Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Review: the Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston station

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

This is my review of the Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston station.

HfP has been meaning to review the new Caledonian Sleeper trains since they were launched in 2019, after £150m was invested in new rolling stock. There were initial service and reliability issues which persuaded us to delay a trip, and then of course we had the pandemic.

The opening of a new lounge at Euston last November made us feel that it was the right time to give it a go, and we were tempted by a 25% discount offer available for trips in January. It still cost HfP over £300 for a one-way trip to Inverness in a double bedded room …..

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

Click here for my review of the Caledonian Sleeper train itself. In this article I want to look at the Euston lounge.

The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at Euston station

Ahead of my journey to Inverness I checked out the lounge which is located on Platform 1, the platform where the train departs from.

Access to the Euston station lounge is available for holders of Double En-suite and Club Room En-suite tickets. It doesn’t appear that other passengers can buy access to the lounge which is a bit of a shame, but to be honest I think capacity would become an issue.

The lounge opens at 18.00 although the first departure time for the Sleeper is 21.15. This is presumably for the benefit of people needing somewhere to wait after leaving their office.

I arrived at 18.30 and I wasn’t the first passenger there, but it was just early enough to get a few pictures before it became busy.

The lounge can also be used after your arrival back into London which is handy if you want to get a shower here instead of in the tiny train bathroom.

The lounge is welcoming with lots of bench seating and small tables. Everything is still very new and fresh, with the lounge under two months old.

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

There appeared to be enough plugs and the WiFi worked well.

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

There are also corners where larger groups can gather:

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

Food in the Caledonian Sleeper lounge

If you want to eat before you board your train there are a number of options.

Sweet and savoury snacks are complimentary. If you want something bigger in the evenings then there is a paid-for lounge menu with toasted sandwiches, nachos, pizza twists, soup and sausage Wellington.

If you want to get into the Scottish mood, you can order Haggis, Neeps, Tatties with Whisky Sauce for £14.

For dessert you can choose from a brownie or a £14 cheese board. Non-alcoholic drinks are complimentary whilst alcoholic drinks are available for purchase.

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

The lounge menu also includes breakfast options for arriving passengers, such as bacon or sausage rolls and pastries. I don’t know how big these are but they seem fairly priced by lounge standards at £5.50 with the pastries at £2.50.

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

Here are the modest free snacks on offer:

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

…. and the non-alcoholic drinks:

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

I had a toasted sandwich (smoked ham & cheddar cheese) with tortilla chips which did the job, and only cost £6:

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

Whether the lounge should be charging at all for food is a different question, of course. Given that my one-way ticket would have been over £400 at full price (£500 for a couple), and was still over £300 with the 25% January discount, allowing at least one free food item per passenger wouldn’t hurt.

The showers

I was impressed by the toilet and shower facilities, which are new and very clean. Toiletries from Scottish brand Arran and towels are provided at no charge.

To my mind it is a good alternative to have a shower here on arrival rather than onboard, especially if you come from Glasgow or Edinburgh which have much shorter journey times than my Inverness train.

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

and

Review: The Caledonian Sleeper lounge at London Euston

Conclusion

This is an inviting lounge, perhaps a bit on the small side but with the benefit of everything being new.

With my Inverness train not boarding until 20.30 it was good to have somewhere to spend a couple of hours, especially as the main concourse at Euston is neither inviting or warm.

The shower facilities are excellent and as the lounge is open in the morning until 10.30 it also works as a smart arrivals lounge.

Click here for my review of a double bedded Club room on board the Caledonian Sleeper.


Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2025)

Here are the five options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,500 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here.

You can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £290 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A good package, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

Got a small business?

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum which has the same lounge benefits as the personal Platinum card:

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

You should also consider the Capital on Tap Pro Visa credit card which has a lower fee and, as well as a Priority Pass for airport lounge access, also comes with Radison Rewards VIP hotel status:

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Comments (124)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Chaz says:

    That place looks completely soulless and a miserable place to spend any time at all. If I’ve just dropped £500 on a ticket, I’m pretty sure I could spend a few pennies more, basically anywhere but there, and have a better start to my journey. A free tea bag isn’t going to swing it for me.

  • Amy C says:

    In fact you could spend less and get better looking food at the newly opened ‘Spoons that is visible across the road from Plat 1 at Euston.

    • Jimmy says:

      That would require you to go to spoons, though 🤮

      • TGLoyalty says:

        While I agree you could walk a little further and plenty of other places. It was just an example of a brand new pub very close by

      • cin4 says:

        Yes it would. And the point being made is that being snobby is pointless if it means you end up in a even more soulless space with worse and more expensive food just for the sake of saying you were in a lounge instead of a ‘spoons.

        • Rob says:

          Where is this parallel universe where a Wetherspoons in a very grotty part of town is teaming with single women at night all choosing to hang out there whilst waiting for a train and then hopping into their £425 train cabin? It’s just so detached from any sort of reality – you give the impression of never having even met anyone with the money to pay £425 for a train ticket, yet alone do so yourself.

  • Cat says:

    I wish there were photos of the sausage Wellington. I need to know if this is anything more than just a sausage roll!

    They’re having a laugh with the cheese board price, especially after the cost of the ticket.

    I’m lookin forward to the main review, Conny. I do love sleeper train journeys. Maybe if the service has improved, I may give the Caledonian sleeper another try, after the disastrous journey we had just after Serco took it over. Maybe. I’ve not quite forgiven and forgotten yet.

  • Rick MacLeod says:

    This was an interesting review, however £6 for a toastie or £5.50 for a bacon roll is not, in my view, good value at all. Your point about whether they should be charging at all should have emphasised more, because when your review suggests that these prices aren’t bad for a lounge then the lounge management is not likely to contemplate changing things.
    I would suggest that for the amount spent to gain access via my ticket, I would be shocked to then be asked for even more (I mean, seriously, £14 for a cheese board? It’s hardly The Shard, is it!!)

    • Rob says:

      If you’ve got a problem with £6 for a toastie (which I think is the same as Pret charges for a takeaway toastie) then I doubt you’d be on a £500 train ticket in the first place. Whether it is bad business sense from a customer experience point of view is a different question.

      I have more of a problem with, say, No1 Lounges charging you for cooked to order food in a lounge you’ve paid £40 to enter because you didn’t like the cost of food and drink in the main terminal ….

      • Richie says:

        The toastie in the photo doesn’t look as good as a Pret toastie, looks more like a Greggs toastie.

        • Mike says:

          A Greggs toastie has cheese on the top, so I don’t think you know what Greggs sells.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        It’s not the quality of pret and best to compare it to the standard/cost of similar in the brand new spoons a few mins walk away.

      • Jonathon says:

        Rob are you seriously defending this? It’s absolutely not something a serious travel blog or website should be reporting as a positive. But then that 25% discount apparently worked for them so….

        • Rob says:

          I just said that I don’t think its good for customer experience, and if its not good for customer experience its not good for business. This is no different to a £500 hotel charging you £6 for a mini-bar can of coke though.

          • Josh B says:

            It is a little different tbh. The point of a lounge is somewhere to hang out and have some refreshments! A better analogy would be a £500 hotel room charging extra for towels or a pillow!

          • Hampshirehog says:

            Which tbh isn’t great either what with free mini bars more common nowadays

    • Martin says:

      The £5.50 for a bacon roll is all the more puzzling when Club passengers get free breakfast on board – and the lounge is only open to Club passengers.

      I get that the munificence of the Scottish taxpayer only goes so far, but they could offer a voucher for brekkie in the lounge in lieu of something on the train, as the extra time to sleep is welcome on the lowland service.

  • HertsSam says:

    Out of curiosity, I looked up the flights to Inverness from London on Expedia for a business class flight. The earliest you can get there is 11:10am starting at Luton and arriving at the airport. I don’t know how long it would take to get into the town for a meeting.
    If you wanted to be there for the morning, you would have to go up the day before and stay in a hotel. And you would have to pay for the transport and the hotel.
    As another poster said with this service you get transport and accommodation.
    Whether you can sleep well enough in a train to be productive the next day is for you to decide.
    I note coming from Inverness to London, you can be at LGW by 8:45 or LHR by 9:15. So quite possible to make a morning meeting in London. Or you could take the sleeper train to London.

    • lumma says:

      Who are you flying business class from Luton to Inverness with?

      • HertsSam says:

        This was Expedia.
        Apologies. I did many searches to get my facts straight and then I quoted the results of the wrong search.
        Yes you are right it was Economy. And yes this was Easyjet.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      Easyjet lands at Gatwick at 8:10/8:20am depending on the morning.

      If you’re going the other way 6:55pm departure gets in at 8:30pm.

      • HertsSam says:

        I searched for flights on 3/4/24 going to Inverness from a London airport. Earliest arrival time is 11:10 using Easyjet from Luton, which is listed as a London airport.

  • lumma says:

    The Caledonian Sleeper is one of the few TOCs that we don’t get staff discount on working for Network Rail.

    I’ve ridden it once to Edinburgh in the seat carriage, was only £55 but I didn’t get a minute of sleep on it, too bright, too noisy and really uncomfortable seats, even though they’re essentially the same as First Class on a regular train. Luckily the Kimpton had a room available first thing

    • John says:

      Apparently it’s policy not to turn off the lights

      • LittleNick says:

        Is this to deliberately penalise those that didn’t pay the extra for a bed?

        • Bagoly says:

          More likely is from paranoia of being blamed for sexual assaults.
          (which is also presumably the reason for no sharing of compartments with strangers now)

    • Amy C says:

      You don’t? TOC employees like me do. 😬

  • gavalar says:

    I’m being gently nudged to use this to fit with the company’s ‘green’ stance but resisting as just doesn’t work for me with sleep quality, times & productivity.

    • Andrew. says:

      I suspect that after a few return journeys hit the P&L, you’ll be back on the plane.

  • MKB says:

    One of the knock-on effects of Caledonian Sleeper no longer using the Avanti First-Class Lounge is that the latter now closes one hour earlier Sun-Fri at 22:00, meaning that first-class ticketholders on the last two trains to the West Midlands no longer have the lounge facility after this time.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.