Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits

company · earth · economy · Liège and Brussels

The Belgian company founded on 1 October 1872 in Liège that operated the Orient Express and most of Europe's named luxury sleepers. Its model was unusual and is the key to the whole story: it owned rolling stock and staff, not infrastructure, and sold a service across national railway networks that had no interest in coordinating with each other. That let it assemble an international train in an era with no international railway. Its carriages outlived its services — the 1920s stock James Sherwood bought from 1977 became the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, and seventeen further 1920s CIWL cars rediscovered in 2015 are being restored for a relaunch under the Orient Express name.