It’s sad how the term “Orient Express” has taken such almost mythical proportions, when in fact, at least after WW2, the train called Orient Express was in no way different stock-wise, or “luxuriousness”-wise, etc, from dozens of other international trains with names in Europe the itinerary of which included one or several nights.
Also note that in the Orient Express at least in post-WW2 times, like in other similar trains, the train composition was not fixed for all of the journey. There was no “the” train. At various stages cars were attached and detached. In September 1984 the Orient Express had: 1) day cars Paris-Wien and Paris-Budapest, 2) sleeping cars and couchettes Paris-Salzburg, 3) day cars Stuttgart-Budapest, 4) day cars Paris-Bucuresti, 5) day cars Wien-Bucuresti, 6) day cars, sleepers and couchettes Budapest-Bucuresti. And vice versa, obviously. Plus different restaurant cars on the Austrian, Hungarian and Romanian sections. And, on some days of the week sleeping cars that indeed went the whole way Paris-Bucuresti. And different locomotives in each country, of course. This from my September 1984 Thomas Cook Continental Timetable.
(If you want to show off knowledge of actually luxurious European trains in recent history, at least talk about the 1st-class-only Trans-Europ-Express instead. Some of the TEE trains actually used specific unique stock, so that it makes sense to call such stock “the” TEE train. The Orient Express, during the last 50 years of its running, used the same stock that was used in other similar trains.)
