An exhibition in Paris last year shows a poster of BBC's television adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, in which David Suchet portrayed the role of detective Hercule Poirot. [Photo/CFP]

The years between the world wars were the luxurious Orient Express heyday－one that has since undergone resurgence.

It has never been a single train and route but, rather, a network of trains connecting the cities of the East and West.

It was decimated during World War II.

Hitler conscripted many of the 1,750 cars the line had at its peak and scrapped them down to rolling platforms to transport tanks.

The war advanced the aviation industry, and flying quickly became the chic way to travel after 1945.

In 1977, millionaire shipping-magnate James Sherwood bought two shabby first-class sleeping carriages from the defunct line－without an engine－at an auction.

"People thought he was crazy," the train's senior manager, Bruno Janssens, says.

Sherwood was no railway nut chasing a boyhood dream but was intrigued by the nostalgia the Christie novel and subsequent films had inspired. His enthusiasm was stoked, Janssens says, by the fact that, while only two bidders competed for the train relics, about 500 journalists showed up.