Haunting Photographs Show the Previously Luxurious Interior of an Abandoned Orient Express Train

The Orient Express has a long history of mystery, adventure, and intrigue associated with its moniker, as evidenced by numerous references in literature, cinema, and music. The Orient Express, now linked with Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and sequences with James Bond in From Russia With Love, began as a long-distance passenger railway service in 1883. The train was designed by the international hotel and travel logistics company Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL), and its original route ran from Paris’ Gare de l’Est to Giurgiu, Romania, via Munich and Vienna. The Orient Express’s routes and rolling stock have changed numerous times since then.

The Orient Express has a long history of mystery, adventure, and intrigue associated with its moniker, as evidenced by numerous references in literature, cinema, and music. The Orient Express, now linked with Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and sequences with James Bond in From Russia With Love, began as a long-distance passenger railway service in 1883. The train was designed by the worldwide hotel and travel logistics company Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL), and its initial itinerary went from Paris’ Gare de l’Est to Giurgiu, Romania, via Munich and Vienna. The Orient Express’s routes and rolling stock have changed several times since then.

The train’s skeletons are known locally as “the Orient Express,” and the luxurious coaches and the beautiful wood finish definitely made for a once spectacular travel experience. The Orient Express was a demonstration of comfort and elegance for its day, when travel was still difficult and unreliable, as the images demonstrate. And, while the train is thought to have been in a busy railway yard somewhere in Belgium, its exact origins are unknown.

If riding on the Orient Express still appeals to your sense of grandeur and history, the train’s name and legacy live on as the Venice-Simplon Orient Express, a private venture by the leisure company Belmond that allows guests to “step aboard and experience truly elegant travel, wrapped in timeless romance.”