EUROPE: Off Goes the Orient Express

The French President and a special envoy of the Sultan of Turkey were on the flag-bedecked platform at Paris’ Care de I’Est when the Orient Express chugged proudly off on its maiden trip to Constantinople in 1883. On that first trip, the 2,000-odd miles took six days and six hours, what with all the border ceremonies and crowds along the track.* The seats had velvet covers topped by Brussels lace, and lush damask .curtains hung from the windows; the fittings were of solid oak and mahogany; on the outside of every car was a coat of arms and the proud gold lettering, “Les Grands Express Européens.” Hand-cut glass separated the sleeping compartment from the outside aisle. In elegant salon cars, diners lingered over oysters and chilled glasses of Veuve Cliquot served by attendants in morning coats, light blue silk breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes. Elegant prostitutes provided companionship for the lonely on the long journey to the Orient.

Spies & Vanishing Briefcases. For decades the Orient Express served as grist for the mills of novelists (e.g., Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler), who conjured up (a) fur-wrapped beauties from Hungary in conspiratorial conversation with spies in the corridor, (b) muffled sobs in the next compartment, or (c) vanishing briefcases. The only things that ever really vanished were the good service and the passengers. By the 1920s most of the lush old cars had been replaced with stern steel models, and the porters wore drab brown, offering special attention only when the palm was well greased with hard currency in advance. Then came airplanes and the Iron Curtain. By last year the traffic on the old line between Vienna and Bucharest was down to an average 1½ passengers per trip.

Last week the coldly practical railroad experts of Europe, meeting in Leningrad, were agreed: the old Orient Express no longer paid its way, must therefore be eliminated. Now anyone who wanted to spend two days traveling to Istanbul would have to endure the slicker, upstart Simplon-Orient Express, which swings south through Switzerland into Italy and then on across Yugoslavia, delivering its passengers efficiently enough but without the luxury their grandfathers had known.

*By 1905 it was down to a snappy two days twelve hours.