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In effect, the curator for this romantic restoration was Shirley A.M. Sherwood, wife of the shipping tycoon and an Oxford-educated research biochemist. "Every coach had a different story," she says, and a plaque in each car traces its provenance. The most exquisite of all is a dining car with eight frosted-glass panels handcrafted in the style of famed 19th century French jeweler Rene Lalique. The sleeping compartments, nine to twelve to a car, are marvels of compact beauty, with comfortable bench seats that convert into upper and lower berths, mahogany drop tables, and inlaid doors enclosing an ornate washbasin; there is a magnificently paneled toilet at the end of each car.
The train once went to Istanbul, but there is no longer enough demand for that service. As it is, the v.s.O.E. is booked solidly through October, and the company has laid on a third weekly trip from London to Venice. On Sept. 1, according to Sherwood, the Orient Express will be in the black. If occupancy continues at the present rate of 80%, he expects the company's investment to be repaid within four years. In its first month or so, Sherwood concedes, he received "a lot of complaints." They ranged from U.S. tourists' grumbling about the sweetbreads on the dinner menu to the bumpy suspension, and erratic service by crews unattuned to the jolting of cramped trains. From his mail, at least, Sherwood is now satisfied that the v.s.O.E. is running smoothly.
Few complaints are heard aboard. J. Carter Beese Jr., 26, a Baltimore stockbroker who invested $4,000 in this, his first European vacation, figured that the $440 (plus dinner and drinks) for his Venice-Paris ticket was only $ 180 more expensive than the economy airfare for the journey. Caroline Rohm, a fashion designer from New York who buys fabric in Italy twice a year, predicted that she and Friend Henry Kravis. a Manhattan stockbroker, will "sell 200 seats" with their glowing accounts of the journey.
Tony and Gisela Bloom, an attractive South African couple making the London-Venice run, compared the v.s.O.E. to the Blue Train, which runs between Pretoria, Johannesburg and Capetown and is considered one of the world's most luxurious. It was Tony Bloom who provided the only honest-to-Bond suspense on one trip: he found $17,000 in a dirty roll of bills next to the piano. The money was claimed, an official reported, by "a Frenchman." Mystery and intrigue are not dead on the Orient Express.