Sunday, March 27, 2011

Fleet Profile - Minitrix Orient Express (Heavyweight Series)





Growing up as a kid of humble origins and as an avid lover of railways I soon developed a taste for the great railways of Britain and Europe where the romance of railway travel, in my humble opinion, reached it's zenith with the Orient Express (thanks to it's visionary mastermind Georges Nagelmackers who founded the famous Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits in the late 1800's).  And therein lies the rub, when we think of the Orient Express we must remember to separate the physical train from the journey.  While the journey may be the Orient Express, the actual hardware (the rolling stock) is the product of Nagelmackers and his "Wagons-Lits" company.




Wagons-Lits, apart from fielding rolling stock for the Orient Express, fielded rolling stock for trains all across Europe, including:

  1. Orient Express - Paris to Istanbul/Constantinople (also linking to the port of Calais and the British Pullman service to London as time went on).
  2. Nord (Northern) Express - Paris to St Petersburg
  3. Sud (Southern) Express - Paris to Lisborn in Portugal (by connecting with the Nord Express in Paris, connected St Petersburg to Lisborn)
  4. Train Bleu - Calais/Paris to Nice in the south of France (taking holiday makers to the French coast)
  5. Night Ferry - London to Paris (via a ferry transporting the coaches from Dover to Dunkirk at the narrowest point of the English Channel).  Note the modern Venice Simplon Orient Express transports passengers by ferry to Calais from Folkstone England, but coaches are not ferried on this service.
The Minitrix "Orient Express" set includes 2 CIWL type F baggage cars, 4-axle car with a wood body in teak and a conductor's cupola.  Originally produced in the early twentieth century.  A WR type dining car, such as can be seen here WR Type Heavyweight Dining Car.  And two WL type sleeping cars.  A photo of which is displayed.




The Minitrix set is hauled by a variation of the French SNCF 230 E 4-6-0 locomotive without smoke deflectors.  My locomotive is pictured below.



If someone is able to help me out with a real life photo of this locomotive (without smoke deflectors and the correct cylindrical boiler and firebox housing I would greatly appreciate it.

2 comments:

Jerry said...

Nice looking set! Glad to have finally found your blog! Keep up the great work!

Chris Beland said...

Nice set. Loco is KPEV (Prussian) S10.1 of which a number were passed to France after the Great War as war reparations.