Express delivery

For our June meeting, the second at the new venue, our speaker was Philip Hancock, talking to us about that most famous and romantic of rail journeys, the Orient Express. For his 25th wedding anniversary Philip was lucky enough to make the classic trip to Venice on the modern day version of the service, and he described the opulent restored vintage carriages and the tsunami of five-star dining. He also filled us in on the history of the service, created in the late 19th century by Georges Nagelmackers, a Belgian banker with a love of trains, who went to America and witnessed the early days of transcontinental travel on George Pullman's revolutionary sleeping and dining carriages. Of course transcontinental travel in Europe meant crossing several countries and Georges's inaugural service was a bureaucratic nightmare, requiring transit permission from 11 different polities. Although it wasn't the wild west, the safety of the route was such that passengers were encouraged to carry revolvers. We learned about the various routes that the service has taken over the years, about its sad decline into little more than a commuter service without dining to sleeping arrangements, and its rebirth in the 1980s as a luxury tourist experience.

Many thanks to Philip for a stylish and inspiring lecture. You can find more photos from the event at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720327147000, and you can see a video of the talk at https://youtu.be/ekUqdhr7Ooc.