Researching for a novel

[M123]

Hi everybody
As the headline says, I am researching for a novel I am writing.
In the novel, a train is supposed to have a big role with the characters engaging with it in different ways. Only problem is - I don't know anything about trains, I just know I have always been fascinated by them and wanted to travel through Europe with them.
Well, anyway. The novel takes place in the 1920's somewhere in Europe.
I don't know yet which route the train is supposed to take in the novel. But I have an idea that it could be something like from Copenhagen through Hamborg, Köln, Paris, München, Wien, Prag, Berlin, Warsaw. Maybe also London. (It will be ok in the novel to make my own route) within reason. There is supposed to be both freight wagons and passengers wagons. The decor in the passenger wagons have to look like it is from around 1900 to 1920.
Have you any idea which train (type, company, owner, which country it was built in and so on) could have been on a route similar to this in the 1920's?
Any ideas to where I can get more information?
Have a nive evening

 

[EM2]

Hello! Welcome to the forum.
The company that would have ran a train like that would probably be CIWL (Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits), the company that ran the Orient Express. They would either supply very luxurious coaches for the whole train, or attach their sleeping & dining coaches to trains operated by state railways.
They ran a huge range of long-distance trains across Europe. The Wikipedia page has a list of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_Internationale_des_Wagons-Lits#Corporate_history

 

[Bevan Price]

International trains would often contain coaches from several different countries, but German coaches (DR - Deutches Reichsbahn at that era) would have been found over much of Western & Central mainland Europe at that time. Trains often contained multiple portions serving several destinations. (See below)

Long distance trains might carry parcels vans, but freight wagons carrying coal, minerals, etc. would be mainly confined to "freight-only" trains - although a few freight wagons might be coupled onto the back of a few branch line passenger trains.

Locomotives at that time would be almost entirely steam, although there were a few electrified lines.

Don't forget that World War 1 took place between 1914 & 1918, and led to curtailment of international services, not all of which might have been fully restored by the 1920s.

Look through the photo gallery at this site, particularly the steam & museum sections, to get an idea of what some of the older locomotives & stock looked like:-

http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix_frameset.html

Examples of international trains - taken from a 1953 timetable, but similar services had operated for many years, and continued into the 1970s & later.

Hook v. Holland - to Graz (Austria), with portions for Rome & Vienna, via Amsterdam, Koln, Ulm, Munich & Salzburg;. conveyed portions from Ostend to Vienna, and Amsterdam to Genoa / Ventmiglia.

Hamburg to Rome via Augsburg, Munich, Salzburg, Villach; conveyed portion from Copenhagen to Rome, and a portion to Split (then in Yugoslavia)

Plus many more choices available

 

[M123]

Thanks a lot for you answers! It was very helpful

 

[30907]

One point to add: although coaches (and parcels/post vans ) would have run through several countries on one journey, extra coaches for domestic travel would often have been attached/detached at border stations.
Also, the locomotive would always have been changed at a border station and possibly several times within a large country (eg Germany).
There might have been reversals of direction, too, combined with those - as still happens at Stuttgart and Muenchen today (I'm guessing a German connection from your username); this was more common pre-1939.