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The
end of the Orient Express..?
Some years ago in the
European timetable change in June 2001, the Orient Express was
cut back to running just from Paris to Vienna. It lost its
daily through couchette car and seats car from Paris to
Budapest, and its twice weekly through sleeping-car
from Paris to Bucharest. There was a fear that at this point it
would also lose its famous name. But no, it continued.
In June 2007, the TGV-Est high-speed
line opened, and the Paris-Vienna Orient Express was again cut
back, this time to run just Strasbourg-Vienna, with a TGV
connection to/from Paris. But even in this truncated form
it still officially carries the name 'Orient Express' in the
European timetables, and so the Orient Express lives on...
You might now be a bit confused...
...because you've
read that the Orient Express stopped running in 1977, and was
beautifully restored and put back into service and runs to Venice and
costs a lot to travel on and people like Alan Whicker and
Terry Wogan travel
on it and do TV programmes about it... I mean, the
Venice Simplon Orient Express is the original Orient
Express, isn't it..?
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Above: The REAL
Orient Express about to leave Paris for Vienna
(pre-June 2007)...
The car on the left is the sleeping-car, with carpeted
1- 2 & 3-bed rooms with washbasin. The car on the
right is one of two modern couchette cars with more
basic 4- & 6-bunk compartments. There are photos
of the interior of a sleeping-car compartment on this
train, along with timetable information and fares, on
the London to Austria page. |
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...if
you don't believe me, look at the official destination
label... |
Yes, the (real)
Orient Express still runs today...
The Orient Express
referred to here and shown in these photographs is the REAL Orient Express, the
actual true descendant of that first 'Express d'Orient'
that left Paris in October 1883. It's a normal scheduled
'EuroNight' express, run by the German and Austrian national
railways, and you can travel on it with normal tickets
including InterRail and Eurail passes. It has normal
Austrian Railways seats, couchette, and sleeping-cars.
Until 8 June 2007 it left Paris every
evening at 17:16 and arrived in Vienna at 08:30 next morning.
As of 9 June 2007, you leave Paris at 19:24 by high-speed TGV to connect
with the Orient Express at Strasbourg. The Orient
Express leaves Strasbourg at 22:20 and arrives in Vienna at
08:35 next morning. It's still the most time-effective,
comfortable and convenient way to travel between Paris and
Vienna.
You can trace the history of
the train pictured above from one year's railway timetable to the next all the way from 1883 to 2008,
so the pedigree of this train is quite
genuine - more so than either of the two expensive tourist
trains of restored vintage rolling stock claiming to be the
Orient Express (the
Venice Simplon
Orient Express
(VSOE) and the Nostalgic Orient
Express), beautiful though they are.
The photograph
above shows the Orient Express at Paris Gare de
l'Est, before it was cut back to start in Strasbourg, about half an hour before its departure for Vienna. The gentleman is
boarding the Paris-Vienna sleeping-car, which is to this very
day staffed by personnel of the Compagnie Internationale des
Wagons-Lits, which is the company that operated the original
Orient Express from its inception. However, since 1971 the Wagon-Lits Company
has simply staffed the sleeping-car as a contractor (they provide the
attendant, the room service catering, bed linen, etc.) instead of owning
and operating the sleeping-car in their own right. The
coach to the right marked 'liegewagen' is one of the two
modern Austrian Railways couchette cars, also as it happen
staffed by the CIWL. The right-hand photo is a close-up of the
destination label, clearly announcing the train as the
EuroNight train 'Orient
Express'. I
have used the Orient Express on many occasions,
most recently on my return from Petra, Damascus, Aleppo,
and (appropriately enough) Istanbul in September 2005. You'll find
the Orient Express in table 32 of the latest edition of the
Thomas Cook
European Timetable. There are photos of the
interior of the sleeping-car and couchette cars on the
London to Austria by train page. |
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So you thought the Orient Express didn't run any more...?
A few other things you didn't know about the Orient
Express:
- Agatha
Christie's 'Murder on the Orient
Express' isn't set on the Orient
Express - It's set on the Simplon Orient
Express. By the 1920s and 30s there were a whole
inter-connecting network of Wagons-Lits company trains
with 'Orient Express' as part of their name in
addition to the Orient Express itself. The Orient
Express has always run from Paris Gare de l'Est via Munich, Vienna
& Budapest, whereas the Simplon Orient Express started
running in April 1919, taking a Southerly route from Calais and
Paris Gare de Lyon to Milan, Venice, Trieste, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia and
Istanbul, with a portion for Athens. You can see the
summer 1939 timetable for this train below.
- Graham Greene's
book 'Stamboul Train' isn't set
on the Orient Express either - It's set
on the 'Oostende-Vienna Orient Express'. This
train ran from Oostende & Brussels via Frankfurt to
Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade and beyond, combining with cars
of the Orient Express east of Vienna and with those of the
Simplon Orient Express between Belgrade & Istanbul. In the 1960s
its 3-times-a-week through sleeping car from Oostende
to Istanbul was withdrawn, and the 'Oostende-Vienna Orient
Express' became just plain 'Oostende-Vienna
Express'. In the 1990s, this train changed its name to 'DonauWalzer',
and with the coming of Eurostar and the ceasing of all
Dover-Oostende ferry service it was cut back to start in
Brussels rather than Oostende. The 'DonauWalzer'
survived as the Brussels-Vienna night train until December
2003 when it was withdrawn. Today, Brussels-Vienna
passengers need to change in Cologne onto a new breed of
'hotel train' with top of the range facilities, the
excellent CityNightLine 'Donau Kurier' (www.bahn.de/citynightline).
CityNightLine trains have double-deck sleeping-cars, and
their deluxe rooms even have their own shower.
- In 1962 the daily Simplon
Orient Express was replaced by a slower train, called the Direct Orient
Express, which had a twice-weekly sleeping-car Paris to
Istanbul. With
typical inaccuracy, most journalists
reported the withdrawal of the Direct Orient Express in
May 1977 as the withdrawal of the Orient
Express. Wrong. The Orient Express
continues to run to this day, as the main
overnight train between Paris and Vienna. Until
2001, it also continued to Budapest and (in the form of a
through sleeper on certain days of the week) Bucharest.
You can see the summer 1965 timetable for the Direct Orient
Express below.
- Don't confuse
the real Orient Express (a scheduled
railway service between Paris and Vienna)
with the Venice Simplon Orient
Express (VSOE) run by VSOE Ltd, a
special train of restored vintage ex-Wagon-Lits Company sleeping cars, or the
Nostalgic
Orient Express, a similar operation. The VSOE
is the one most people have heard of, costing about
£1,400 or more per person from London to Venice. See
the VSOE section
below.
- The Venice Simplon Orient
Express website (www.orient-expresstrains.com)
actually has the nerve to ask an FAQ 'Is the VSOE train
the original Orient Express..?' and suggest that
the answer is 'yes'.
There is, and cannot be, any
such thing as the 'original' Orient Express, for a very good
reason. Take air travel. Suppose there's a
British Airways flight to New York called 'Flight
BA123'. Is there an actual unique aircraft called
'Flight BA123'...? Of course not. 'Flight BA123' is a
abstract concept, a service, a departure, a 'flight',
something which appears in the timetable, in the reservation
system and on your ticket. BA own a whole fleet of
whichever type of aircraft is required to operate flight
BA123 to New York, and any of these might be used to run
that flight on any given day. So it is with the Orient
Express. It was and is a service, and not a particular set of
rolling stock. In any case, it would have used different rolling
stock at different periods in its history,
and at any given time it would have required several sets of
rolling stock to operate. Think about it - in its heyday in the
1930s, it ran daily from Paris to
Istanbul, a journey that took three
nights. On any given night, there must have been
one Simplon Orient Express leaving Paris, another on its
second night out from Paris, a third approaching Istanbul on
the last night of its journey, and another three Simplon
Orient Expresses travelling in the other direction towards
Paris. So there must have been
at least six sets of rolling stock..!
Furthermore, both the Venice Simplon Orient Express and Nostalgic
Orient Express use
LX-class sleeping-cars
dating from 1929, the most spacious and
luxurious cars built for the Wagon-Lits
company. However, the real Orient Express and its
sister trains didn't use LX sleepers, at least not for the
through cars to Istanbul and Athens. Before the
war, the Orient Express used
S-class
sleeping-cars
(dating from 1922, a few years
older than the LX's with slightly smaller compartments
and without all the wood marquetry of the LX sleepers),
and after the war the
Z-class. LX sleepers were used on the
trains such as the 'Blue Train' between Calais/Paris and the South of France,
the 'Rome Express' from Calais/Paris to Rome and
on the Paris-Berlin-Warsaw-Riga 'Nord
Express'. The Calais-Trieste sleeping car attached
to the Simplon Orient Express would have been an LX in the
1930s.
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Simplon Orient Express 1939
Below: The 1939 timetable for the Simplon Orient
Express. At this period, the train consists
exclusively of Wagons-Lits sleeping cars. Note that
the departure time for London is just the time of the
train+ferry connection - the Simplon Orient Express starts
in Calais. The Taurus Express is a separate
connecting train - see the Syria page.
Reproduced with kind
permission from the 1939 edition of the Thomas Cook
Continental Timetable,
© Thomas Cook |
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The Orient Express in its
heyday - What was it really like..?
This
might give you an idea of what travelling on the Orient
Express was like in its heyday.
Departure from Istanbul...
Imagine
it is the mid-1930s, and you are in Istanbul. You dine
at the Pera Palas Hotel, the hotel established by the
Wagons-Lits Company in 1894 specifically to cater for Orient Express
clientele, and still a great hotel today. About 9pm, you
head down to Sirkeci station for the 22:00 departure of the
Orient Express. You need to eat beforehand, because there is no
restaurant car attached to the Orient Express when it leaves Istanbul - this isn't attached until Kapikule on the
Turkish/Bulgarian border, in time to serve breakfast.
At
Sirkeci station, under the station lights, you catch you first
glimpse of the blue and gold sleeping-cars of the Orient
Express. It's a very short train - Just four
sleeping-cars, with a baggage van ('fourgon' in
French) at either end. The train isn't so much a train
as a collection of through sleeping cars, made up as follows:
- Two sleeping-cars make up
the 'Simplon Orient Express' from Istanbul to Paris (Gare de
Lyon) via Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, Trieste, Venice, Milan,
Lausanne, and Dijon. Just one of these two sleepers goes
through to Calais for the London connection.
-
Depending
on the day of the week, the third sleeping-car is either
the
3-times-a-week 'Orient Express' sleeping-car for Paris
(Gare de l'Est) via Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna,
Munich and Strasbourg, or the 3-times-a-week
'Oostende-Vienna Orient Express' sleeper for Brussels and
Oostende (with a boat connection for Dover for the train
to London) via Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna,
Frankfurt and Cologne.
- Depending on the day of the
week, the fourth sleeping-car is either Istanbul-Berlin (4
times a week) or
Istanbul-Prague (3 times a week).
On board the
Orient Express sleeping-cars...
Each
'S' type sleeping-car
has 10 wood-panelled compartments with either one or two beds
(one above the other) plus a washbasin - there are no baths or
showers on board. The sleeper
compartments convert for daytime use into a compact carpeted
sitting room with sofa and small table. There is no
lounge car or seats car, at least not this side of
Trieste. Agatha Christie needed a 'pullman' salon car
for dramatic purposes in 'Murder on the Orient Express', so
uses some dramatic licence and writes one into her
story. Very wealthy passengers travelling alone might
pay for sole occupancy of a 2-bed compartment, but other
passengers would share a compartment with another passenger of
the same sex.
Shunting around at Belgrade...
At
Belgrade the following day, the sleepers bound for Berlin or
Prague and Oostende or Paris Gare de l'Est are detached
and shunted on to a train for Budapest. Meanwhile, the
Istanbul-Paris and Istanbul-Paris-Calais sleeping-cars of the
'Simplon Orient Express' (plus one of the baggage vans) are
attached to an Athens-Paris and an Athens-Paris-Calais
sleeping-car that have arrived in Belgrade from Greece a
little earlier. Hercule Poirot's situation will now be
clear to aficionados of 'Murder on the Orient Express' - he is
travelling to London, so needs to reach Calais. However,
he is unable to get a berth in
the Istanbul-Calais sleeper of the Simplon Orient Express 'because the whole world
travels tonight...'. Instead, he takes a spare berth
in the SOE's Istanbul-Paris sleeper, but it is '...for one night
only...' as he will transfer to a spare berth in the
Athens-Calais sleeper when it is attached at Belgrade.
Agatha Christie knew her trains..!
The
Simplon Orient Express gains some more cars along the way -
for example, another sleeping-car (a luxurious 'LX' type) for Calais is added at
Trieste. Locomotives are changed at every frontier where
one national railway system hands over to another, and also at
other places in between - for example, Milan Centrale is a
terminus, so the train reverses there and gets a fresh
locomotive on the other end.
Arrival in Paris
At
Paris Gare de Lyon, three nights out of Istanbul, the 'Simplon
Orient Express' terminates. The through sleepers to
Calais are shunted around the Paris 'ceinture' (literally
'belt' line) from the Gare de Lyon to the Gare du Nord, where
they are attached to a train for Calais.
All change at
Calais for the London connection...
No,
the sleeping cars aren't loaded onto the ferry at Calais..!
The
only passenger coaches ever to be physically ferried
across the Channel were the London-Paris (and for a while,
London-Brussels) sleeping cars of the 'Night Ferry', which
started in 1936, was suspended a few years later for World War
II, then ran after the war until withdrawal in 1980. Orient Express passengers for London
have to leave their sleeping-cars at Calais Maritime and board
a ferry for Dover. At Dover, a British Southern Railway 'boat
train' is waiting to take them non-stop to London Victoria.
Orient Express, Arlberg Orient Express...
Incidentally, you can see that in the 1930s the 'Orient
Express' itself (as opposed to the 'Simplon Orient Express')
ran three times a week from Paris (Gare de l'Est) - Munich -
Vienna - Budapest - Belgrade - Istanbul. It also
conveyed a Paris - Budapest - Bucharest sleeper, and a Calais
- Budapest - Bucharest sleeper. On three days of the
week when it wasn't running, its departure slot from the Gare
de l'Est was taken up by the 'Arlberg Orient Express', which
took a Southerly route through Switzerland (via Basel and
Innsbruck) to reach Vienna. It also had Paris - Vienna -
Budapest - Bucharest and Calais-Bucharest sleepers,
maintaining an almost daily Wagons-Lits service between these
cities. You can begin to see how the network fitted
together..! |
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Direct Orient Express, 1965...
Below: The 1965
timetable for the Direct Orient Express, which replaced
the Simplon Orient Express in 1962. You can see
from the long list of through cars that this train isn't a whole
train running from A to B either, but an assortment of through
carriages between different points. You can see that
it now includes ordinary seats cars (the carriage symbol)
and couchettes ('CC') as well as sleeping-cars (the bed
symbol). Note that the departure time shown against
London is the departure time of a train+ferry connection.
The actual Direct Orient Express starts in Paris with a
few through cars from Calais.
Reproduced with kind
permission from the 1965 edition of the Thomas Cook
Continental Timetable,
© Thomas Cook. |
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A chronology of the Orient Express:
-
1876:
A Belgian, Georges Nagelmackers, founds
La Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits,
to operate luxury sleeping cars and
dining cars all over Europe, much as
George Mortimer Pullman was doing in the USA... The various national
railway companies provide the track, the
stations and the locomotives. The Wagons-Lits
company provides and staffs the sleeping-cars
and dining cars. Passengers pay for a 1st class
ticket plus a Wagons-Lits supplement. The railway companies
get the ticket revenue, the Wagons-Lits company get the revenue from the supplement.
-
1883:
Nagelmackers' flagship, the 'Express
d'Orient', starts running, twice a week, Paris (Gare de
l'Est) -
Strasbourg-Munich-Vienna-Budapest-Bucharest-Giurgiu.
At Giurgiu, passengers cross the Danube by ferry to
Ruse in Bulgaria, where a second train would be waiting for the 7-hour journey to Varna on
the Black Sea. An Austrian Lloyd steamer then connects for
the 14-hour sea voyage to
Constantinople (Istanbul).
-
1885:
Service increases to daily over the Paris-Munich-Vienna
section. The Orient Express continues to operate
on two days a week
beyond Vienna to Giurgiu for the ferry to Ruse, the
connecting train to Varna and ship to Istanbul, and on
a third day each week it runs beyond Vienna to Belgrade and Nis. As the railway
was incomplete in Bulgaria, horse-drawn carriages took
passengers from Nis across the mountains
to Plovdiv, where the rail journey resumed for Istanbul.
-
1889:
The line is completed, and direct Paris-Constantinople
operation starts in June 1889. The Orient Express
leaves Paris (Gare de Strasbourg, now renamed Gare de
l'Est) every night at 18:25. It has daily sleepers
for Vienna, twice-weekly sleepers on Sundays & Wednesdays
for Constantinople, and twice-weekly sleepers on Monday &
Friday for Bucharest. Arrival in Constantinople was
at 16:00, 3 nights (67.5 hours) from Paris.
-
1891:
'Express
d'Orient' is officially renamed 'Orient Express'.
-
1909: The Orient
Express trainsets are re-equipped with new sleepers and
restaurant cars. The new sleepers feature softer
suspension and an upper berth which folds more completely
away for day use.
-
1914: The Orient
Express is suspended from July 1914, due to the war.
The Germans try to run a Berlin-Constantinople train, the
'Balkanzug', without much success.
-
1919: In
February 1919 the Orient Express is reinstated, twice a
week from Paris to Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest, but via
Zurich and the Arlberg Pass into Austria to avoid Germany.
It resumes operation through Germany in 1920, although
suspended again 1923-24 with the occupation of the Ruhr.
-
1919:
On 11 April 1919 the Simplon Orient Express starts running in
addition to the Orient Express, using the
Southerly route from Paris (Gare de Lyon)
to Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Trieste,
Belgrade, and (from 1920 onwards) Istanbul. This route has the
advantage of avoiding Germany (which the Allies still
didn't trust), and it rapidly becomes
the main route from Calais and Paris to Istanbul.
The Treaty of Versailles has a specific clause requiring
Austria to accept this train - previously, Austria had
insisted that international trains could not pass through
their territory (which then included Trieste) unless they
ran via Vienna.
-
1922: From 1922
onwards, the pre-war wooden R-class sleepers are
progressively replaced by new steel
S-class sleeping-cars. The new cars are painted blue with gold lining and
lettering, replacing the varnished teak of earlier
Wagons-Lits cars. Blue and gold all-steel dining
cars replace the older restaurant cars from 1925 onwards.
-
1929: The
westbound Orient Express becomes stuck in snow for 5 days
at Tcherkesskeuy, some 130km from Istanbul. The
incident inspired Agatha Christie's plot in 'Murder on the
Orient Express'.
-
1930s:
By the 1930s, a complete network of through sleeping
cars was in operation between Western and
Central/Eastern Europe, involving the Orient Express and
several sister trains with 'Orient' as part
of their name. The trains inter-connected and
swapped sleeping-cars at various points such as Budapest
and Belgrade:
Simplon
Orient Express: Daily through
sleeping cars from Calais & Paris (Gare de Lyon) to Istanbul, via Dijon - Lausanne - Milan -
Venice - Trieste - Zagreb - Belgrade - Sofia. The Simplon Orient
Express
also provided daily though sleeping-cars from Calais and Paris
to Athens. The Calais-Trieste sleeper was normally a
luxurious
LX-class sleeping-car, but the
Calais/Paris-Istanbul/Athens sleepers would normally be
S-class.
Orient
Express: 3 times a week service
from Paris (Gare de l'Est) - Strasbourg - Munich - Vienna - Budapest,
with through sleeping-cars from Calais & Paris to
Bucharest, and from Paris to Istanbul (combined
with the Simplon Orient Express between Belgrade and
Istanbul).
Arlberg
Orient Express: On 3 out of the
4 days of the week when the Orient Express wasn't
running, its departure slot from Paris Est was taken up
with the three-times-a-week Arlberg Orient Express from
Paris to
Basel, Zurich, Innsbruck,
Vienna, Budapest,
with through sleepers Calais & Paris -
Bucharest and Paris-Athens. This train was created
in 1932 out of the Suisse Arlberg Vienna Express.
The trains
also conveyed an Istanbul-Berlin sleeping
car 4 times a week, alternating with an Istanbul-Prague
car 3 times a week.
-
1939-42:
Most of the great trains are suspended for world war 2.
The Wagons-Lits Company's arch rival, the German Mitropa
company, tried running its own Orient Express into the
Balkans reserved for military and diplomatic personnel,
but this was not a success as partisans kept blowing it
up...
-
1945-7:
The Simplon Orient resumes running in November 1945, three
times a week Calais - Paris - Milan -Venice
- Belgrade - Sofia, finally extended to Istanbul again
in 1947. However, ordinary
railway company seating cars and couchette cars are now conveyed
for various parts of the journey, in addition to the Wagon-Lits
company sleepers and restaurant. Although service
to Istanbul restarted, the through sleeping cars to Athens
were unable to resume because the Greek / Yugoslav border
was closed. At this period, a Z-class sleeper was
normally used Paris-Belgrade, a luxurious LX-class sleeper
Paris-Brig, and S-class sleepers Paris-Istanbul.
Later, Z-class sleepers would also end up on the
Paris-Istanbul & Athens run.
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1947
onwards: With communists firmly in control in
eastern Europe, the Wagons-Lits Company's sleeping-car and
dining car operations in Eastern Bloc countries are
gradually taken over by the eastern European railway
companies' own sleeping-car and dining car
subsidiaries. Although the 'Orient Express' through
sleeping-cars from western to eastern Europe remain
operated by the Wagons-Lits Company, Wagons-Lits sleepers
and diners operating on these trains wholly within Eastern
Bloc borders are progressively replaced by non-Wagons-Lits
cars.
-
1951:
The Greek border reopens and the Athens portion of the
Simplon Orient Express resumes running.
Unfortunately, the Bulgarian / Turkish border then closed,
temporarily halting the Istanbul portion until 1952.
-
1960:
The through sleeping cars to / from Calais are withdrawn
and all cars of the Simplon Orient Express now start /
terminate in Paris (Gare de Lyon). The Pullman cars
of the Calais - Paris 'Golden Arrow' / 'Fleche d'Or' are
extended to run around Paris from the Gare du Nord to the
Gare de Lyon to maintain a connection (the Gare du Nord to
Gare de Lyon trip was necessary anyway to convey the
through sleeping-car from Calais to San Remo bound for the
'Train Bleu' and the Calais to Rome through sleeping-car
bound for the 'Rome Express').
-
1962:
The Simplon Orient Express is withdrawn and replaced by a slower train called the Direct
Orient Express. The Direct Orient Express conveys
a daily sleeping car and seats cars Calais-Paris-Milan-Venice,
a daily sleeping car and seats cars Paris (Gare de
Lyon) - Milan - Venice - Trieste -
Belgrade, a twice-weekly sleeping car and seats
car Paris - Belgrade - Istanbul (initially a
Z-class,
later a
YU-class
sleeping-car), and a
three-times-a-week (later twice weekly) sleeping car Paris - Belgrade
- Athens (also a
Z-class or
YU-class car).
-
1962: In
addition, the Arlberg Orient Express loses its
Paris-Budapest and Paris-Bucharest sleepers, and becomes
plain 'Arlberg Express' running
Paris-Zurich-Innsbruck-Vienna. It continues in the
timetables as the 'Arlberg Express' until the 1990s, when
it loses it's Vienna and Innsbruck cars and today it just
runs Paris-Zurich-Chur, still with a sleeper staffed by
the Wagons-Lits company, but without any name.
-
1967: The
Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits drops the suffix
'et des grands express Européens'
from its title and adds 'et du tourisme' instead.
-
1971:
The Wagons-Lits company decides that it can no longer
maintain and renew the ageing sleeping car fleet based
on receiving revenue from sleeper supplements alone
(passengers travelling on the Orient express paid for a
normal ticket plus a sleeper supplement - the supplement
went to the Wagons-Lits Company, the ticket revenue went
to the relevant national railway operators). The Wagons-Lits
Company therefore either sells or leases its sleeping cars
to the national railway operators all
over Europe. Although now
owned or leased by the various state
railway companies themselves, most
sleeping-cars in Western Europe are still
staffed by the Wagons-Lits company who provide the
sleeper attendant, the bed linen and the on-board catering. Until
1995, sleeping cars were marketed jointly by most western
European railways as
"Trans Euro Night / Nuit / Nacht / Notte / Nat"
and painted in a mid-blue livery with a white line under
the windows and a
big white 'TEN' on the side.
-
1976:
The Direct-Orient Express' twice-weekly Paris-Athens sleeping car is withdrawn;
-
1977:
The Direct-Orient Express is withdrawn completely, ending all direct service from Paris to
Istanbul. The last run left Paris Gare de Lyon at
23:56 on 19 May 1977 (actually, a few minutes late, on
20th May!), it's solitary Paris-Istanbul sleeping-car a
Y-class
car built in 1939, now in the modern blue and white
livery. A rump of this train remains until the
early 1990s, running from Paris (and in summer, from
Calais) to Milan and Venice with sleepers, seats and
couchettes. The (plain) Orient Express from Paris to
Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest continues to run as before.
-
1977-2001:
The Orient Express itself continues to run, as the main overnight train
between Paris and Vienna, and as a direct
service between Paris and Budapest. It conveys OBB (Austrian Federal Railway) or
SNCF (French Railways) couchettes and
seats Paris-Vienna, a MAV (Hungarian
Railways) air-conditioned couchette car
and seats car Paris-Budapest, a Hungarian
dining-car and more air-conditioned seats
cars Salzburg-Vienna-Budapest, and a sleeping car, owned by OBB, but
staffed by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.
Until the early 1990s, this sleeping-car was extended
three times a week to Bucharest, full of Caucesceau's diplomats. In 1999, the Orient Express regained a separate twice-weekly sleeping-car from Paris to
Bucharest, this time a Romanian one similar to that used
on the Dacia Express - see the photo on the Romania
page.
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1982:
James Sherwood, rail enthusiast and head of Sea Containers
Inc., starts up a regular service from London and
Paris to Venice called the 'Venice Simplon Orient
Express' (VSOE for short). The service uses vintage 1920s and 1930s
Pullmans from London to the Channel port, and 1929-vintage Wagons-Lits sleepers from Boulogne to
Venice. This train should not be confused with the
(real, plain) Orient Express. The Venice Simplon
Orient Express continues to run today, once a week from
March until November every year - see the
section below
and also the VSOE's official website,
www.orient-expresstrains.com.
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2001: On 10 June
2001, the Orient Express through couchettes and seats from
Paris to Budapest were withdrawn, as was the twice-weekly
sleeping-car from Paris to Budapest. The Orient
Express now runs just Paris-Vienna as a normal scheduled
train with seats, couchettes and a sleeping-car.
-
2007: The Orient
Express remains in the timetable as the overnight
Paris-Vienna train, but no longer travelling beyond
Vienna. The through Paris-Vienna couchette cars and
sleeping-car are attached to a French domestic train
between Paris and Strasbourg.
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June 2007: The
new TGV-Est high speed line from Paris to Strasbourg opened
on 10 June 2007, and the domestic train to which the
Orient Express was attached over this section has been replaced
by a 200 mph TGV. As a result, the Orient
Express is cut back to run only between Strasbourg and Vienna,
with TGV connection to/from Paris. However, it still retains its famous name, 'Orient Express'.
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The Venice Simplon Orient
Express (VSOE):
These days, the train which most
people mean when they talk about the Orient Express is the
Venice Simplon Orient Express (VSOE). The
Venice Simplon Orient Express is a privately-run train (in fact,
two trains, one on each side of the Channel) of
restored 1920s, 30s, & 50s coaches, providing a once-a-week
service London-Paris-Venice between
March and November. The complete London-Venice journey
costs around £1,200 per person one way, including meals.
Its official website is
www.orient-expresstrains.com.
Posters, travel accessories,
souvenirs -
Orient Express Gift Shop |
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Books about the Orient Express...
 If
you want to learn more, you can click the pictures to buy these
books online at Amazon. The book on the left has
more about the history of the Orient Express, the book on the
right concentrates on the restored Venice Simplon Orient
Express.
Also
recommended is 'The Orient Express - The life and times of the
world's most famous train' by E H Cookridge. Although out
of print, you can buy it second hand through Amazon - click
here for details. |
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  The
Orient Express also features heavily in fiction...
Murder
on the Orient Express (book)
Murder
on the Orient Express (DVD)
Stamboul
Train by Graham Greene (book)
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Page last updated 12 March 2008
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