US-French museum to offer night on Orient Express

Visitors to a rail museum in France’s Burgundy region, the brainchild of US entrepreneur Gregory Marshall, will have a chance to spend a night on the legendary Orient Express.

Two carriages and a locomotive from the line created in 1883 to carry the well-heeled from Paris to Constantinople, as Istanbul was then called, are the jewel of Marshall’s growing collection of steam trains for a hotel-cum-museum he hopes to open next year.

The Orient Express stopped serving Istanbul in 1977 when the service was shortened and the fabled train made its last journey in December 2009.

Marshall’s “dream train” project is centered on a disused railway station nestled among century-old oaks and aspens in the village of Dracy-Saint-Loup, population 600.

Once he brings the long-deserted station, built in 1882, back to life, “it’ll be great for kids,” said the 71-year-old.

“I’ve loved trains since I was a child,” said Marshall, a former US Marine who remembers the first toy train his father gave him when he was 5 or 6 years old.

Marshall’s French manager, Gregory Godessart, says guests cannot expect to enjoy all the modern comforts, but just “to have fun spending the night in the Orient Express.”

So far one of the wagons is practically ready to take paying guests, with Marshall aiming for a spring 2018 opening.

Marshall, who made a fortune from some telecommunications patents, bought the dilapidated building from the French state railway company SNCF in September 2016.

He knows his “dream train” project is going to bust the 200,000 euro ($230,000) budget he set.

But he doesn’t mind.