Okay, I didn’t learn ALL about trains in Turkey, but I found out a lot during my research for Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

Obviously, the train plays a large role in this novel, and I wanted to understand what the journey was like for travelers. Christie had taken the same journey herself, so it was extra fun to explore all the details. There is an amazing number of websites dedicated to the history of the Orient Express, and what I couldn’t figure out from the websites, I learned by emailing the experts who created those websites.

First off, the train on which the murder occurs is technically not the Orient Express, but the Simplon Orient Express. Mary Debenham actually says as much in the first chapter. Both routes connect Paris to Istanbul, but the original Orient Express traveled a more northerly route via cities such as Strasbourg, Vienna, and Budapest. The Simplon Orient Express went south to Simplon, Switzerland and included stops in Milan, Venice, and Belgrade. You can compare the two routes on the Luxury Train Tickets website.

Tourists before and after World War I wanted to explore beyond the usual European itineraries, pushing further into the Middle East on the other side of Istanbul. The Taurus Express connected Istanbul to Cairo in Egypt and to Baghdad in Iraq, a boon to travelers using the Orient Express. It was called the Taurus Express because it ran over the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey.

The Taurus Mountains are a steep barrier between the high plateau of Anatolia and the lower plains of Cilicia. There is a pass called the Cilician Gates that was used for centuries to get beyond the mountains. Alexander the Great marched that way, as did the Mongols and the Crusaders. But it was too steep for wheeled traffic.

A German team of engineers built a series of tunnels and bridges and train tracks over the Taurus, but the first World War interrupted their work. After the War, much of the Middle East was controlled by the British and the French and it became an attraction for European travelers.

In the early part of the novel, Mary Debenham and Colonel Arbuthnot are looking down at the Cilician Gates. I was having a hard time figuring out where the train was to do this, but I found an excellent resource in Jean-Patrick Charrey, the webmaster of the Trains of Turkey wiki website.

Jean-Patrick explained how the German engineers first built a narrow-gauge railway to help facilitate the building of the main railway, but it was basically along the same route. He also reminded me that these early trains were steam engines, which meant they needed to take on water at various points. One of those water stops happened to also be a great viewing point, so travelers had time to enjoy the scenery, as Miss Debenham and Colonel Arbuthnot experienced.

I also found out that one couldn’t just hop on a train in Baghdad and disembark in Paris. In Syria, there were motor services by car or bus to get travelers from, say, Cairo to the train, services that were provided by Wagons-Lit. To reach the Istanbul station from the Taurus Express to board the Oriental Express, one had to take a ferry across the Bosphorus Strait. The novel says “the Bosphorus was rough” and that “Poirot did not enjoy the crossing,” which is not surprising since Poirot complains of seasickness in many of the books.

Once on the Simplon Orient Express, however, travel was luxuriously comfortable, if tedious. Of course, for Christie’s characters, luxury is suspended when the train is snowed in by a blizzard and fuel and food start running out.

This disaster happened in real life, too. In 1929, the Orient Express was buried in snow during a two-day blizzard. The train’s steam heat stopped working and food was rationed. The stronger passengers attempted to tunnel out, which took days because the tunnel kept collapsing. Eventually, they were able to reach daylight. A village nearby reluctantly provided some provisions to keep the passengers alive until Turkish soldiers and a snowplow rescued them.

This story and her own personal experience with the Simplon Orient Express inspired Christie to write one of her best-known works. Sure, we don’t need to know all these train details to enjoy Murder on the Orient Express, but isn’t fun to have this information? It’s as if we were in the train with Agatha and her characters.