TUESDAY TRAINS / THE FOUNDING OF THE ORIENT EXPRESS

 

Gare l'est Paris late 19th century

GUEST BLOG / By Clive and Vera Stunning, PillartoPost.org Travel Writers--Few trains have carried the mystique of the Orient Express, yet its origins were practical and entrepreneurial rather than romantic. The train was the creation of a Belgian businessman, Georges Nagelmackers, who believed Europe’s expanding railway network deserved the same comfort and continuity already appearing on American railroads. During a trip to the United States in the early 1870s, Nagelmackers encountered the Pullman sleeping cars that allowed passengers to travel long distances overnight in comfort. European railways, though extensive, still forced travelers to change trains frequently and endure cramped compartments. Nagelmackers returned home determined to introduce sleeping cars and coordinated international service across the continent. 

Early Euro rail sleeping car

 In 1876 he founded the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, a company designed to build luxury railway cars and operate international services linking the capitals of Europe. His boldest idea was a train that would run from Paris to Constantinople, the great city at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. 

 The first Orient Express departed Gare de l’Est in Paris on October 4, 1883. Its passengers included journalists, diplomats, and curious travelers eager to experience the new service. The journey crossed France and Germany, passed through Austria-Hungary, and continued toward the Balkans. At the time the route was not yet entirely continuous by rail. Passengers finished part of the trip by steamer across the Black Sea before reaching Constantinople. 

 

Even in its earliest form the train introduced a level of Parisian elegance and comfort rarely seen in European rail travel. The sleeping cars were finished in polished woods and brass fixtures, with attentive stewards attending to passengers throughout the journey. Dining cars served full meals on porcelain plates accompanied by French wines. Long-distance rail travel suddenly acquired a measure of elegance. Within a decade the route was improved and extended until a complete rail connection linked Paris directly with Constantinople (which became Istanbul in 1930). 

The dark blue Wagons-Lits carriages became a familiar sight across Europe, moving through the valleys of Bavaria, across the plains of Hungary, and into the Balkans. The train quickly attracted an unusual clientele. Diplomats, aristocrats, spies, journalists, and adventurous travelers shared the same narrow corridors and dining tables. News and intrigue traveled almost as quickly as the locomotive itself. 

 Boarding the Orient Express meant stepping into a world that stretched across a continent. A traveler might leave a Paris platform and, several days later, step down beside the domes and minarets of Constantinople. Few inventions of the nineteenth century captured the imagination of travelers quite the way that blue train did. In the decades that followed, the Orient Express became one of the most recognizable trains on earth, but its reputation began with a simple idea: that Europe’s railways could be joined together into a single elegant journey from the Atlantic edge of the continent to the gateway of the East.