THE STORY

What image comes to mind at the mention of the Orient Express? Adventure? Luxury? Intrigue? Reliability? Awe? The famous train was all of these things and much more. Very few people ever traveled on the Orient Express, even at its peak, because the cost was prohibitive for all but the super rich. However, no form of public transportation has fascinated more authors, journalists, and filmmakers than the Orient Express. Thus, it has assumed a dimension almost larger than life. D.H. Lawrence had Lady Chatterley and her lover travel on the Orient Express. Agatha Christie, who was, in fact, a regular traveler on the Orient Express, used it as the setting for one of her most compelling Hercule Poirot stories, Murder on the Orient Express. Graham Greene's Stambol Train is about the Orient Express. Eric Ambler also used it as the setting for The Mask of Dimitrios, and one of the most accurate descriptions of the postwar train is found in the final chapters of Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love. And there are scores of others. How did this magnificent train come into existence and how did it achieve such fame and notoriety? In the 30 or so years following 1825, when the first steam railroad was put into operation in England, every country in Europe began building its own railroad system. Political conditions were unsettled, and the threat of war hung heavy in the air. Hence railway builders would deliberately use track widths and rolling stock incompatible with those of their neighbors to thwart the movement of invaders by rail. Transcontinental travelers thus had to change trains at every border, and frequently used a ship or stagecoach to make connections.

Moreover, railroad coaches had evolved from horse-drawn carriages and were quite uncomfortable. Trains had no lavatories, no restaurant cars, no connections between coaches, no corridors, no lighting, hard seats, and little heat. Although progress was being made in Europe, it was in America that the real advances in rail travel were taking place. There, consistent with the democratic principles on which the country had been founded, railroad cars had open seating in contrast with the tiny boxed-in compartments found on European trains. Distances in the U.S. were longer, so provision had to be made for eating and other necessities. The three most important advances in American railroading sprang from necessity. First, much track in America had been poorly laid, so derailments were common. To overcome this problem, the fixed wheel-and-axle design was discarded, and railroad cars were equipped with bogies, swiveling four-wheel trucks with independent springs. Second, American trains were much longer and heavier than European trains, and the locomotive brakes required a very long distance to stop a train. So, for greater efficiency, George Westinghouse developed a system of compressed air brakes. The third advance was George Pullman's development of a combined parlor/sleeping car. Georges Nagelmackers, son of a wealthy Belgian banker, journeyed to the U.S. in 1869 and was very impressed by American railroads and particularly by Pullman's luxurious cars. By the time he returned to Europe in 1870, Nagelmackers was obsessed with the idea of establishing luxury, long-distance, through rail service throughout Europe.

His indulgent father was impressed with his son's enthusiasm and proposed to King Leopold II of Belgium that he would forgive the King's substantial overdue bank loans if the King would agree to head the list of subscribers to the venture. The King, seeing a way out of a difficult financial situation, agreed, and the new company of Nagelmackers et Cie. gained an endorsement. Soon their stock sales promotion had every social climber in Belgium clamoring to get aboard.

The new company's first train was to run from Paris to Berlin by way of Belgium. Five cars, ordered from a coach-building company in Vienna, arrived in early July to begin service later in the month. Then, on July 19, 1870, France declared war on Prussia. Discouraged, but still determined, Nagelmackers negotiated a route from Ostend, Belgium, through France, and down to Brindisi. The route was very successfulfor one year. Then, on September 17, 1871, the French opened a tunnel through the Alps under Mount Cenis. Rights were reserved for French-owned rail-roads, so Nagelmackers was forced to continue using the much longer (18 hours) route through the Brenner Pass. As losses mounted, the service was reduced. With only ten cars as assets and debts far exceeding his capital, Nagelmackers disbanded the company and formed a new one under a name that was to become world famous: La Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. The company was struggling along, only slightly better off than the old one, when Nagelmackers received a letter inviting him to come to London to "discuss matters of mutual commercial interest." The invitation was from Colonel William Mann of Perkins, Ohio. Although charming and urbane, Mann was fundamentally dishonest. He once ran a tavernprofitable only because he didn't pay his bills. Later he sold stock in a non-existent oil field, collected taxes for the federal government (he turned in $4.7 million and pocketed $5 million), and ran several railroad-related swindles. His last misadventure in America was an attempt to compete with George Pullman using Mann-designed boudoir cars. Rather than having seats that converted into beds, each Mann car was divided into two separate sections, one for sitting and onewith real bedsfor sleeping. The cars accommodated only 16 passengers, half the number who could share a Pullman, and cost more to build; thus they were quite unprofitable. Mann soon admitted defeat and took two of his cars to England where he held lavish receptions to drum up interest in them. The European railroad executives were unenthusiastic, except for young Nagelmackers who swallowed hook, line, and sinker everything Mann told him about his grandiose plans. Moreover, he even agreed to make his company a subsidiary of the Mann Boudoir Sleeping Car Company.

Nagelmackers, with boundless energy, traveled around Europe trying to sell cars to kings, nobles, and anyone else he thought could afford one. He quickly sold more than 50 cars and, in the process, became more convinced that there was a need for luxury train service across Europe. By now completely disenchanted with Mann, who was in London enjoying himself on the money that was rolling in, Nagelmackers and his financial backers bought him out for $5 million and reinstituted the company under its old name in 1876.

Railroad executives were not convinced that the luxury service Nagelmackers described would be profitable, so they granted him only a few short-term contracts to attach some of his cars to various trains between Paris and Vienna, Paris and Cologne, Ostend and Berlin, and some other routes of less consequence. To the amazement of everyone but Nagelmackers, the cars were well patronized and frequently sold out. With some assistance from the influential King Leopold II, Nagelmackers started negotiating with many European countries, states, and kingdoms for a route from Paris to Constantinople. It took him almost a year to reach agreements with the eight national railway companies involved: the Eastern Railroad Company of France, the Imperial Railways of Alsace-Lorraine, the Kingdom of Wrttemburg State Railways, the Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways, the Royal Bavarian Lines of Communication, the Imperial and Royal Austrian State Railways, the Royal Rumanian Railways, and the Austrian Lloyd Shipping Company (for the last section by sea to Constantinople).

The route selected by Nagelmackers ran from Paris through Strasbourg, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest, and Bucharest to Giurgiu on the Danube in Rumania. From there, the passengers were obliged to take a ferry across the river to Rustchuk, Bulgaria, where Nagelmackers had made a somewhat shaky arrangement for a special train to take them on to Varna (a port on the Black Sea coast). From there, a steamer took the passengers on an 18-hour sea voyage to Constantinople. Scheduled time was 81 hours and 40 minutes eastbound and 77 hours and 49 minutes westbound.

The service had no formal name, but newspapers quickly dubbed it the Orient Express, and Nagelmackers decided to make the inaugural run on October 4, 1883 under this name. The train was made up of two sleeping cars, a restaurant car, a luggage van, and a mail van. Each sleeping car had five compartments, each of which accommodated four people in comfortable bench seats by day and four berths at night. Washbasins and toilet compartments were at one end of each car. The large number of journalists invited on the inaugural run furnished many memorable accounts of the occasion. Nagelmackers spared no effort to ensure the success of the trip; elaborate food, excellent wine, beautiful crystal and linen, and impeccable service combined to create an ambience of unmistakable elegance and grandeur. In addition, many official receptions and welcomes were held along the way. Hungarian minstrels boarded the train at Szegedin and played vigorously for more than two hours without a stop. Passengers were even invited to the castle of the rather morose King of Bulgaria. Thus the most famous train of all time was put into service. After the euphoria of the inaugural trip wore off, the Orient Express settled into a regular routine. By 1884, it had become a daily service as far as Budapest and, a year later, to Bucharest with several alternative routings onward. By 1889, a link of track near Nish, Bulgaria, was finished, which meant that finally the same coaches could travel all the way from Paris to Constantinople. The route then became important for mail as well as passengers. Nagelmackers died of a heart attack on July 10, 1905, two weeks after his sixtieth birthday. He did not live to see the opening of the Simplon Tunnel, an incredibly important link through the Alps between Switzerland and Italy. Almost immediately, Wagons-Lits began to offer service between Paris and Venice. This became known as the Venice Simplon Orient Express (V-S-O-E) and is the only service still in operation today, thanks to its meticulous restoration by James Sherwood in 1982.

People often think of the Orient Express as one train running one route. In fact, the company operated more than 1000 coaches on routes throughout Europe and the Near East with such destinations as Lisbon, Madrid, Naples, Ankara, Beirut, Baghdad, Saint Petersburg, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London. From 1908 until the new communist regime appropriated the company's cars and property in 1919, Wagons-Lits operated all the Trains de Luxe on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

During the Great War (now called World War I), many Wagons-Lits services were halted, and because of the German occupation of Belgium, the company was forced to move to Paris. Prior to the war, the Simplon service terminated in Trieste, then a part of the Austrian Empire, because Austrian authorities would not permit international trains to traverse the Empire without stopping in Vienna. However, the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the War, specified that new international through routes be opened in Italy, Trieste, and the newly created country of Yugoslavia, formerly the southern part of the Austrian Empire.

Thus, a new and much faster southern route via the Simplon Tunnel and across Italy and Yugoslavia to Constantinople was inaugurated on April 11, 1919. A few years later, the route was extended on the western end to London, creating probably the single most popular route of the Orient Express. This route was in service until the Germans occupied France during World War II, and then reinstated from the end of the war until the last run on May 19, 1977. The train ran from London to Paris, through the Mont d'Or tunnel to Lausanne and Brig, through the Simplon Tunnel to Milan, Venice, and Trieste, and into Yugoslavia. A second train, originating in Munich, met the first train in Ljubljana, and continuing cars were joined for the run to Belgrade. At Crveni Krst the train was divided, some cars being routed to Athens and the main train going to Constantinople via Sofia, Bulgaria. The trip from London to Constantinople took exactly 96 hours and the train was rarely late. While the train was occasionally slowed by snow, it generally made up the lost time on the straight runs in France and Italy. One exception was in February 1929, when the train was marooned for six days in huge snowdrifts near Cherkes Keui, just 70 miles from Constantinople. Indeed, in its long history, the Orient Express suffered very few mishaps. Minor accidents occurred in January 1901, when a locomotive jumped the rails and ran into the restaurant hall of the Frankfurt-am-Main Central Station, and in November 1911, when the Orient Express ran into a stationary freight train near Vitry-le-Francois because of incorrectly set signals. No one was seriously injured in either of these accidents. On the other hand, holdups in the Balkan areas near the end of the run occurred with disturbing frequency in the early days of the Express. As political stability increased in the '30s, however, the number of railway robberies declined. On any given run of the Orient Express one could be certain that deals were being made, plots were being hatched, and fortunes were changing hands. The booking lists in the archives of the train company read like pages from the International Who's Who. Royalty from Europe and the East were frequent passengers on the Orient Express as were military officers, entertainers, musicians, bankers, industrialists, bishops, and, of course, spies. The train was known to be a hotbed of intrigue and mystery.

Basil Zaharoff, the notorious arms dealer, always reserved all the seats in compartment seven for himself when he rode the train. The dancer Margaretha Gertrud Zelle, otherwise known as Mata Hari, was a frequent passenger, and Lord Kitchener traveled on the train as a young military intelligence officer gathering information about Austrian and Turkish fortifications. But we'll never know the identities of most of the spies, secret agents, saboteurs, and couriers who repeatedly crossed the continent on mysterious missions. All of which leads us to speculate and wonder: What was it really like to travel the Orient Express?

