The first Express d'Orient leaves the Gare de l'Est

node

Around two dozen passengers leave Paris on the inaugural working, twice weekly, via Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest to Giurgiu on the Danube. There the railway stops: passengers ferry across to Ruse, take a second train to Varna on the Black Sea, and complete the journey to Constantinople by steamer. The service is sold as a through journey to the Orient and is, in engineering terms, three journeys with two transfers — which is precisely the gap the next six years of Balkan construction closes.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.