In Angleur, a residential neighbourhood in southern Liège, the Nagelmackers family tomb sits in Diguette Cemetery, on land the family donated in 1864. Among those buried there is Georges Nagelmackers, the Belgian engineer and industrialist who founded the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits and created the original Orient Express.

Nagelmackers’s path to the railway business began in 1867, when his father sent him to the United States after he said he wanted to marry his cousin. There, Nagelmackers became interested in Pullman’s night trains and gathered passengers’ views as he considered ways to improve the idea. Back in Belgium, he worked for the family’s mining and iron interests while developing his plans.

In April 1870, he published a brochure describing “sleeper carriages.” The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War later that year halted plans to launch the service, and his family opposed the project and withdrew financial support. With backing from King Leopold II, Nagelmackers nevertheless ran his first sleeper carriage between Paris and Vienna in November 1872.

In London, he met American Colonel William D’Alton Mann, who had developed a different sleeping-car design. They formed Mann’s Sleeping Carriage Company in 1873 and developed carriages with compartments opening onto a side corridor, with toilets at the end. A journey by the Prince of Wales helped draw attention to the venture. In 1876, the partners established the International Sleeping Car and European Express Company, with King Leopold II also contributing financially.

The company reached a turning point in 1883, when Mann returned to the United States and sold his shares to the king. Nagelmackers extended the Paris–Vienna route to Constantinople and named it the Orient Express. The city was not renamed Istanbul until 1930.

Nagelmackers died at his château in Villepreux, near Versailles, on July 10, 1905. After his funeral, his body was brought to Belgium and buried in the family tomb at Diguette Cemetery. The grave is in the first aisle on the left after entering the cemetery, at the end of Rue Devant l’Aîte in Angleur.

Sources: Atlas Obscura.