Our 5 tips & tricks for train travel with babies or toddlers:
- Plan for the worst
- Bring a light foldable stroller – fold before boarding
- Bring a sleeping tent
- Walk around – benefit from the freedom
- Pack ultralight
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1. Plan for the worst
You need to come well prepared for all needs your kid might have along the journey: bring water, milk powder, food, fruit, extra diapers, fresh clothes, toilet paper, a light book, and some small toys,… and think about how you are going to easily access it on a shaky driving train, assuming there’s nowhere to heat food, now baby table or nothing. Mentally prepare yourself for some serious struggle. But to be clear: I rather have to take care of a kid for a full day in a driving train than in a driving car!
-> Think: exploded diaper while traveling alone in an old train… sh*t on your hands, his clothes… you’re happy if you have toilet paper at hand, and can access everything with one hand (pinning your little one to the train seat with the other hand) and asking for the help of the 2 grandmothers in your coupé.
2. Bring a light foldable stroller – fold it before boarding
Big strollers are a pain on almost every train, no matter if it’s the Belgian IC trains, the high-speed trains of Eurostar, or the night trains with extra small passageways. You need to invest in a (second-hand) light compact travel stroller like Yoyo or Hamilton by Yoop… or the old-school foldable strollers.
For departure, you want to fold on the platform. It’s not always easy to hold a kid and your luggage, but on most international trains boarding is stressful and you don’t have the space nor time on board of the train to take your kid and luggage out of the stroller. For arrival you can already prepare and if space allows prepare before getting off.
-> We bought our Hamilton by Yoop S1 second-hand via Facebook marketplace, the day before leaving on our night train trip to Nice earlier this year. It folds nicely and is small so you can store it above the seats. We stored a soft bag that holds all the stuff of August under the stroller, easy to take out when folding and always accessible. Read more about our night train trip with August here.
3. Bring a sleeping tent
Instead of a foldable sleeping bed, we used a little sleeping tent (Deryan baby tent) that is very compact and can be used anywhere on the ground or a bed in the night train. When traveling by night train, we ALWAYS ask for the lower bed. Even if you have other beds, ask fellow travelers to switch: you don’t want your baby or toddler to fall 1.5m high from a bunk bed in case of a bumpy ride or a wild baby. You should find a way to attach the tent to the bed or wall of your coupé so it can not roll off.
-> During our last trip to Nice, we forgot to attach the tent to the wall and August and his tent rolled off the bed (30cm high). Luckily he was laughing instead of crying… but you want to check if the tent can roll off and put your bags/jackets next to the bed just in case. I would never place my kid on the middle or upper bed, not even with the safety nets you get from SNCF Intercité, since they don’t cover the full width of the bed. #honestparenting
4. Walk around – benefit from the freedom
We all know how difficult it is to keep a kid seated on a chair. Contrary to airplanes, there’s quite a lot of space to walk up and down in the train, open doors (careful for little fingers!), go to the restaurant or bar car, and play on the ground. When August was smaller we used a carrying bag and would walk around in turns during longer train rides.
-> When traveling from Brussels to Sevilla by train, we would take turns and spend 1-2 hours in the bar car, letting August play on the ground with a couple of toys. He would take his naps in the carying bag. Don’t try to entertain the kid for too long in your seat: it often doesn’t work well, and after a while, your partner and neighbors start to get irritated anyway 🙂. More about our trip to Sevilla here.
5. Pack ultra-light
Determine in advance what bags you will take and reconsider everything you take until it fits… and not the other way around. Limit yourself in the space you can fill and pack accordingly. Worst case, you must buy additional things during your holiday or wash clothes or diapers a few times. For longer trips, we always pack assuming we will go to a supermarket on day 1 and wash clothes every 3 days.
When traveling to Nice for 5 days last Autumn, we had:
- One backpack for Tine and my clothes / books / laptop,
- One bag with August stuff (sleeping bag, (re-usable)diapers, milk powder for exactly 5 days, clothes, one meal, two water bottles, hygiene stuff) that fit under the stroller
- A foldable stroller
- A sleeping tent
Carbon Conscious Travel 