and the Hercule Poirot television mystery Three Act Tragedy also by Agatha Christie, the novel The Colossus of Arcadia (1938) by E. Phillips Oppenheim and the novel Mon Ami Maigret (1949) by Georges Simenon. The Blue Train Races were a series of record-breaking attempts between automobiles and trains in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It saw a number of motorists and their own, or sponsored, automobiles race against "le train bleu". The Blue Train Bentleys, two Bentley Speed Six automobiles owned by "Bentley Boy" Woolf Barnato, were involved in the Blue Train Races. Philip Marlowe comes around after being knocked unconscious to see a poster advertising "See the French Riviera by The Blue Train" in Raymond Chandler's novel "The Lady in the Lake" (1943). In 1963, the belle-epoque restaurant at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris was renamed Le Train Bleu to honor the historic train. A French television series, Le train bleu s'arrete 13 fois'' (lit. "The Blue Train Stops 13 times"), appeared on the French channel ORTF between October 8, 1965, and March 11, 1966. It featured one mystery episode for each of the thirteen stops of the Train Bleu between Paris and Menton, based on short stories by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Bloomingdale's flagship store in New York City operated a restaurant named Le Train Bleu from 1979 to 2016. Named after the legendary train, its interior was a wider version of what the dining car on the original train might have looked like. The Blue Train is mentioned in the 2022 movie "Downton Abbey: A New Era" (set in 1928) carrying the Grantham family through France to the French Riviera and back. See also Famous trains References Books Train Bleu Night trains Railway services introduced in 1886 Railway services discontinued in 2003