The BBC iplayer is showing this early work by dramatist Stephen Poliakoff. The story is set on a cross-European railway service. The Ost-West express was a once-a-week service that connected Ostend (Belgium) with various cities across Europe. The train was made up so that every carriage ended up at a different place. The train was re-arranged at Aachen (Germany) so that it split between routes to toward Scandinavia to the North; straight on toward Berlin (East and West Germany) and to Moscow, and east towards Vienna (Austria) etc.
We took this train in 1988 to visit my parents, who were living in Warsaw (Poland). On the return trip we travelled in a Russian carriage, complete with bunks and a samovar tea-urn. Our journey, although not as eventful as that described by Poliakoff, was certainly a railway adventure in the old-style – the transition into East Germany (only a few years from collapse) was dramatic. Travelling through the German industrial Ruhr, at night, was amazing.
I posted before about this train ride.