Georges Nagelmackers

Georges Lambert Casimir Nagelmackers (25 June 1845 – 10 August 1905) was a Belgian civil engineer and businessman, famous for founding the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits and creating the Orient Express.

Early life Nagelmackers was born on 25 June 1845 in Liège, Belgium. Born into a family of bankers with interests in railways and close links to the court of King Leopold II of Belgium, Georges Nagelmackers trained as a civil engineer.

As a young man he fell in love with an older cousin. When his feelings were not reciprocated, his family encouraged him to travel to the United States of America to help him recover and also further his professional studies.

Career While spending ten months travelling throughout America, he was exposed to train travel on Pullman carriages. He became convinced that there was a market for Pullman-type carriages in Europe. After a proposal to George Pullman to collaborate on developing the European market was rebuffed, Nagelmackers returned to Europe.

Other versions of his biography maintain that Georges Nagelmackers knew about sleeping cars as they were already in operation in Belgium before he traveled to the United States, and that he never actually met George Pullman.

In 1870 he published a proposal to develop sleeper carriages for the European market called "Projet d'Installation de wagons-lits sur les chemins de fer du continent" (Project for the installation of sleeping cars on the railways of the Continent). He also bought the Smyrna–Kasaba Railway in 1893 and also sold it to the French the following year.

In June 1900, Nagelmackers won the four-in-hand (mail coach) driving event during the International Horse Show in Paris. The show was part of the Exposition Universelle, and the equestrian events were later classified as part of the 1900 Summer Olympics. who married Alice Helen Dalziel (1876–1910), the only child of Davison Dalziel, 1st Baron Dalziel of Wooler. After her death in 1910, he married Gloria Monés-Maury, sister of Pedro Monés, Marquess of Casa Maury.

Nagelmackers died on 10 August 1905 in Villepreux, France, at the age of 60.