Book | Les tramways belges dans l’Empire Ottoman

Nagelmackers, who had spent ten months in the United States, returned to Belgium with the intention of reproducing and perfecting the American concept of the Pullman sleeper cars. But his wealthy-industrialist family cut off his allowance: "Trains with beds in? What a ridiculous idea!!!" Nagelmackers didn't give up and found in Leopold the Second the perfect ally. 

Georges Nagelmackers began by designing standard rolling stock able to run on lines in various countries. In the late 19th century, the technical railway standards differed from country to country, forcing passengers to change at borders. He also struck deals with customs departments to make border crossings smoother.

Before then long-distance train travel had been Spartan. But Nagelmackers designed sleeping cars with luxurious private compartments which had sinks with running water, restaurant cars, smoking cars and saloon cars with a piano. And all of this came with a service worthy of a 5-star hotel.

On the eve of the First World War, the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits was running 31 luxury trains, including the Nord Express, which left from Ostend and Paris, via Brussels, then on to Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg; and the Oiseau Bleu from Antwerp, via Brussels, to Paris.

In the 1920s, the decoration was updated. The wooden inlay, lamps and stained-glass windows by the artist René Lalique created the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties that marked the golden age of the wagons-lits. A legend was born...

[*] Georges Nagelmackers (1845 – 1905)

Georges Nagelmackers established an international company that came to symbolise luxury travel by rail. He was born in Liège to a wealthy family who had interests in railways and banking, and links to the Belgian royal house. As a young man he travelled in the United States and was impressed with the railway services developed by George Pullman (1831-1897). He returned to Belgium in 1869 with plans to develop international through rail services, and in particular to attract the custom of British travellers bound for India and going  by train to Brindisi in southern Italy from where they continued by steamer. His plans were frustrated by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, but in 1872 he began to operate services from Ostend to Berlin, from Paris to Cologne and from Vienna to Munich, and the following year gained favorable publicity by providing trains to take Parisians to the International Exhibition in Vienna. 

Lack of capital forced him into partnership with a rival, the American, Colonel William d’Alton Mann (1839-1920), a retired cavalryman, who had supplied the first sleeping car in Great Britain to the Great Northern Railway in 1874, and ran a company called Mann Boudoir Sleeping Cars operating trains in Germany, Belgium, France and the Habsburg Empire. Nagelmackers became general manager of the joint company on 31 August 1874 and on 4 December 1876 bought out Mann, and established the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, to which the words ‘et des Grands Express Européens’ were added in 1883. The new company took over all the Mann services between the principal cities of German, extending across the German borders to Vienna, Bordeaux, Ostend and to Orsova on the Danube, the eastern frontier of the Habsburg Empire. The company supplied food and drink to sleeping car passengers, and in 1881 constructed in Munich its first restaurant car for daytime use.

The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Européens’ operated some of Europe’s most celebrated trains. On 5 June 1883 there was a demonstration of what was to become the Orient Express running from Paris to Giurgowo | Giurgiu RO| Yergöğü TR, on the Danube in present-day Romania, where passengers embarked on steamers to Constantinople.  \

[See: Surreal Shores– A Golden Dawn On The Bosphorus: The Orient Express By Boat (Part Four)] 

A daily service on part of this route, from Paris to Budapest, began on 1 June 1884, with connections twice a week to Giurgowo. After the construction of new railways in Bulgaria, from 1 June 1889 the Orient Express took passengers all the way from Paris to Constantinople in 67 hours 35 minutes without change of carriage.

After the Second World War the company could no longer operate east of the Iron Curtain. It operated fewer trains made up exclusively of its own vehicles but sleeping and restaurant car services continued. National railway companies were increasingly willing to co-operate in such ventures as the Trans-European Express network, which made the need for a trans-national company less obvious, and long-distance rail services of all sorts were increasingly subject to competition from airlines. In 1960 the company still had about 13,000 employees, with workshops in Paris, Ostend, Rome, Vienna, Munich, Athens, Irun, Madrid and Istanbul. The company was re-named the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et du Tourisme in 1967, and two years afterwards began to sell off its vehicles. Sleeping car services across Europe are now much reduced, but the company still operates, providing, amongst other services, catering facilities on Eurostar trains.

Book trams Egypt tramways Cairo Alexandria Heliopolis Fayum

Les tramways belges en Egypte (1894-1960) par R. Dussart-Desart (in French)

This book describes the detailed history of the tramways of Cairo, Heliopolis, Alexandria, Port Saïd and of the light railways in the Lower Egypt and Fayoum areas.

All those networks were financed or equipped by Belgians in the 1864-1960 period, the last of them being nationalized in 1960.

Several pages also illustrate the networks of Cairo, Heliopolis and Alexandria in the sixties, the seventies and in 1980 and in 1992. Two pages are devoted to Belgian tramways preserved today in Cairo and Heliopolis. The book analyses the various joint ventures between those undertakings (ranging from rolling stock overhaul to exchange of “spies”) and the history of their subsidiary companies active in the fields of the generation of electricity and of the production of rolling stock.

This study is based on an in-depth survey of the archives of the operators, several trips on-site and thirty years of exchanges with witnesses of the development of those networks. Beyond an historical approach describing the harsh realities of another era, the author tries to add a touch of humor and of humanity. The life of the people who built and operated those tramways, whether Egyptians or expatriates, is dealt with too.

172 pages A4 on glossy paper 115 g/m², hardcover, 296 illustrations including 231 photos, postcards and artefacts, 33 tickets, 16 network maps, 7 paintings by P. Meeuwig, 6 shares, 3 technical drawings.