The usual one-line history of Al Ándalus says its carriages were built for the British royal family. The record says something more modest, and more interesting. Spain's official tourism body puts it carefully: the sleeping cars belong to the same series as those the British monarchy used between Calais and the Côte d'Azur. Same series is not the same thing as a royal train.
The cars came out of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits at the end of the 1920s, the most self-confident moment in the history of European sleeper travel. How they got from the Riviera timetable to the plains of Andalusia, and what was done to them on the way, says a good deal about how heritage trains are actually made.
A sleeping car company at the top of its game
By the late 1920s the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits had spent half a century turning Georges Nagelmackers' idea of a pan-European sleeping car into an empire of named expresses. The story of how that empire began is told in our piece on Nagelmackers and the European sleeping car. What matters here is what the company did next. In 1922 its Calais-Méditerranée Express was relaunched as an all-first-class train of new steel carriages, the sleepers painted dark blue with gold trim. Within a year the public was calling it the Blue Train.
It was the railway that carried Britain to the Riviera. Passengers crossed the Channel, boarded at Calais, were worked around Paris from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon, and woke on the Mediterranean. The passenger lists that railway historians like to recite include Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel, Winston Churchill, Somerset Maugham, and the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII. The train's role in inventing the Riviera as a winter destination is covered in Le Train Bleu and the making of the Côte d'Azur.
Ninety cars with ten rooms each
The carriages that matter to Al Ándalus were the next step up. Shortly before his death in 1928, the company's chairman, Lord Dalziel, ordered a new class of luxury sleeping car. Ninety were delivered from 1929, numbered 3466 to 3555 and designated Lx, sometimes written Lx10, because each had only ten large single-berth compartments where the existing S-type cars had twelve. Fewer rooms meant more space per passenger, and the Lx cars went straight onto the Calais-Méditerranée Express. The older S-type cars they displaced were moved to the Simplon Orient Express.
The Lx was a fleet car, not a commission. It was built in quantity to a standard design, and it was decorated in the marquetry and glass tradition that made Wagons-Lits interiors famous. For that craft, see Lalique, Prou and the glass and marquetry of the Wagons-Lits.
The royal question
This is where the popular version goes wrong. Many travel pages state that the Al Ándalus cars were built for British royalty, and some go further and say Spain bought them from the royal family. No source we could find supports either claim. Spain's national tourism site, Turespaña, says only that the sleeping cars are of the same series as vehicles originally used by the British monarchy to travel between Calais and the French Riviera.
That wording fits the evidence. Members of the royal family, the Prince of Wales most famously, travelled on the Calais-Méditerranée Express as passengers, and the Lx cars ran on that train. That makes them cars of a type in which royalty slept. It does not make them a royal train, and none of the sources ties a particular Al Ándalus car to a particular royal journey. The true story is a better one in any case: these are carriages from the most glamorous scheduled train of the interwar years, not one-off showpieces.
Across the Pyrenees
Wagons-Lits operated across much of Europe, Spain included, and its rolling stock moved between national networks as traffic demanded. The Spanish railway archive Docutren records one well-documented example. The dining car WR 3579, now named Alhambra, was built in 1929 by the Entreprises Industrielles Charentaises in France and arrived in Spain in 1941. It served there for more than four decades before being chosen for a new purpose.
Moving a car into Spain was never just a matter of shunting it across a border. Most of the Spanish network was laid to the broad Iberian gauge, so a car built for French standard-gauge track needed different running gear to work there. It is one reason the 1985 rebuild described below began with the bogies.
- 1886–87: the Calais-Méditerranée Express enters the winter timetable.
- 1922: relaunched as an all-first-class train of blue-and-gold steel sleepers.
- 1929: the first of ninety Lx sleeping cars, and the dining car later named Alhambra, are built.
- 1941: WR 3579 arrives in Spain.
- 1985: Renfe rebuilds the cars and launches Al Ándalus.
- 2012: the train receives a comprehensive overhaul.
What 1985 actually changed
Renfe launched Al Ándalus in 1985 as a nostalgic touring train based in Seville. The Docutren records are specific about the work. The dining cars were given air conditioning, new Pennsylvania-type bogies, a new interior layout and new decoration inside and out. The Lx sleepers were rebuilt as well, and the train's accommodation came to include suites, a long way from the ten single berths of 1929. Early formations included a staff sleeper, vans, a generator van, and the lounge, bar and dining cars that were always the train's public face.
It is worth being precise about what survives. The bodies, much of the panelling and the Belle Époque character are of the 1920s. The bogies, the air conditioning, the plumbing and the room layouts are of the 1980s or later. That is not a criticism. Almost every heritage train in service, including the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, is the product of the same compromise between the original fabric and the needs of a modern sleeper.
A second life, and its numbers
The train was given a comprehensive overhaul in 2012. Published figures for the present formation do not agree, and they are worth reading with care. A University of Seville feature describes 15 cars, more than 400 metres and room for 60 passengers. Other descriptions give 14 cars, 450 metres and 64 passengers. Both versions describe the longest passenger train on Spanish track, and the gap probably reflects formations that have changed over the years. Sources also differ on the build years: some say 1928 to 1930, others 1929 to 1930. The Lx class itself dates from 1929.
Riding the carriages today
The cars still run as Al Ándalus, Renfe's Andalusian touring train, with its lounge, bar and restaurant cars from the Wagons-Lits era. Seville remains its natural home, and the itineraries are built around the cities of the old caliphate, Córdoba above all. Travellers who want the northern equivalent can compare it with El Transcantábrico Gran Lujo and the Costa Verde Express in our guide to Spain's luxury trains compared.
For travellers drawn to the Wagons-Lits story itself, the logical companion is the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, whose restored cars come from the same company and the same era. The full range is on our trains page. For help planning a journey, write to travel@palacetours.com or call 786-408-0610.
