Updated July 1, 2024 at 5:30 p.m.
PARIS — “A palace on rails” is how designer Thierry Gaugain describes his G Train concept project, destined for a future owner ready to shell out $350 million. The world’s first private luxury train project is equipped with 14 glass cars, terraces and a garden. It is entirely modular, with room for 20 bedrooms, a spa, a gym, a restaurant and even a place to store engines from buggies to microlights.
Although the designer — known for creating spectacular yachts — has yet to find a buyer for his G Train, his unusual project demonstrates a paradigm shift that puts designers at the center of thinking. “Today, the train is no longer seen as a mode of transport to go from point A to point B. The on-board experience takes precedence over the journey,” says railway historian Arthur Mettetal.
Making slowness desirable
The revival of night trains, new interior concepts signed by design stars, ultra-luxury cruise trains are some of the means in place to encourage travelers to abandon air travel for this more environmentally-friendly form of transportation, which is enjoying renewed interest. Last summer, France’s national railway company, SNCF, handled a record 24 million passengers. In 2022, night trains saw an 149% increase, according to a Trainline survey with YouGov.
“We’re clearly at a turning point. The train is a positive link in the evolution of our society, but we’re going to have to make people want to go back on it,” said Julien d’Hoker, founder of the Yellow Window design agency specializing in mobility. In addition to ticket prices, one of the major challenges is to make slowness desirable, in contrast to the race for speed of recent decades. Design thus becomes a central tool. “We’re seeing the arrival of start-ups and new concepts that are dusting off the railway sector and allowing designers to express themselves the way they’ve wanted to do for years,” d’Hoker said.
A new way to travel
At SNCF, design has always been at the core of major developments. In the 1970s, the company began collaborating with Roger Tallon, a visionary with a passion for high-speed rail travel, who was to play a decisive role in railway design in France. He worked on the concepts for the Corail trains, the TGV duplex and even the Eurostar. He created revolutionary new layouts, such as the various living areas within trains, with lounges for young people, business travelers and dining cars.
His forward-looking vision still resonates today. In the early 2000s, the SNCF collaborated with fashion designer Christian Lacroix to dress the TGVs. Although most passengers remember the flashy new seat colors, Lacroix also contributed to the evolution of the shape of the seats, the practicality of the carriages, with luggage racks in the center of the cars, and the lighting, with blinds to replace the curtains. Today, giving a train a new look goes beyond comfort and aesthetic; designers have to create a new way of traveling.
The train is like a second home.
While for some, designing a train interior is a childhood dream, everyone agrees that the challenge is immense. The constraints cannot be ignored for style or decorative whimsy. The specifications are heavy and complex. “Designing the interior of a train is a mix of simplicity and ergonomic intelligence. Practicality makes for a successful and exceptional experience. The passenger must not suffer due to poor design,” says Tristan Auer, designer of Grand Suites for the luxury hotelier Belmond’s Royal Scotsman train.
“Extremely advanced global design”
Designers have to adapt to a host of norms, take into account safety, ergonomics, durability, maintenance, accessibility and acoustics, all while initiating a new dynamic. For Maxime d’Angeac, artistic director of the new Orient Express, “It’s a very complex exercise. It’s not the work of a decorator, but of extremely advanced global design, and we cannot make mistakes. A train like the Orient Express isn’t just beautiful, it’s detailed, precise and masterful. There are no gratuitous sets, everything has a function and has to work.”
The train is also an enclosed space where people have to live together in harmony. Activities, behaviors and desires have evolved considerably: “The train is a shared living space in which you can create your own bubble, like a second home, or converse with your neighbors — that’s the designer’s challenge,” d’Hocker said.
Forgetting space constraints
The SNCF is taking the subject head-on, making design an emblematic marker. “We need to think globally about today’s challenges. The scale of the task is enormous,” said Florence Rousseau, Marketing Director of TGV Inoui 2025. A few weeks ago, the public company unveiled the interior design of the future Inoui TGVs, created by the renowned Japanese design studio Nendo and Arep, a French agency with expertise in mobility.
Their reinterpretation focuses on a qualitative, gentle and poetic on-board experience. “The train is not just another mode of transportation, it’s an office, a bedroom, a dining room and a meeting place all in one. The idea here is to create gentle bubbles and showcase the landscape, so that passengers forget they’re in a confined space,” said Isabelle Le Saux, design director of SNCF Voyageurs.
The return of the night train
“Discretion and timelessness, the hallmarks of the Nendo studio, are also essential because these trains must last 40 years or so,” Rousseau said. A great deal of attention has been paid to the new hyper-functional seats, featuring innovative foam covered with a 3D knitted fabric made from natural fibers. It produces a hammock effect, conforms to the shape of the back and adapts to all morphologies. A new, rounded lemon-yellow table lamp echoes a more familiar, domestic ambience, taking us away from the railway world. The designers have also completely redesigned the bar to make it “the jewel of the on-board experience,” Rousseau said.
If we want people to get off planes, train travel has to be very desirable.
The return of night trains is also a major contemporary concern, as they are a serious alternative to medium-haul flights. Two young entrepreneurs, Adrien Aumont (co-founder of KissKissBankBank) and Romain Payet, have taken on the challenge of reviving the night train’s image by creating Midnight Trains “hotels on rails”.
These trains, which will link Paris to a dozen major European cities from 2025, aim to be an option more in tune with the times, far removed from the off-putting image of sleeper trains. “If we want people to get off planes, train travel has to be very desirable. We don’t believe in punitive ecology, we want to offer a new formula that will appeal to even the most reluctant,” Payet said.
Inspired by the codes of the hospitality industry, these trains feature private rooms, a real restaurant, whose menu has been devised by a pillar of Parisian bistronomy, and a cocktail bar. The entry-level price for a night in a Japanese capsule-style room is equivalent to the price of a low-cost airline ticket. Julien d’Hoker, who oversees the design and interior layout of Midnight Trains, has created a warm, hushed atmosphere, focusing “on luxury sensations rather than ostentation”, as Midnight Trains aims to revolutionize the sleeper train experience while remaining accessible.
The rail, the new luxury trend
This more lifestyle-oriented mode of travel has attracted the attention of hotel and luxury groups, who are also investing in the market with cruise trains based on imagination, heritage and glitz. They’ve called on celebrities from the worlds of design, and even cinema, to revive the golden age of luxury trains, with models that rival each other in sophistication. Slowness and nostalgia are the heart of the theme. These high luxury trains help revive the image of rail travel by making it an exceptional experience.
It’s going to be difficult to get people back on the train in large numbers.
Hotelier Belmond, acquired by LVMH (which also owns Les Echos) in 2019, saw the potential of legendary trains as early as 1982, when it relaunched the Venice Simplon-Orient Express. Since then, Belmond has developed several spectacular routes around the world. Aboard the British Pullman, passengers travel in carriages designed by aesthetic filmmaker Wes Anderson. On the Royal Scotsman designed by Tristan Auer promises an immersive experience; the plush décor echoes Scottish traditions and landscapes.
“I designed the bespoke grand suites like a tailor, down to the smallest details. For some passengers, staying aboard the Royal Scotsman is the trip of a lifetime. As a designer, I have to take up the challenge of combining dream and reality,” said Auer, who has designed car and aircraft interiors.
To write the new history of the legendary Orient Express, which first entered service in the 1920s and is now owned by Accor group, Maxime d’Angeac designed a showcase of extreme luxury, embellished by the talents of the finest French craftsmen, just as it was originally adorned with Morrison marquetry and Lalique panels.
Cinematic décor
Scheduled to go into service in 2026, this train promises a timeless journey. In the meantime, impatient passengers will be able to board other Orient Express La Dolce Vita trains crossing Italy from November 2024 onwards. Their flamboyant interiors, imagined by Dimore Studio, one of Milan’s hottest design agencies, celebrate the golden age of Italian design in the 1960s and 1970s with a cinematic décor.
Railroad historian Clive Lamming is however more skeptical about the railway’s return to favor — and above all, mass appeal: “I think it’s going to be difficult to get people back on the train in large numbers. Particularly in rural areas, where stations have disappeared and users prefer the more convenient and comfortable car. It’s not enough to change the color of a train and the quality of the coffee, except for a limited clientele of bobo travelers.” So, it’s up to these talented designers, to paraphrase SNCF’s famous slogan, “to make you prefer the train”.
*Originally published Feb. 04, 2024, this article was updated July 1, 2024 with enriched media and new information about the Guardian of the Nile, Egypt’s first Made-in-Italy luxury tourist train.
