Simplon Orient Express

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Simplon Orient Express


Advertising poster around 1927

Train type: international long-distance train
Was standing: Out of service
Countries: FranceFrance France Switzerland Italy Yugoslavia Bulgaria Greece Turkey
SwitzerlandSwitzerland 
ItalyItaly 
Yugoslavia Socialist Federal RepublicYugoslavia 
BulgariaBulgaria 
GreeceGreece 
TurkeyTurkey 
Predecessor: Orient-Express
Simplon-Express
First drive: April 11, 1919
Last drive: May 26, 1962
Successor: Simplon-Express
Direct-Orient-Express
Former operator: until 1940: CIWL
from 1945: CIWL and participating state railways
route
Departure station: Paris
Intermediate stops: (only the most important)
Lausanne , Milan , Venice , Trieste , Zagreb , Vinkovci , Belgrade , Niš , Sofia , Pythio
Destination station: Istanbul
Route length: 3011 km
Cycle: Every day
Train numbers: SO
Technical specifications
Rolling stock: Sleeping , dining and saloon cars
Train run


The Simplon-Orient-Express , abbreviated to SOE , also known as Simplon-Express or Simplon-Orient for short , was an international long-distance train that followed the Orient-Express between Paris and Constantinople from 1920 to 1962 on the Paris route - Venice - Istanbul ran daily. From 1940 to 1945 there were interruptions and shortened walking routes due to the Second World War , as well as in the 1950s because of Greek - Turkish border conflicts. The Simplon-Orient-Express operated as a luxury train for the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL) until 1940 . After the end of the war it was continued as an express train with seating cars for the participating state railways as well as sleeping and dining cars for the CIWL. The name is derived from the Simplon Tunnel , which was used to cross the Alps .

history

As early as the 1900s and 1910s, suggestions were repeatedly made for a different railway connection to the east that was independent of the Orient Express and that would not have passed through the German Empire and Austria-Hungary . The proposals failed due to resistance from Austria. With the opening of the Simplon line in 1906, France saw new opportunities for international passenger traffic, which enabled the introduction of the Simplon Express, which from 1906 connected Paris with Milan.

After the Orient Express was discontinued during World War I , a connection from Paris to Istanbul was to be re-established after the war. In contrast to the Orient Express , a train route was deliberately proposed that does not go via Munich and Vienna. The CIWL was initially not convinced of the success of the new train route, which circumnavigated the defeated states of Germany , Austria and Hungary . At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the accompanying negotiations, the route of the Simplon-Orient-Express from Paris through the Simplon Tunnel and Northern Italy to Trieste and on through Yugoslavia was determined. The route of the Orient Express, on which the train continued its journey to Istanbul, was only reached again in Belgrade before the war years.

Train formation of the Simplon-Orient-Express on the Milan – Trieste section in 1921

On April 11, 1919, the train ran for the first time, but only to Trieste . From January 1920 he drove continuously to Belgrade and in the summer of the same year to Istanbul , with through cars to Bucharest . The part of the train to Bucharest was deposited in Vinkovci , and bypassing Hungarian territory via Subotica and Timișoara . A year later, the train also received a sleeping car to Athens , which for the first time had a free rail connection to and from Western Europe.

In the years that followed, a whole system of feeder trains with through coaches was built around the Simplon Orient Express . For traffic with England, cars ran from Calais and Ostend . The latter only operated until 1925 via Luxembourg , Strasbourg , Basel and the Gotthard Railway to Milan. After that, the through coaches ran through Germany and via Vienna and Budapest, so that they were only given to the Simplon-Orient-Express in Belgrade. The Simplon Orient Express continued through coaches to Athens and Piraeus , the port of Athens.

From 1925, the old teak dining cars were gradually replaced by those with steel car bodies. New sleeping cars were used from 1930. In the same year, the Simplon line was continuously  electrified with 15 kV AC voltage at 16 2 ⁄ 3  Hz, so that the Simplon-Orient-Express on the Swiss section between Vallorbe and Domodossola was mostly covered with an Ae 4/7 .

In 1930, a speedboat connection across the Bosporus was also offered for the first time , connecting it to the Taurus Express, also operated by CIWL . This train ran from Istanbul Haydarpaşa via Aleppo in Syria to Rayak in Lebanon , after the completion of a direct rail connection from 1933 to Tripoli . Buses ran between Rayak or Tripoli and Haifa , from Haifa there was a train connection to Cairo .

After the beginning of the Second World War on September 1, 1939, the Simplon-Orient-Express initially only operated temporarily between Milan and Istanbul; from September 7, the French and Swiss sections were also served again. Towards the end of the German campaign in the west , on May 25, 1940, the Simplon-Orient-Express ran for the last time from Paris and Calais in the direction of Istanbul. The CIWL shortened the train route initially to Milan, from May 30th it then operated between Lausanne and Istanbul. The through coaches from Berlin, Prague and Munich to Istanbul had previously been discontinued in April and May 1940. Until then, the Simplon Orient Express between Belgrade and Istanbul carried sleeping cars from both Paris and Berlin to Istanbul in one train, despite the state of war between the German Empire and France. From April 1941 - the exact date is not known - the CIWL had to stop the Simplon-Orient-Express on its remaining route after the start of the Balkan campaign .

After the Second World War, the Simplon Orient Express ran for the first time on November 13, 1945 on the entire route from Paris to Istanbul. Initially, there was only one CIWL sleeping car on the train, the rest were first and second class seating cars. With the resumption of holiday traffic in the 1950s between Paris and Northern Italy, the train was mainly used by tourists. During the Cold War , only a few business travelers and diplomats used the connection to Eastern Europe. As a result, when the train crossed the border from Italy to Yugoslavia in 1950, the train consisted only of the sleeping car and the Paris – Istanbul seating car and a baggage car that was carried to Belgrade. After the border, the train in Sežana was given eight passenger coaches and two freight cars.

Train formation of the Simplon Orient Express on the Milan – Venice section in 1950

Until 1951 there were no through coaches to Athens because of the civil war in Greece and the border between Yugoslavia and Greece was closed. From 1951 to 1954 the connection to Istanbul was interrupted again because the Bulgarian-Turkish border was closed. From 1954, light steel wagons of the BLS and SBB also ran on the Simplon-Orient-Express on the Paris – Trieste section . The train reached a top speed of 125 km / h in this section.

The Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further cooled relations between Western and Eastern Europe, so that the train lost the addition of Orient in 1962 and only operated as the Simplon Express between Paris and Belgrade. The connections to Istanbul and Athens have since been made by the Direct Orient Express . In 1977 the last sleeper connection between Paris and Istanbul was discontinued.

The luxurious Venice Simplon-Orient-Express , a special train made up of former CIWL wagons, has been operating in the summer months since 1982 . Weekly package tours London – Paris – Venice are offered, and once a season the trip from Paris to Istanbul. However, the train often travels to other destinations and does not use the Simplon Orient Express route on its journey to Istanbul. The name is intended to remind of the luxury of the earlier scheduled connection to Constantinople / Istanbul.

Walkway

In Paris, the train left the Gare de Lyon in the evening , where the through coaches coming from the Flèche d'Or from Calais were delivered. Vallorbe in Switzerland was reached at night via Dijon . After Lausanne the journey led along Lake Geneva through the Valais and the Simplon tunnel to Domodossola and on to Milan , which was reached around noon. From there the journey led through northern Italy to Venice, Cervignano and Monfalcone . Behind Trieste began the second night in which the train crossed Yugoslavia. The route led via Ljubljana , Zagreb and Vinkovci to Belgrade, although the train part to Bucharest was suspended in Vinkovci in the interwar period. This reached its destination bypassing Hungarian territory via Subotica and Timișoara . The carriages to Athens were handed over to an express train in Niš . The Simplon-Orient-Express then drove via Sofia in Bulgaria to the Svilengrad border station , then the route ran via the Greek border station in Ormenio for a few kilometers through Greece, then switched to Turkish territory with a stop in Edirne and back to Greece with a stop in Pythio before finally reaching Turkey. After the third night, the train pulled into Sirkeci Station in Istanbul .

running time

The Simplon Orient Express was the only train in the Orient Express system that ran daily in the interwar period. When it was first introduced, the Simplon-Orient-Express was longer on the road than the pre-war Orient-Express, although the route through Switzerland was shorter compared to the old train route. Due to the poorly maintained routes during the war and the time-consuming passport , customs and currency controls, which were considerably expanded compared to the pre-war period , the train traveled one night and one day longer than the Orient Express in the last peace timetable from 1914. Travel time from Paris to Istanbul was 96 hours at the beginning, but could soon be shortened. The train took 70 hours from 1922 to 1926 and another 57 hours in 1930 for the entire route.

Fiction

Agatha Christie's crime novel Mord im Orient-Express , published in 1934, appears to be fictitiously located in the Simplon-Orient-Express based on the carriage runs described in the book. It is one of the most famous books in which the Orient Express and the variants named after it serve as a background or setting.

The James Bond novel Liebesgrüße aus Moscow , written by Ian Fleming , is partly set on the Simplon Orient Express.

Accidents

  • On October 27, 1928, the Bucharest wing train to the Simplon-Orient-Express collided with another passenger train west of Bucharest near Recea. A fire broke out. 34 people died and 50 were injured.
  • On October 21, 1957, the railway accident in Istanbul occurred in which a Simplon Orient Express traveling from Istanbul to Paris collided head-on with a local train shortly after Istanbul on the single-track line. 95 people died and 150 were injured in this accident.

Timetables

literature

  • Jack Birns: Life rides the Simplon-Orient Express . In: Life . Time Inc, September 11, 1950, p. 137-145 ( google.de ).
  • 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 .
  • Werner Sölch: Orient Express. The heyday and decline and rebirth of a luxury train. 4th edition. Alba, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-87094-173-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Garry Hogg: Orient Express: the birth, life, and death of a great train . Walker, 1968 ( google.ch ).
  2. ^ Sine Maier-Bode: Orient Express and Baghdad Railway. In: Planet Knowledge. ARD, October 10, 2018, accessed on June 5, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Express d'Orient 1889 - 1900. In: Chemins de fer d'Europe et du monde. (French).
  4. ^ Irene Anastasiadou: Constructing Iron Europe: Transnationalism and Railways in the Interbellum . Amsterdam University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-90-5260-392-6 , pp. 35-36 ( google.ch ).
  5. ^ Albert Mühl: International luxury trains. EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991, p. 106.
  6. ↑ CIWL (Ed.): Timetable summer 1939 . valid from July 1, 1939 to October 7, 1939.
  7. ↑ trains-worldexpresses.com: Chronology Middleeast Trains , accessed June 11, 2019
  8. ↑ CIWL (Ed.): Summer timetable 1931 .
  9. ^ A b Albert Mühl: International luxury trains. EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991, p. 106.
  10. ^ Albert Mühl: International luxury trains. EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991, p. 107.
  11. ↑ Jack Birns, pp. 138, 141, 142
  12. ^ "BLS-Schlieren" lightweight steel wagon for international traffic . In: Railway amateur . No. 5 , 2016, p. 199, 200 .
  13. ↑ Constantin Parvulesco: Orient Express: Train of Dreams . 1st edition. Transpress, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-613-71305-5 , p. 30, 127 .
  14. ↑ Grands trains Européens 1959. In: Chemins de fer d'Europe et du monde. Retrieved June 9, 2019 (French).
  15. ^ Venice Simplon-Orient-Express . In: Ameropa (Ed.): Railway adventure travel worldwide . 2019, p. 18-19 .
  16. ^ W. Biedenkopf: Across the old Europe. Krefeld 1981, p. 10 ff.
  17. ^ Jürgen Franzke: Orient Express - King of Trains . Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name in the Nuremberg Transport Museum from November 1998 to April 1999. Tümmel, Nuremberg 1998, ISBN 3-921590-65-5 , p. 27 .
  18. ^ The Terrible Accident to the Simplon-Orient Express. In: Illustrated London News Ltd. Retrieved June 8, 2019 .
  19. ^ Former Rochesterian Hurt, Forty Killed When Fast Trains Collide in Rumania. In: Democrat and Chronicle. Retrieved June 8, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Otuzbeşinci Kilometrede Tren Kazası. In: Kent ve Demiryolu. Retrieved June 8, 2019 (Turkish).
  21. ↑ Çamlık Railway Museum. Retrieved June 15, 2019 .