When the Pullman cars that now form the British Pullman were bought in the late 1970s, the most useful restoration document turned out to be an old invoice in a filing cabinet at the train's depot. It recorded that the original marquetry panels had been made by Albert Dunn, and the firm he founded in 1895 was still trading in Chelmsford, Essex. His son and grandson restored the panels their own family had made decades earlier.
That piece of luck says a great deal about how heritage carriages survive. They are not kept alive by money alone, but by a small number of workshops and family firms that still know how a veneer was cut, how French polish was laid, and how a 1920s sleeping car was put together. Their work is largely invisible to passengers, which is exactly the point.
A fleet assembled from sidings and auction rooms
The modern revival of the Orient Express began not in a workshop but in a sale room. In 1977, when the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits withdrew from the Orient Express service, the American businessman James Sherwood bought two original carriages at auction in Monte Carlo. Over the following years he tracked down more, and by the most widely cited account spent around US$16 million acquiring 35 sleeping, restaurant and Pullman cars. Published figures for the size of that first collection vary between accounts, which is unsurprising for vehicles scattered across a continent and bought one or two at a time.
Most of what was found was tired rather than ruined. The carriages had been built between 1926 and 1949, had served on trains such as Le Train Bleu, the Rome Express and the Nord Express, and had been stored, requisitioned or simply worn out. The task was to return them to the standard of their first years in service while making them fit for a modern main line. The result, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, made its first London to Venice run on 25 May 1982.
- 1895 - Albert Dunn founds the marquetry studio A Dunn & Son.
- 1926 to 1949 - construction of the carriages that now form the continental train.
- 1977 - the first two carriages are bought at auction in Monte Carlo.
- 25 May 1982 - first London to Venice journey of the revived train.
- 2018 - sleeping car 3425 is refitted to create the first Grand Suites.
The English origins of a continental train
One detail tends to surprise passengers. The Wagons-Lits company was Belgian in origin and its trains are remembered as thoroughly continental, yet several of the sleeping cars now in the train were built in England. According to the operator's own carriage histories, sleeping cars 3473 and 3483 were built in Birmingham in 1929, and 3482 was built in England the same year, all entering service on Le Train Bleu. Others, such as 3543, were built in France and decorated by René Prou. The idea of the sleeping car belonged to Georges Nagelmackers, whose story is told in our account of the European sleeping car, but its construction was an international business from the start.
That mixed parentage matters to restorers. A car built in Birmingham and one built in France may look alike from the platform, but differ in joinery, fittings and materials, and each has to be treated on its own terms.
Marquetry, French polish and the family firms
The wood panelling is the part of a heritage carriage most passengers remember, and it is the most fragile. On the British side, the marquetry in the cars of the British Pullman was restored by A Dunn & Son, the firm that had made much of it in the first place. By the late 1970s the business was run by Albert Dunn's son Robert and grandson Bob; it is now led by Albert's great-granddaughter Cheryl.
The firm describes the process plainly. Each panel is stripped of its old French polish so the state of the wood beneath can be seen. Backboards damaged by damp have their rotten sections cut out and replaced, blisters in the veneer are pressed back down, and any marquetry beyond saving is redrawn by hand and remade from veneers chosen to match the original shading. Where possible, fragments of the original are reused so that the repair cannot be seen. The panel is then sanded and sent for polishing.
That polishing is its own trade. Belmond credits A Greenham & Son, a French-polishing firm founded in 1884 and still run by the same family, with an annual visit to work through the train's woodwork panel by panel. The lesson is that restoration is not a single event. A carriage restored once and then left alone would need restoring again within a generation.
Glass, mosaic and the problem of missing records
Restorers of Pullman cars face an unusual obstacle: the records of the Pullman Car Company were destroyed in a bombing raid during the Second World War. The histories now displayed on plaques inside each British Pullman car had to be reconstructed from other evidence. The decorative work presented similar gaps. The mosaic bathroom floors were designed by the artist Marjorie Knowles, who died in 1998 before completing the commission. The mosaicist Aimee Harman joined in 1999, completed the unfinished floor in the car Minerva and took on the care of the others.
On the continental train the glass carries the same weight. Specialists from Lalique, whose founder René Lalique created the celebrated panels in dining car 4141, were among the craftspeople brought in for the original restoration. The history of that glass and of Prou's marquetry is explored in our piece on Lalique, Prou and the Wagons-Lits interiors.
What restoration quietly changes
It is tempting to imagine these carriages as untouched survivors. They are not, and the people who restore them have never claimed otherwise. The British Pullman cars were fitted with electric heating and toughened glass during their restoration, alongside period-sympathetic furnishings such as Art Deco table lamps that were added rather than recovered. On the continental train, sleeping cars 3309 and 3425 were rebuilt internally to create Grand Suites with en-suite bathrooms and convertible saloons, a layout the original cars never had. Belmond describes these as a homage to the private carriages once commissioned by aristocrats, which is a fair way to put it: faithful in craft and materials, new in arrangement.
Car 3309 also illustrates how carriage histories accrete legend. The operator's account links it to the 1929 snowdrift that is often cited as an inspiration for Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Accounts of how long that train was stranded differ, and such associations are best read as part of a carriage's story rather than as settled fact.
Workshops that never close
The craft does not stop when a carriage returns to service. Belmond says that in each period when the continental train is not running, its carriages are taken to workshops in France or Italy to be examined, with everything from Chinese lacquerwork to mechanical components checked, cleaned or restored. Elsewhere, the model is different. In South Africa, the workshop at Rovos Rail's Capital Park depot in Pretoria rebuilds coaches in-house, most of them former National Railways of Zimbabwe vehicles, and the company's steam locomotives include Class 19Ds saved from scrap dealers and returned to service after extensive restoration. That story is told in full in our account of how Rohan Vos rescued his rolling stock.
Where the workshops' work can be seen today
The most direct way to see this craftsmanship is to travel in it. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express carries the restored Wagons-Lits sleeping and dining cars across the Alps to Venice, while the British Pullman keeps the marquetry and mosaics of the 1920s Pullman cars in daily use out of London. In southern Africa, Rovos Rail's Pride of Africa is the product of its own depot's long programme of rebuilding. For a wider view of how these trains differ, see our comparison of the Orient Express trains, or browse all our luxury trains.
