Abandoned Orient Express Train Shows Us What Luxury Travel Looked Like In The Past

In People by Anja, August 20, 2016

In the late eighteen hundreds, the Grand Orient Express train offered passengers a chance to travel in true luxury. In 1883, The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL) launched the train and it quickly became the standard for luxury travel.

Abandoned Orient Express Train Shows Us What Luxury Travel Looked Like In The Past

Today, there are a dwindling number of these vintage trains left. Venice-Simplon Orient Express, located in Venice, has been transformed into a hotel. The other, which you’ll see in the photos below, is abandoned and actively corroding in Belgium. It was left there after it ran its final run in December of 2009.

The once unstoppable Orient Express lost its reign to speed trains and cut-rate airlines. A largely unaltered historical Orient Express train is incredibly rare, offering stories and unprecedented insights about the history of luxury travel.

Lucky for all of us, a Rotterdam-based urban photographer named Brian visited the abandoned train in Belgium with camera in hand. Brian shares via his website, “When I step into an abandoned site it feels like stepping into a time machine. I try to feel the emotions of it’s past and that is what I want to show in my pictures.”

Abandoned Orient Express Train Shows Us What Luxury Travel Looked Like In The Past