Railway to the Danger Zone
Or "Wagon-Lit to Varna".
The 15 October entry includes a brief mention of one of the most famous trains in the world, the Orient Express. I apologise in an advance for any errors.
So, it might be worth discussing this service and giving an idea of what it would be like, part based on my own limited experiences with sleeper trains. A return trip on the Caledonian Sleeper in 2016 and an Amsterdam to Munich ride on Nightjet last year.
The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (et des grands express européens) or The International Sleeping-Car (and European Great Expresses) Company, usually referred to by "train fiends" as CIWL, was established in 1874 by a Belgian called Georges Nagelmackers, who inspired by the Pullman sleeping cars in the United States, decided to set up a European operation. Being the son of a powerful banker and with connections with royalty (especially King Leopold II of Belgium - yes, that guy), he was able to get his first operation going in 1872.
The Orient Express from Paris Est to the Sirkeci terminus in Constantinople (now Istanbul), which initially started just going as far as Vienna in 1882 and finally got there in 1889, was just one part of a large network of trains operated by CIWL. They eventually operated services in Africa, the Middle East and East Asia too. Even Britain got in on the action with the Night Ferry.
A photo of the modern day Paris Gare de L'Est I took last month is below. This is a roughly 10-minute walk from Gare du Nord, where boat trains from the Channel ports arrived and I am sure they could have found a taxi or something to carry their baggage.
CIWL would either attach its carriages to regular trains or do their own dedicated "Trains de Luxe" of which the Orient Express was initially the latter, charging a supplement to the regular First Class fare. Locomotives were provided by the various railway companies, changing at national frontiers or at terminus stations, like Munich Central or Vienna West. Their main network was in Western Europe - travel to the Mediterranean or to various spa towns (like, well, Spa) by the upper classes being their main source of business. They also managed to corner the restaurant car business in mainland Europe for several decades.
It's worth mentioning that the Orient Express service here is not the more famous train from the Agatha Christie novel. That was the Simplon Orient Express, a post-First World War train routed via Switzerland (the Simplon Tunnel), Italy and Yugoslavia to avoid going through the losing countries of the Great War - for one thing, the Germans had seized a good deal of CIWL's rolling stock and set up a rival operation called Mitropa.
The Orient Express here had the routing of Paris-Munich-Vienna-Budapest-Bucharest-Varna-Istanbul, at least initially. The 1888 timetable can be found here:
As you can see, it only went through to Constantinople (via ship from Varna at this time) twice a week; most of the carriages would have only go as far as Vienna. I am not sure of the actual arrangements in 1893 and if a change would be required at Bucharest. The train would not be massively long - maybe six carriages total.
While luxurious and elegantly decorated, the provisions of your 1890s sleeper compartment were limited and the compartments rather small. The 2000s-built Nightjet version from Amsterdam to Munich might serve as a useful illustration. This is the standard compartment; the deluxe ones with toilet and shower had sold out. Sleepers are very popular right now!
The seats convert into bunk beds for sleeping, something still done done by a smartly dressed conductor. You got a sheet and a branded woolen blanket. Indeed, the modern-day successor to CIWL, Newrest Wagons-Lit, provides the staff for the Nightjet network. This compartment has three beds total - the 1890s train had a mix of 2-berth and four-berth compartments.
More photos of the modern-day carriage can be found here:
While there was an en-suite washbasin provided in each compartment with a mirror for shaving, if you needed to go to the toilet, you had to go down the corridor. This would have been something familiar to Lord Godalming from his boarding school days. No WiFi - even on most trains today that's the case.
Most of the photographs of CIWL rolling stock are from the 1920s onwards, when they used steel carriages painted blue; the 1890s carriages were in teak and looked roughly like this:
Buy the Kato HobbyTrain Lemke H44010 Vienna/Belgian 3pc CIWL Orient Express Sleeping Coaches & Baggage Set from Reynauld's Euro Imports. Ca
Space for larger luggage is limited and these trains had dedicated luggage cars. In Western Europe, customs/passport inspections would be handled by the conductor during the night, because the last thing you want to do is wake up someone like Baron Renfrew. Especially as that guy was the Prince of Wales travelling incognito and he could have a ferocious temper. Although to be fair, he would usually be extra nice afterwards.
Restaurant coaches were generally only found on trains with significant daytime portions (frequently only for those bits), a waste of money and coal otherwise. Otherwise, you would have a tray brough to your room. A carafe of water was provided, and the conductor could sell you something a bit stronger. The food would have been rather good in any event; my Nightjet and Caledonian Sleeper meals made up for a lot of the problems.
Then it would be a case of riding through the night, the clickety-clack of jointed track hopefully helping you sleep.
The OG service, soon being routed via Belgrade instead, continued to run except for wartime interruptions, gradually contracting after the Second World War as the Iron Curtain and air travel put people off it, until 2009, ending as just a Strasbourg-Vienna EuroNight.
However, Nightjet now do a thrice-weekly Paris to Vienna service, which as a nice nod to the past uses the same numbers (469/468) the Orient Express used in its final years.
The First World War saw CIWL's carriages requisitioned for military use and the Armistice would be signed on one of their carriages used as part of Ferdinand Foch's staff train at Compiègne in France on 11 November 1918. Hitler would then use that same carriage for the surrender of France in 1940, taking it back to Germany where it was destroyed - a modified vehicle from the same class stands on the site today.
CIWL itself would go on (despite the loss of its Russian operations in particular) to reach its peak in the early 1930s before the Second World caused more loss of rolling stock. After that, their Central and Eastern European operations were nationalised and with the market in decline, they eventually sold or leased their carriages in 1971 to a consortium of Western European operators. They continued to build and maintain carriages until 1998 and some of their stuff can still be found in Europe today, especially on the private sleeper operators like the Alpen-Sylt Express. They also continued to staff these trains and still do with Newrest Wagons-Lit.
My trips did not see me get the greatest night's sleep and I had a big delay on the Nightjet, but it was a memorable experience and I intend to do another overnight train next year.
More details of that can be found here if interested:
At the beginning of 2020, I arranged a trip to Bavaria planning to visit Munich and attend the Oberammergau Passion Play. Then Covid happene
So, yes. A good train ride ahead of a dangerous operation.
