Nord Express
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The "Nord Express" (Northern Express) was a train service introduced in 1896 by Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, a Belgian night train company. It left Paris via Brussels, Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) and Daugavpils to Saint Petersburg.
The founders of CIWL wanted to establish a direct link between Saint Petersburg and Lisbon with connecting services of ocean liners to America.
Passengers from Russia had to change once in East Prussia at the German/Russian border because Russian railway tracks are of a wider gauge than in Western Europe. In Paris there was a connecting service of the Sud Express (Southern Express) to Lisbon in Portugal. This train service enabled people to travel across Europe in a—by the standards of the time—very fast and comfortable way.
After World War I the train was diverted to Warsaw (capital of Poland) instead to Saint Petersburg. After World War II the "iron curtain" and air travel set an end to this famous train connection.
After World War II the name Nord Express has also been used for the ordinary night train connection Paris-Copenhagen. It has been shortened and diverted again and now goes (2007) between Paris and Hamburg, taking 10.5 hours.
[edit] In the arts
- Vladimir Nabokov describes in Chapter six of Speak, Memory how he travelled on the Nord Express from Saint Petersburg to vacations in France in 1906.
