Originally Posted by Mike Foster:
.the only clue i have are the words on sides of coaches which are french . regards mike
The words Wagons Lits: that was a railway company founded by a Belgian engineer in 1883. They ran luxury sleepers. The company stopped in 2003. Wagons Lits means literally Bed Cars, sleepers as you call'em I think. Funny to have these words on an "american" toy train though.
They also ran on the Orient Express, from Ostend in Belgium all the way to Istanbul. An inspiration for quite a few espionage films and novels. I remember Wagons Lits from their catering business, selling coffee and snacks. The Germans had Mitropa, I think that went broke shortly after the Berlin wall came down. After the war it became East German. Their DDR restaurant cars were great, with waiters serving you Russian goulash called Soljanka. They were common sight in the west as they ran on the Berlin-Amsterdam connection, so as a westerner you could have some taste from the other side. That's history now.
Kieffer