the paid two-week vacation for French workers. Second-class and third-class sleeping cars were added to the Blue Train to carry middle and working class French people on holiday to the South of France. In 1938, the Popular Front government nationalized the private railway companies in France, including PLM. After 1938, le train bleu was run by the new French national railway company SNCF as an ordinary night express train. 1949–1978 Service was interrupted during the Second World War but resumed in 1949, when the train officially took the name Le Train Bleu. Scheduled airline service began between Paris and Nice in 1945, which took away much of the wealthy clientele. In 1962 the rolling stock was replaced by MU coaches and second class coaches were introduced in the Blue Train. In 1971 the CIWL sold its rolling stock to the national railway companies that operated the trains further on. After 1978, the train added cars with couchettes to attract more middle-class passengers. The end Beginning in the 1980s the night express trains were gradually replaced by the high-speed TGV trains, which cut the length of the journey from Paris to Nice from 20 hours to five, and this effectively ended the era of luxury night trains to the French Riviera. After a long history, Le Train Bleu ceased to exist under that name in September 2003, when SNCF rebranded all of its principal overnight trains as Service Nuit. The train coaches remained in use until 9 December 2007, by which time the train had lost its dining car and most of its sleeping cars. An overnight train between Paris and Nice continued to run under SNCF's Intercités de Nuit brand, only carrying couchette and reclining seat accommodation and not luxury sleeping cars, but this was discontinued from 9 December 2017 due to withdrawal of funding from the French Government. However, a Paris-Nice night train has been scheduled to restart on 29 March 2021. In art, literature and popular culture In 1924, le train bleu inspired a ballet of the same name, created by Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, with music by Darius Milhaud, a story by Jean Cocteau, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, stage design by Henri Laurens, costumes by Coco Chanel and a curtain painted by a 1922 work of Pablo Picasso. The train was featured in the novel The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie,