What was the Orient Express doing in Romania?

Chapter

1882 – 1883

The trial

10 October 1882, Paris–Vienna

The premiere

5 June 1883

Giurgiu

4 October 1883

Georges Nagelmackers, a Belgian banker's son, had seen Pullman cars in America and wanted them in Europe. On 10 October 1882, just after half past six in the evening, his Train Éclair de luxe left Paris for Vienna: 2,000 kilometres of trial run with invited guests, seven cars, 101 tons – and a first menu of oysters, turbot, game and chocolate pudding.

The trial worked. On 5 June 1883 the first Express d'Orient left Paris for Vienna via Munich; on 4 October it pushed on to Giurgiu, on the Danube. There the railway ended: passengers crossed by ferry to Ruse, took another train to Varna, and boarded an Austrian Lloyd packet for Constantinople – 83 hours and 30 minutes after leaving Paris.

The Romanian crossing alone ran 2,627 kilometres of rail: Szeged, Jimbolia, Timișoara, Caransebeș, Vârciorova, Craiova, Piatra Olt, Pitești, Bucharest, Giurgiu, Smârda. For two years Romania was not a stop on the Orient Express – it was the better part of the journey.

Meanwhile Vienna stayed the terminus for four months; the Romanian timetable only began in October.

Chapter

1889 – 1914

Belgrade

from 1885, via Niš–Plovdiv

The direct

1 June 1889, Paris–Constantinople

The name

Orient Express, from 1891

The ferries were slow, so in 1885 a new route opened south of the Danube: Vienna–Belgrade–Niš by rail, carriage to Plovdiv, rail again to Istanbul. Then the gaps closed one by one, and on 1 June 1889 the first direct train left the Gare de l'Est for Constantinople – no ferry, no carriage, one train. In 1891 it was officially renamed the Orient Express.

Romania stayed on the map another way. After Anghel Saligny's bridges over the Danube at Fetești–Cernavodă, the route was extended to Constanța, where Romanian Maritime Service ships waited – the sea leg moved from Varna to the Romanian port.

For a quarter-century the direct train ran unbroken, the red-and-gold Wagon-Lits cars becoming the symbol of the line. Then, in 1914, the war stopped everything; the Simplon tunnel, bored through the Alps in the meantime, was about to redraw the map.

Meanwhile The eastern terminus was Sirkeci, by the Golden Horn; ferries beside it crossed to Haydarpaşa, terminus of the Asian lines.

Chapter

1919 – 1977

The detour

Paris 1919: no Germany–Austria–Hungary

The peak

1930s: three services

Last Istanbul

19 May 1977

The 1919 Peace Conference drew the new route to bypass the defeated powers – no Germany, Austria or Hungary. Through the Simplon tunnel, Milan, Venice and Trieste, the Simplon Orient Express reached Istanbul; Austria had to accept it by the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Bucharest kept a group of sleeping cars, detached from the main train at Vinkovci.

The 1930s were the peak: three parallel services – the classic Orient Express, the Simplon, and the Arlberg via Zürich and Innsbruck to Budapest, with sleepers onward to Bucharest and Athens. Royalty, diplomats and businessmen filled the restaurant cars; Agatha Christie set her Murder on the Orient Express aboard the Simplon service.

War broke the rhythm again – Munich–Bucharest ran until May 1940, Lausanne–Istanbul until April 1941 – and the Iron Curtain thinned it after 1945, communist railways replacing Wagon-Lits cars with their own. In 1962 the Direct Orient Express took over the name; the last Paris–Istanbul run left on 19 May 1977.

Meanwhile In 1940 the Bucharest sleeping-car group was dropped as the war closed in.

Chapter

1977 – 2026

Bucharest

Paris–Bucharest until 1991

Vienna

only until 2001, Paris until 2007

The end

10–11 December 2009

Istanbul lost the train in 1977, but Bucharest kept it: the Orient Express ran Paris–Bucharest via Vienna and Budapest until 1991, though the through sleeper only lasted until 1982, and seasonally at that. In the summers of 1999 and 2000 a CFR sleeper ran twice a week from Bucharest to Paris – the last Romanian chapter.

The retreat continued: Vienna in 2001, the last Paris departure on 8 June 2007, then Strasbourg–Vienna without the historic numbers 262/263. The last trains ran on 10 and 11 December 2009 – timetables dropped the name days later, a victim, as the obituaries said, of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines.

The name refused to die. Since 1982 the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express has run restored 1920s cars from Paris to Istanbul – via the Brenner Pass, not the Simplon tunnel – and Accor, which bought half the brand in 2017, plans its own Paris–Istanbul runs for late 2026. The Giurgiu ferry of 1883 is long gone: since 20 June 1954 the Friendship Bridge carries the rails across the Danube.

Meanwhile Tickets on the revived luxury train start past $3,000 a person – nostalgia, priced accordingly.