Orient Express to axe British route after 41 years due to Brexit

The luxury Orient Express train is scrapping its British leg of the journey due to Brexit border controls. Belmond, the company that runs the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (VSOE), has decided to drop the London to Folkestone route due to delays in crossing the English Channel to the French port city of Calais.

During the Easter holidays two weeks ago, travellers were held up for up to 14 hours in Dover, the main point to cross the Channel, due to post-Brexit security checks. In the London to Folkestone leg, passengers rode in art deco carriages before taking buses to cross the Channel and boarding Belmond’s continental train in Calais to continue their journey across Europe.

There are fears those delays will get worse.

“We’re adjusting operations in 2024 ahead of enhanced passport and border controls,” The Guardian reported a Belmond spokesman as saying.

“We want to avoid any risk of travel disruption for our guests – delays and missing train connections – and provide the highest level of service, as seamless and relaxed as possible.”

The European Union (EU) is introducing a biometric system where people who are non-EU nationals/non-EU residents, will need to get off their buses to have their passports, as well as fingerprints and faces, biometrically checked.

Also in the works are a plan for EU and British travellers to submit pre-travel authorisation forms.

Passengers from London can take the modern high-speed Eurostar train to Paris and join the VSOE there but “it’s not the same”, Mr Mark Smith, founder of the train travel site The Man in Seat 61, told The Guardian.

“It is a great shame if that part of the experience is gone.”

The historic Orient Express started in 1883, journeying from Paris across Europe through Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest before ending in Constantinople.

It was the world’s first luxury train and was dubbed “the train of kings and the king of trains”.

Its sister train, the Simplon Orient Express, also travelled a route from Paris to Istanbul, but headed south through Lausanne, Simplon, Milan, Venice, Belgrade and Sofia before arriving in Istanbul.

The Orient Express has seen its fair share of history.

Apart from inspiring literary works such as Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train (1932) and Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express (1934), it has also been involved in cross-border tensions and was even blown up by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

By 1977, the original Orient Express routes were retired after more than 100 years of storied journeys.

In 1982, the VSOE started retracing the original Orient Express route and continues the service till today.