When my alarm went off at 5:55 AM on a Tuesday morning last month—the sky still deep grey, the temperature 31 degrees—my first thought was: will the train have a sleeper car? As my previous rail experiences were of the more upright, local variety—Long Island Railroad, Amtrak, Eurostar—I just wasn’t ready to stop dreaming. As I approached platform B at Paris’s Gare de L’Est to board the infamous Orient Express, frequently portrayed on stage and screen, I realized I wouldn’t have to—though, I also wouldn’t be getting much shuteye. The legendary line that once brought the continent’s jet-setters from France to Constantinople doesn’t contain sleeper cars, but while my destination would be Reims in the Champagne region, I knew the journey itself would remain something of a dreamscape—and a fantasy one at that…