London to Istanbul by train

Good evening. In 1883 the Orient Express made its inaugural run from Paris to Constantinople, as the city was still commonly known then. Passengers travelled via Vienna and Budapest and disembarked at the Bulgarian port of Varna, completing their journey across the Black Sea by steamship.
For more than 80 years, the Orient Express continued to offer variations on this route, with the service eventually hitting the buffers in 1977. Aided no doubt by the writings of Agatha Christie, the romance of this overland journey continues to resonate across the decades. In fact, the French hospitality group Accor plans to resurrect an iteration of the luxury service in 2025, which will no doubt come with a hefty price tag.
But you don’t have to be a Christie-style heiress, count or Russian princess to experience this iconic route. Continuing our popular series of great rail journeys, Ben Aitken rides the rails from London to Istanbul, travelling on ordinary scheduled services. While Orient Express passengers were wined and dined before retiring to their private quarters, our writer has to make do with a bag of peanuts and a compartment shared with “four Swiss teenagers and a Moldovan dentist”. “Rambunctious and halting” the night trains may be, but “the simple magic of crossing an entire country in your sleep will comfortably offset any number of niggles”.
Aitken is beguiled by the “deep vistas”, “easy companionship” and “steady staccato” of long-distance rail travel. He makes an entertaining and convincing argument for taking the train over the plane, although there’s one issue that seems to cross the divide between the two modes of transport – “the toddler three rows back” who has been “kicking off since Karlsruhe”.