Calais Nice Rome Express In December 1883 the
Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL) created its second luxury train after the
Orient Express was introduced in June of that year. Due to contracts between CIWL's competitor, the
Pullman Company, and the owner of the
Mont Cenis Pass Railway, the
Società per le strade ferrate dell'Alta Italia, CIWL could not use the
Fréjus Rail Tunnel, so CIWL was forced to use the longer route along the Mediterranean coast. The connection between
Paris and
Rome was introduced as
Calais Nice Rome Express, but it was reduced to
Calais Nice Express after only one year. In 1885 several Italian railways merged and CIWL could buy the routes formerly served by Pullman, which made it possible to use the shorter Mont Cenis Railway. The train was to be named
Rome Express. In order to serve British customers, the
Calais-Mediterranée Express was created in 1886, but it lasted until 1890 before the
Rome Express made its first journey.
Calais-Méditerranée The
Calais-Méditerranée Express was introduced in the 1886/1887 winter timetable. In the winter of 1889/1890 the name was changed to
Méditerranée Express, due to the creation of the
Club train. At the southern end, the route was extended to
San Remo, but the portion north of Paris was taken over by the Club Train. After the introduction of the
Rome Express on 15 November 1890, the two trains were combined between Paris and Mâcon. South of Mâcon, the
Rome Express continued during the night over the Mont Cenis railway and the
Méditerranée Express ran through the Rhone valley to the Côte d'Azur. After several breaches of contract by CIWL, The height of the season for
le train bleu was between November and April, when many travellers escaped the British winter to spend time on the French Riviera. Its terminus was at the
Gare Maritime in
Calais, where it picked up British passengers from the ferries across the
English Channel. It departed at 1:00 in the afternoon and stopped at the
Gare du Nord in Paris, then travelled around Paris by the
Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture to the
Gare de Lyon, where it picked up additional passengers and coaches. It departed Paris early in the evening, and made stops at
Dijon,
Châlons, and
Lyon, before reaching
Marseille early the next morning. It then made further stops at all the major
resort towns of the French Riviera, or
Côte d'Azur:
Saint-Raphaël,
Juan-les-Pins,
Antibes,
Cannes,
Nice,
Monte-Carlo, before reaching its final destination,
Menton, near the Italian border. The sleeping cars had only ten sleeping compartments each, with one attendant assigned to each sleeping car. Early passengers included the Prince of Wales (later
King Edward VIII),
Charlie Chaplin, designer
Coco Chanel,
Winston Churchill and writers
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Evelyn Waugh and
Somerset Maugham. The
Great Depression and the
devaluation of the
Pound Sterling greatly reduced the number of wealthy British and American travellers going to the Riviera, reducing the two trains to two carriages conveyed with the
Golden Arrow between Calais and Paris. After a one and half hour stop the two luxury cars were conveyed further south by the
Côte d'Azur Pullman Express. In 1936, the new
Popular Front Government in France introduced the paid two-week vacation for French workers.
Second-class and
third-class sleeping cars were added to the Blue Train to carry middle and working class French people on holiday to the South of France. In 1938, the Popular Front government nationalized the private railway companies in France, including PLM. After 1938,
le train bleu was run by the new French national railway company
SNCF as an ordinary night express train.
1949–1978 Service was interrupted during the
Second World War but resumed in 1949, when the train officially took the name
Le Train Bleu. Scheduled airline service began between Paris and
Nice in 1945, which took away much of the wealthy clientele. In 1962 the rolling stock was replaced by MU coaches and second class coaches were introduced in the Blue Train. In 1971 the CIWL sold its rolling stock to the national railway companies that operated the trains further on. After 1978, the train added cars with
couchettes to attract more
middle-class passengers.
The end Beginning in the 1980s the night express trains were gradually replaced by the high-speed
TGV trains, which cut the length of the journey from Paris to
Nice from 20 hours to five, and this effectively ended the era of luxury night trains to the French Riviera. After a long history,
Le Train Bleu ceased to exist under that name in September 2003, when SNCF rebranded all of its principal overnight trains as
Service Nuit. The train coaches remained in use until 9 December 2007, by which time the
train had lost its dining car and most of its sleeping cars. An overnight train between Paris and Nice continued to run under SNCF's Intercités de Nuit brand, only carrying couchette and reclining seat accommodation and not luxury sleeping cars, but this was discontinued from 9 December 2017 due to withdrawal of funding from the French Government. However, a Paris-Nice night train has been scheduled to restart on 29 March 2021. As of July, 2023, there is a night train to and from
Paris Austerlitz to Nice which follows much of the route of Le Train Bleu. ==In art, literature and popular culture==