Orient Express

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A through sleeping-car service run by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, first worked on 4 October 1883 out of the Gare de l'Est in Paris as the Express d'Orient. It was not at first a railway to Constantinople at all: the rails ended at Giurgiu on the Danube, and passengers ferried to Ruse, took a second train to Varna on the Black Sea, then a steamer for the last leg. Only on 1 June 1889, once the Balkan gaps were closed, did a train run Paris to Constantinople entirely on rails, reportedly in 67 hours 35 minutes. The name survived four route changes, two world wars and a partition of Europe, ending as an unremarkable ÖBB EuroNight sleeper: the last Paris–Istanbul working ran on 19 May 1977, and the name left the European timetable after the Strasbourg–Vienna train of 12 December 2009. It was always a set of carriages attached to other companies' trains over other companies' tracks, which is why it could be rerouted so often and why it could disappear without any line closing.