Rome-Express (train route)

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The emblem of the CIWL

The Rome Express (at times also known as Paris-Rome-Express ) was an international long-distance train that ran between Paris and Rome with interruptions from 1883 to 1978 . Until 1939 the train ran as a luxury train of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL), after the interruption by the Second World War as a night train with the exclusive use of sleeping cars . As the fastest train between Paris and Rome, it was replaced by the Palatino in 1969 ; the Rome Express remained in the timetable for a few years parallel to the Palatino as a slower express train with many stops in between, which included sleeping and couchette carriages as well as seated carriages Napoli Express from Paris to Naples rose. The Palatino was discontinued in 2013 as the last night connection between Paris and Rome .

history

After the success of the Orient Express , Georges Nagelmackers decided to introduce a connection between the French Channel coast and the French and Italian Riviera under the name Calais-Nice-Rome Express as the second route of the CIWL . At that time, the Riviera was a popular winter destination for the European upper class, so Nagelmackers expected good demand for a correspondingly comfortable travel option. Since several Italian railway companies had already signed contracts with the CIWL competitor Pullman for the use of sleeping cars , the CIWL had to take the detour via the Riviera for the route to Rome, as the direct route via the Mont-Cenis tunnel was closed to it . The train first ran on December 8, 1883.

The resistance of the Italian railways forced the CIWL to withdraw this train route to Menton on the French-Italian border just a year later . The train was therefore called the Calais-Mediterranée Express and also developed into a popular luxury train , later called Train Bleu . Pullman had not achieved any notable success outside of Italy in signing contracts with the railway companies, so the company withdrew from Europe in 1886 and sold its wagons to the CIWL. This paved the way for Nagelmackers to conclude new contracts with the Italian railways , which have now been combined in the Rete Mediterranea and Rete Adriatica . In 1890, the CIWL was able to get the new Rome Express running from Paris Gare de Lyon with the guidance of the Mont-Cenis-Bahn .

Like most CIWL luxury trains, the train only consisted of sleeping, dining and baggage cars . To Dijon the Rome-Express ran together with the Calais-Mediterranée Express . In Italy he was taken to Rome via Turin and Genoa . Initially the train ran between Genoa and Rome via Florence, only from 1897 did it use the shorter route along the coast from Pisa via Livorno to Rome . At the same time, it operated independently of the Calais-Mediterranée Express in France and was a completely independent luxury train. With one short exception in the 1930s, the train was to keep this route until it was closed. With this relocation via Livorno , the train route received through coaches to Florence , which were mostly detached in Pisa , and in some timetable years also in Viareggio , and to Naples . In order to meet the requirements of British customers, the Rome-Express was also given through coaches from the Channel coast, which, depending on the timetable year and ship timetables, began in Calais or Boulogne-sur-Mer . Between 1902 and 1914, the train also ran through coaches as far as Sicily to the terminal stations Taormina and Palermo . These were given their own names as Paris-Rome-Naples-Palermo-Express , just as the through coaches from Calais were marketed as Calais-Rome-Express .

In contrast to most of the CIWL luxury trains, the Rome Express continued to run after the beginning of World War I , albeit no longer in the luxury train category and with seated coaches , as it was important for traffic between the capitals of the three Entente powers . After the end of the World War, the Rome Express lost its seating car and was formally classified as a luxury train again . At times in the early 1920s he drove a sleeping car to Taranto once a week , where there was a boat connection to Istanbul . Regardless of this, it remained the fastest and most luxurious rail link between Paris and Rome for decades. After the introduction of the new sleeping car type CIWL type Lx in 1929, the Rome Express soon received this type of vehicle. Another special feature was the shower that was installed in one of the baggage cars on the Rome Express - a very rare feature in night trains at the time. In the last timetable before the Second World War , the Rome Express included several sleeping cars between Paris and Rome, a sleeping car from Calais to Naples and a sleeping car from Paris to Florence. In the mid-1930s, the Italian state railroad ran the Rome Express completely via Florence again for a short time, as the route from Florence to Rome was already electrified and thus faster travel times were possible. In 1938 the trains returned to the coastal route via Livorno after the contact wire was also hanging there continuously. The through car had been running from Calais in Flèche d'Or since 1937, and the changeover from Paris Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon was carried out via the Petite Ceinture . On September 3, 1939, the train had to be stopped due to the outbreak of war.

After the war, the Rome Express did not return to service until 1948. Before that, from 1946, the first post-war connection between Paris and Rome had been through coaches on the Simplon-Orient-Express , which did not run via Mont Cenis and Turin, but via Milan. As before the war, from 1948 onwards the Rome Express again ran through coaches to Florence and Naples, and there were also through sleeping coaches from Calais to Rome. As one of the few former luxury trains, the Rome Express remained a pure sleeping car train for a few timetable years for a few timetable years, but as early as 1956 it also ran seating and couchette cars . A dining car was no longer run continuously, but was removed from the train in the evening in Dijon or Chambéry or Turin or was additionally coupled in the morning. In 1969, the French state railway SNCF and the Italian state railway FS introduced the new Palatino night train, which was faster than the Rome Express by a good two hours to 14 hours and 48 minutes . Apart from the Modane border station , where a change of locomotive was also required, the Palatino only served Pisa, Genoa and Turin. He also took over the dining car runs from the previous Rome Express. The name Rome-Express was retained for a few years for a slower train between Paris and Naples that was also equipped with seated cars , in contrast to the Palatino and the earlier Rome-Express , which only carried sleeping and couchette cars. In accordance with the new train destination, it was renamed Napoli Express in 1978 and discontinued in the early 1990s. The Palatino operated as a night train until 2013, most recently operated by FS subsidiary Thello .

Vehicle fleet

Compartment in the sleeping car of the type Lx

In the years before the First World War, the CIWL kept a separate fleet of cars for each of its luxury trains. By 1914, the fleet of cars consisted mainly of the CIWL type R, which attracted attention with its teak- clad exterior walls. The Rome Express also consisted of cars of this type. In the 1920s, the first all-steel wagons painted blue were gradually used, initially of the type S. From 1929, the Rome Express received the new CIWL type Lx , the most comfortable type of wagon from the CIWL. The sleeping cars of this type remained in service on the Rome Express until the end of the 1950s. They were gradually replaced by the newer types P and U, from 1969 the type T2 was also used. In addition, since the 1950s, other seated and couchette cars operated by the SNCF and the FS.

The use of locomotives is only rudimentary known for most of the years. Until 1938 the route of the Rome Express ran over the tracks of the Compagnie des chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM), which hauled the train with its various powerful Pacific designs in the last years before the First World War . From 1925 the PLM electrified the Mont-Cenis-Bahn with a conductor rail , the Rome-Express was pulled accordingly between Chambéry and Modane by the various electric locomotives on this route . The nationalization of PLM in 1938 changed little, the newly founded SNCF continued to use the tried and tested PLM series. In Italy, the high-performance Prairies of the FS 685 series came into use after 1912 . From the 1920s onwards, they were gradually replaced by electric locomotives. Between Modane and Genoa, the FS, which had electrified major parts of its northern Italian network with three-phase current , used the relatively slow, but well-suited FS E.550 and FS E.551 series for the steep routes . From genoa onwards, the faster FS E.333 , FS E.431 and FS E.431 series were used. The steam traction initially remained south of Livorno, until the contact wire to Rome was gradually completed from 1938, but with 3000 V direct current . After the Second World War, the SNCF initially used their powerful Pacific locomotives, which were taken over from PLM, again, in some cases also the new Mountains of the SNCF 241 P series . In 1952, however, the continuous contact wire between Chambéry and Paris was completed, and since then the Rome Express has operated entirely with electric locomotives. Both railway companies used their most powerful express train locomotives. The Italian section of the line was also converted by 1964 from the outdated three-phase drive to the DC voltage that was already available south of Livorno before the war. Until 1976, however, a change to the old power rail locomotives was still required between Chambéry and Modane.

reception

The Rome-Express was always considered one of the best trains of the CIWL, but never came close to the legendary reputation of the Orient-Express . Nevertheless, he often played an essential role in books and films, especially in the crime genre.

One of the first books was published in 1896, the British author Arthur Griffiths has a murderer walk through the train in his work The Rome Express . Another detective novel called Rome Express was published in 1932 by two British authors, Ruth Alexander and Clifford Gray . It served as the basis for the screenplay created by Sidney Gilliat for the British film Rome Express with Conrad Veidt , made in the same year , one of the first crime films to draw a significant part of their tension from the situation in the locked train. The train name also bears the film title of the 1949 French police comedy Rome Express with Jean Debucourt and Denise Gray .

literature

  • George Behrend : History of Luxury Trains. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-280-00918-9 .
  • Wilfried Biedenkopf: Across old Europe. The international train and through car runs as of the summer of 1939. Publishing house and office for special traffic literature Röhr, Krefeld 1981, ISBN 3-88490-110-9 .
  • Albert Mühl, Jürgen Klein: Traveling in luxury trains. The International Sleeping Car Society. EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 3-88255-696-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Stöckl : Rolling Hotels Part 1: The International Sleeping Car Company (= Railways of the Earth , Volume VIII), Bohmann Industrie- und Fachverlag, Vienna / Heidelberg 1967, p. 9
  2. ^ Albert Mühl, Jürgen Klein: Traveling in luxury trains. The International Sleeping Car Society . EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 3-88255-696-X , p. 92
  3. ↑ a b Fritz Stöckl: European railway trains with sonorous names. Carl Röhrig Verlag, Darmstadt 1958, p. 219
  4. ^ Albert Mühl, Jürgen Klein: Traveling in luxury trains. The International Sleeping Car Society . EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 3-88255-696-X , p. 349
  5. ↑ George Behrend : History of the luxury trains. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-280-00918-9 , p. 46
  6. ↑ Wilfried Biedenkopf: Across old Europe. The international train and through car runs as of the summer of 1939 . Publishing house and office for special traffic literature Röhr, Krefeld 1981, ISBN 3-88490-110-9 , p. 23 f.
  7. ↑ Wilfried Biedenkopf: Across old Europe. Through car runs in the post-war period. Publishing house and office for special traffic literature Röhr, Krefeld o. J., ISBN 3-88490-181-8 , p. 13
  8. ↑ Marc Fressoz: Thello stoppe sa marche sur Rome mais veut titiller la SNCF en Italie et en région PACA , www.mobilicites.com, October 8, 2013 (French, accessed November 11, 2017)
  9. ↑ bearalley.blogspot.de: Ruth Alexander , accessed on November 11, 2017
  10. ↑ www.cinema-francais.fr: Rome Express , accessed on November 11, 2017