What it’s really like to ride the world’s most famous luxury train...
Nick Redman - 26 August 2025
IMAGE: Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a Belmond Train
As a rail route between Europe and Istanbul, aka Constantino[1]ple, the Orient Express was already a legend by the time Agatha Christie’s novel, Murder on the Orient Express, was published in 1934 – Graham Greene’s 1932 spy thriller Stamboul Train had put the line on the map. But Christie’s mystery about a group of passengers trapped on board a luxury service, with a dead body and the detective Hercule Poirot, only deepened its mystique.
Christie evoked brilliantly the golden age of the train. She wrote from experience as a regular traveller on the Orient Express while visiting her second husband, Max, an archaeologist, at sites in Iraq and Syria, lodging en route and writing at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, where room 411 is still dedicated to her.
On one journey, key to the plot of Murder on the Orient Express, the train juddered to a standstill at night when a storm flooded the tracks, turning to a blizzard that delayed Chris[1]tie’s reunion with her husband by days. In her novel, a deep snowdrift halts the train’s progress through the Balkans to Calais. The story was adapted for the screen in 1974 with a 24-carat cast including Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery and Lauren Bacall. Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 remake was just as starry.
IMAGE: Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a Belmond Train
The four-part Channel 4 series The Orient Express: a Golden Age of Travel explores the history and glamour of the train, which departed Paris for the first time in 1883: heading to Istan[1]bul via Strasbourg, Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest. Initially it disgorged passengers in Varna, Bulgaria, from where a ferry took them across the Black Sea.
The Orient Express was envisioned by its creator, Belgian engineer Georges Nagelmackers, as “a train that would span a continent, running on a continuous ribbon of metal for more than 1,500 miles”, according to EH Cookridge in his 1978 book Orient Express: the Life and Times of the World’s Most Famous Train. Over time, competitors co-opted the name but operated different routes and the service was overtaken by cheap air travel. Its last direct service between Paris and Istanbul ran in 1977.
But luxury train travel is still a glorious European experience, largely because the name Orient Express has been taken on by five-star international hospitality companies. After renovating original carriages, some bought at auction, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, for instance, has delivered startlingly luxurious travel since 1982, with carriages rich in Lalique panelling and Chinese lacquerwork.
In essence, taking the Orient Express today means splashing your savings on a once-in-a-lifetime experience, rather than being the leisurely, luxurious way of getting across Europe chosen by travellers with plenty of time and very deep pockets.
Two decades or so ago, I took the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express to Paris for a long weekend with my mum. The shameless opulence began with the British Pullman at London’s Victoria station. We found the train snorting steamily at the platform, ready to ferry its guests, dressed appropriately in vintage attire, to Dover for the tunnel shuttle to Calais.
Amid the flurry of slacks and spats, furs and hatboxes, I could feel an immediate (and uneasy) incongruity between our beachy shirts and casual trousers and these soigné travellers. Still, my mum and I were soon immersed in the views out of the window, as our art deco compartment for two rolled through Kent and a waiter brought us glasses of fizz, then lunch. And while there was a slightly embarrassing Dixie band serenading us with Ain’t She Sweet in Calais as we boarded the waiting Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the five hours to Paris were a dream – a magnificent service that still lures nostalgic travellers in their droves. I’d love to take my mum on another similarly memorable trip. Perhaps aboard the new La Dolce Vita Orient-Express, which magic-carpets guests, in cool carriages styled like a 1960s Fellini film set, to destinations in Italy including the vineyards of Tuscany and Sicily.
Our Paris trip did have one awkward glitch. The suitcases containing our gladrags were whisked away as we boarded the train in Calais (company policy, to maximise carriage space), and weren’t returned to us until we arrived in Paris.
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If only we’d thought to unpack our posh togs so we could change for dinner. Thank heavens for the dining car manager, who produced a pair of large screens to conceal us from the considerably more elegantly attired passengers. We dined discreetly in a corner, shielded by screens. The occasion was unorthodox, but not exactly murder – and we did live to tell the tale.
IMAGE: Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a Belmond Train
As a rail route between Europe and Istanbul, aka Constantino[1]ple, the Orient Express was already a legend by the time Agatha Christie’s novel, Murder on the Orient Express, was published in 1934 – Graham Greene’s 1932 spy thriller Stamboul Train had put the line on the map. But Christie’s mystery about a group of passengers trapped on board a luxury service, with a dead body and the detective Hercule Poirot, only deepened its mystique.
Christie evoked brilliantly the golden age of the train. She wrote from experience as a regular traveller on the Orient Express while visiting her second husband, Max, an archaeologist, at sites in Iraq and Syria, lodging en route and writing at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, where room 411 is still dedicated to her.
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On one journey, key to the plot of Murder on the Orient Express, the train juddered to a standstill at night when a storm flooded the tracks, turning to a blizzard that delayed Chris[1]tie’s reunion with her husband by days. In her novel, a deep snowdrift halts the train’s progress through the Balkans to Calais. The story was adapted for the screen in 1974 with a 24-carat cast including Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery and Lauren Bacall. Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 remake was just as starry.
IMAGE: Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a Belmond Train
The four-part Channel 4 series The Orient Express: a Golden Age of Travel explores the history and glamour of the train, which departed Paris for the first time in 1883: heading to Istan[1]bul via Strasbourg, Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest. Initially it disgorged passengers in Varna, Bulgaria, from where a ferry took them across the Black Sea.
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The Orient Express was envisioned by its creator, Belgian engineer Georges Nagelmackers, as “a train that would span a continent, running on a continuous ribbon of metal for more than 1,500 miles”, according to EH Cookridge in his 1978 book Orient Express: the Life and Times of the World’s Most Famous Train. Over time, competitors co-opted the name but operated different routes and the service was overtaken by cheap air travel. Its last direct service between Paris and Istanbul ran in 1977.
But luxury train travel is still a glorious European experience, largely because the name Orient Express has been taken on by five-star international hospitality companies. After renovating original carriages, some bought at auction, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, for instance, has delivered startlingly luxurious travel since 1982, with carriages rich in Lalique panelling and Chinese lacquerwork.
In essence, taking the Orient Express today means splashing your savings on a once-in-a-lifetime experience, rather than being the leisurely, luxurious way of getting across Europe chosen by travellers with plenty of time and very deep pockets.
Two decades or so ago, I took the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express to Paris for a long weekend with my mum. The shameless opulence began with the British Pullman at London’s Victoria station. We found the train snorting steamily at the platform, ready to ferry its guests, dressed appropriately in vintage attire, to Dover for the tunnel shuttle to Calais.
Amid the flurry of slacks and spats, furs and hatboxes, I could feel an immediate (and uneasy) incongruity between our beachy shirts and casual trousers and these soigné travellers. Still, my mum and I were soon immersed in the views out of the window, as our art deco compartment for two rolled through Kent and a waiter brought us glasses of fizz, then lunch. And while there was a slightly embarrassing Dixie band serenading us with Ain’t She Sweet in Calais as we boarded the waiting Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the five hours to Paris were a dream – a magnificent service that still lures nostalgic travellers in their droves. I’d love to take my mum on another similarly memorable trip. Perhaps aboard the new La Dolce Vita Orient-Express, which magic-carpets guests, in cool carriages styled like a 1960s Fellini film set, to destinations in Italy including the vineyards of Tuscany and Sicily.
Our Paris trip did have one awkward glitch. The suitcases containing our gladrags were whisked away as we boarded the train in Calais (company policy, to maximise carriage space), and weren’t returned to us until we arrived in Paris.
View our handpicked rail tours and get inspired
If only we’d thought to unpack our posh togs so we could change for dinner. Thank heavens for the dining car manager, who produced a pair of large screens to conceal us from the considerably more elegantly attired passengers. We dined discreetly in a corner, shielded by screens. The occasion was unorthodox, but not exactly murder – and we did live to tell the tale.
View our handpicked rail tours and get inspired