On the Right TRACK

The fortunate few traversed Europe on trains like this a century ago. It's time for your champagne adventure.

- KLARA GLOWCZEWSKA

At the start of Agatha Christie’s 1934 Murder on the Orient Express, a certain M.  Bouc, contemplating the train’s dining car and his fellow passengers, says to his tablemate, detective Hercule Poirot: “If I had but the pen of a Balzac! I would depict this scene…It lends itself to romance, my friend.” That romance of high-end European rail travel, mothballed for decades, is having a major comeback. The Orient Express Company (part of Accor) will be launching newly built La  Dolce Vita trains in 2024 (and is already taking bookings for one- and two-night trips from Rome). Belmond, meantime, which owns 17 of the original Orient Express’s carriages from the 1920s and ’30s, is restoring them and adding itineraries. Here’s what to expect on their Venice Simplon-Orient-Express: