In a fond and funny piece in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane, who took to the rails just before the global lockdown, celebrates the enduring romance of the sleeper:

Although it is unlikely, as you clatter through the night, that anything of note will befall you, the prospect that it could feels ever present, just out of sight beyond the next curve of the track. To remain awake to that possibility, even as we’re meant to be sleeping, is the privilege that beckons some of us back, year after year, to this awkward and beguiling locomotion.