Orient Express

Orient Express, luxury trans-European train. In the early 1870s Georges Nagelmackers, the young heir of a wealthy Belgian banking family, persuaded several European railways to let him run sleeping-car trains in the style pioneered by George Pullman in the United States. He would build and staff his own cars. At first he had an American partner, but in December 1876 he formed his own business, popularly known as the International Wagons-Lits (Sleeping Car) Company. After early success with a Paris-Vienna train, Nagelmackers extended its route with his launch of Europe’s first international luxury train, the Orient Express, in June 1883. This ran from Paris to Constantinople (now İstanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

At first its passengers had to cross the Danube by boat, and in Bulgaria had to board a Black Sea liner to finish the journey, as Russian shipping interests impeded completion of a through rail route until 1888. From that year the Orient Express travelled beyond Vienna via Budapest (Hungary), Belgrade and Niš (Serbia), and Sofia (Bulgaria) all the way to its destination. The journey time from Paris was just over 67y hours, as against more than 81y at the train’s inauguration. The service was withdrawn at the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

The Orient Express reentered public service in 1921, although then travelling no farther than Budapest. This was because, following the Allied governments’ request for a new high-grade service to and from the Balkans, the Simplon-Orient Express had been created in 1919. This exploited the transalpine Simplon Tunnel, opened in 1906, to run from Paris through Switzerland, and then via Milan and Venice in Italy and Trieste (then in Austria) to Belgrade, en route to Constantinople.

Between the World Wars the Wagons-Lits company built up a tracery of luxury sleeping-car services between northern Europe, the Balkans, and the Near East, many of which exchanged cars at Belgrade. There, after 1932, the Simplon-Orient Express attached cars from Berlin, Oostende, Amsterdam, Vienna, or Prague, depending on the day of the week, and shed cars of its own for Bucharest; later, at Niš, it dropped off a portion for Athens.

Until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Orient Express and Simplon-Orient Express were composed entirely of sumptuously furnished Wagons-Lits sleeping and restaurant cars, renowned for the standards of cuisine and service, plus baggage and mail cars. The trains were frequented by European and Near Eastern royalty, nobility, diplomats, and business people. The glamour of this clientele, of the cities served, and of the trains themselves inspired numerous artists, writers, and filmmakers.

After 1945 the trains never regained their prewar prestige. Their Wagons-Lits cars were mostly replaced by ordinary coaches. The Orient Express name eventually applied to a Strasbourg-Vienna service run by German and Austrian railways. The Simplon-Orient title disappeared in 1962. However, the 1930s style was recreated by a business magnate, James Sherwood, in the late 1970s. He bought discarded prewar Wagons-Lits Pullman and sleeping cars and had them restored to their original state to create the privately owned and marketed Venice-Simplon-Orient Express luxury land-cruise train.