The Once and Future Train

Europe's fabled Orient Express returns in pristine splendor

It was known in its gilded heyday as the train of kings. It also transported in regal splendor diplomats, divas and duchesses, the beau monde and the demimonde, maharajahs, moguls and con men, courtesans, couriers, private eyes and spies. Thundering across empires to the edge of Asia, the Orient Express was the most celebrated train in history. It retired ignobly in May 1977, aged 94, a shrunken outcast of the hurry-up age. Then, last May, it rose again in all its pristine opulence as a regularly scheduled year-round train luxe, plying between London and Venice. The once and future train is called the Venice Simplon Orient-Express (V.S.O.E.). Among recent passengers on both the south-and northbound runs was TIME Senior Writer Michael Demurest, who once rode the fabled express as a boy. His report:

"To board this train," intoned James I B. Sherwood, "should be an event.

We're not selling transportation." It is, and they're not, thanks largely to Sherwood, 49, a big blue-eyed Kentuckian who heads London-based Sea Containers Group. It is this profitable containerized shipping company (1981 earnings: $35.4 million) that owns and operates the new venture, having acquired and refurbished 35 old Orient Express cars over five years at a cost of $20 million. To emphasize the special nature of the inaugural run last spring, for example, passengers were encouraged to wear '20s finery, and many did so. On current trips, passengers often don evening clothes for dinner, and the champagne, a special V.S.O.E. label bottled by Laurent Perrier, flows freely. And as Sherwood has promised, "The bar-salon stays open, and our pianist plays on, until the last guest has retired." "When a Broadway baby says good night," plunks Giany Bars at the baby grand piano, "it's early in the morning."

On the 24-hour, 926-mile London-to-Venice trip, the train leaves Victoria Station at 11:44 a.m. each Friday and Sun day. The northbound V.S.O.E. leaves Venice's Santa Lucia Station at 5:25 p.m. on Saturday and Wednesday. The English segment of the train, which does not cross the channel, consists of seven chocolate-and-cream cars that were built for the old Orient Express. They have comfortable English names like Audrey and Agatha (not for Miss Christie, who wrote Murder on the Orient Express) or else daunting classical appellations like Perseus and Phoenix. Some English passengers are greeted by name at Victoria by brown-liveried Brian Hannaford, an oldtime Pullman chief steward who has also been restored to service.

Rolling through the viridian Kentish countryside, there is time for a leisurely lunch, a free, staunchly English repast designed perhaps to fortify tender turns against the Gallic frivolities to follow. At Folkestone, passengers board a reserved veranda deck on the Sealink cross-channel ferry. In 90 minutes passengers are ashore at the great French port of Boulogne.

There on the quayside, drawn up like grenadiers in gleaming royal-blue livery, stand the 17 cars of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Europeens. Waxed mirrorbright, they make up the longest (400 meters) passenger train in all Europe. Its eleven wagons-lits, three restaurant cars and bar car, all first class, can accommodate 194 passengers; there are two cars for the crew of 30. It may be the greatest display of grandeur the Boulonnais have seen since Napoleon and his army gathered there in 1805 for an invasion of England that never took place.

With a silken rustle, like a grande dame rising from table, the V.S.O.E. slips away at precisely 5:44 p.m. All the food loaded on at Boulogne is French, save for the croissants, which are delivered hot at dawn in Lausanne, Switzerland, and are sadly soggy. The chef on board is Michel Ranvier, a graduate of the renowned Paris restaurant Jamin; he was approved by Sherwood, who is the author of an excellent gourmet guide to London. The train's general manager is Claude Ginella, formerly with the Savoy in Rome and the Meurice in Paris.

As the train rushes through steepled villages and storied forests, past vineyards, lakes and battlefields, young multilingual porters, mostly hotel trained, stow the guests' bags, bring drinks and tend the little coal stoves that provide hot water. Attendants also take care of all passport formalities. The bubbly flows. People meet and chat easily. The meals, whipped up in a space hardly bigger than most apartment kitchens, include dinner and a next-day brunch. They would probably earn the rolling restaurant one toque in the Gault-Millau Guide. After dinner, Chef Ranvier gives one impressed guest his recipe for le foie gras de canard cuit naturellement. At brunch, rocketing through the broad plains of northern Italy, there is an exceptional dish of small chickens with Albufera sauce. The wine cellar on wheels is more than adequate. The train pulls into Venice at 12:52 p.m.

Since the inaugural run, which was sped on its way by a 25-man band of the Coldstream Guards, the passenger list has included English lords and ladies, showbiz aristocrats and crowned heads of industry. One passenger this summer was Actor Sidney Poitier, with his 30 pieces of luggage. On a trip from Venice to Paris, a group of 14 Arabs celebrated the birthday of a Saudi princess; the Dom Perignon gushed like crude.

But the cars are the stars. Built mostly in the late 1920s, they are jewels of art deco crystal and cabinetwork. Some were discovered, rotted and unrecognizable, on remote railroad sidings. One had been used as a brothel in Limoges during World War II; another had been tenderly maintained by a schoolmaster at Eton. Each car had to be equipped with modern wiring, insulation, safety glass, fireproofing and brakes. Much of the marquetry and upholstery had to be remade, some of it to the original specifications, discovered, miraculously, at a cabinetmaker's in Chelmsford, England. Some 250 Orient Express artifacts, from bud vases to rose silk-shaded lamps, were recreated.

In effect, the curator for this romantic restoration was Shirley A.M. Sherwood, wife of the shipping tycoon and an Oxford-educated research biochemist. "Every coach had a different story," she says, and a plaque in each car traces its provenance. The most exquisite of all is a dining car with eight frosted-glass panels handcrafted in the style of famed 19th century French jeweler Rene Lalique. The sleeping compartments, nine to twelve to a car, are marvels of compact beauty, with comfortable bench seats that convert into upper and lower berths, mahogany drop tables, and inlaid doors enclosing an ornate washbasin; there is a magnificently paneled toilet at the end of each car.

The train once went to Istanbul, but there is no longer enough demand for that service. As it is, the v.s.O.E. is booked solidly through October, and the company has laid on a third weekly trip from London to Venice. On Sept. 1, according to Sherwood, the Orient Express will be in the black. If occupancy continues at the present rate of 80%, he expects the company's investment to be repaid within four years. In its first month or so, Sherwood concedes, he received "a lot of complaints." They ranged from U.S. tourists' grumbling about the sweetbreads on the dinner menu to the bumpy suspension, and erratic service by crews unattuned to the jolting of cramped trains. From his mail, at least, Sherwood is now satisfied that the v.s.O.E. is running smoothly.

Few complaints are heard aboard. J. Carter Beese Jr., 26, a Baltimore stockbroker who invested $4,000 in this, his first European vacation, figured that the $440 (plus dinner and drinks) for his Venice-Paris ticket was only $ 180 more expensive than the economy airfare for the journey. Caroline Rohm, a fashion designer from New York who buys fabric in Italy twice a year, predicted that she and Friend Henry Kravis. a Manhattan stockbroker, will "sell 200 seats" with their glowing accounts of the journey.

Tony and Gisela Bloom, an attractive South African couple making the London-Venice run, compared the v.s.O.E. to the Blue Train, which runs between Pretoria, Johannesburg and Capetown and is considered one of the world's most luxurious. It was Tony Bloom who provided the only honest-to-Bond suspense on one trip: he found $17,000 in a dirty roll of bills next to the piano. The money was claimed, an official reported, by "a Frenchman." Mystery and intrigue are not dead on the Orient Express.

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