Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits

The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL) is a Belgian-founded French company that provided and operated luxury trains with sleeping and dining cars through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most famously the Orient Express. It was founded in 1872 by the Belgian entrepreneur Georges Nagelmackers, who had been inspired by American Pullman night trains during a trip to the United States in 1867 and 1868. The company built an international network of sleeper and dining services across Europe and later Asia and Africa, operating whole specialized trains or individual cars coupled to state railway services, and it held a monopoly on international luxury rail travel before the First World War. Its historical prominence peaked in 1918, when the Armistice with Germany was signed inside one of its train carriages. In 2010 its rail catering operations passed to Newrest Group International, which continues them today as Newrest Wagons-Lits, running night train and daytime catering services in Austria, Italy, France, Portugal and on Eurostar.