Making tracks in style

The cabin shows 1929-style luxury. [Photo provided to China Daily]

There's a sleek Art Deco silver lamp with a fringed pink linen shade. There's a hefty bottle of Taittinger, glistening with sweat in its ice-packed silver bucket. There's a watch hook by the door bolt.

This is all very well for Hercule Poirot and the genteel European nobility who populate Agatha Christie's novel Murder on the Orient Express. But for some of us, these luxe trappings take some getting used to.

Lunch in the restaurant car is slightly less formal than usual, thanks to the heat. The ladies arriving to dine have achieved a bare-armed splendor, and the men have abandoned their de rigueur jackets for the comfort of shirtsleeves.

After sweltering for a few minutes despite sipping a frosty Bellini, I peel off my sports coat and join the club. If our perfectly tailored waiters are aghast, they hide it brilliantly.

As I nibble at a cod nugget on a gold-and-white plate, a voice rings out: "Would you be good enough to bring me a small bottle of mineral water?"

The gravelly tones turn out not to be those of Russian nobility but of a silver-haired Briton. I've clearly read Christie's novel too many times.

"Some people tell us they have found all of the book's characters on the train," my waiter says, with a ghost of a smile.

His tone suggests not every passenger in the dining car enjoys being sized up as a possible murderer.

I resist the urge to look vaguely sinister myself; I'm probably enjoying my lunch too much to pull it off, anyway.

"Reliving that Agatha Christie experience is one of the things we're here for," says the train's senior manager, Bruno Janssens, noting that the company celebrated the 125th anniversary of the author's birth in July with a gala dinner in Venice.

Longtime barman Walter Nisi's special cocktails include Guilty, with 12 "mysterious ingredients".