Agatha Cristie wrote of “the Millionaire’s Train” when she first intrduced Hercule Poirot and had him investigate a sudden death aboard a Train de Luxe on which he happened to be travelling.
The Mystery of the Blue Trainwas first published in 1928, at a time when lady travellers often had their maids quartered in second class and many young bloods took their valets with them to the Riviera as a matter of course.
After only six years, even grander sleeping cars seemed necessary for the superior Blue Train. Lord Dalziel, just before he died in 1928, ordered ninety new coaches. A year later these were ready, called Luxe or Lx10 (x=10) because they only had ten large single-berth compartments instead of the more usual twelve of the S class, which were tansfered to the Simplon Orient Express in 1929.
A short time afterwards the Blue Train suffered the same slump that had struck the stock market. Now a single train to San Remo, combining the Calais-and Paris Méditerranée, sufficed to serve Marseilles, Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo and Ventimiglia, the Italian frontier station where most of the coaches were detached. The Lx class had to be reconstructed to take second class travellers in double berths either in all (Lx20) or in six of their ten compartments (Lx16). And thus they would remain on the Train Bleu for over forty years.
Only at the end of 1936 did any of the Wagons-Lits coaches slip in and out of London in the Night Ferry, and then only at hours when few people saw them pass.
During the war some 845 Wagons-Lits coaches were damaged, destroyed or seized by various forces.
Thanks to the Director General, René Margot Noblemaire, and with just one international Train de Luxe, composed entirtely of Wagons-Lits sleeping, dining and fourgons , the company recommenced the Blue Train. In 1949 the proud name at last reappeared on the destination boards.
For sixty years, discriminating people of means had been escaping from the sea-mists of the Channel, or from wintry Paris, to arrive next morning beside a sparkling blue sea, warm and sunny, beset with palms and mimosas.
Beginning in the 1980s the night express trains were gradually replaced by the high-speed TGV trains, which cut the length of the journey from Paris to Nice from twenty hours to five, and effectively ended the era of luxury night trains to the French Riviera.
Darstaed will reproduce all the coaches necessary to make up the Train Bleu. The coaches will have a new roof in ABS, rubber corridors and a short coupling system. All the coaches will be fitted with interior and lighting.
Sources : Luxury Trains by George Behrend Train Bleu by Jean les Cars and Jean-Paul Caracalla Die Pullman Wagen by Renzo Perret
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