ride to China’s capital took around 24 hours while the journey to Shanghai was about 19 hours.

A passenger with a child boards the high-speed sleeper train in Beijing for its inaugural journey to Hong Kong's West Kowloon Station.

The services were suspended during the pandemic in 2020 and have been replaced by the new high-speed options that launched on June 15.

But while the new trips do indeed slash the overnight travel time by almost half, the high-speed sleeper services take