Founded by Georges Nagelmackers in 1872, CIWL developed an international network of trains beginning in Europe, and later expanding to Asia and Africa.

During his trip to the United States in 1867–1868 the 23-year-old Belgian Georges Nagelmackers was impressed by the Pullman night trains.

Prior to World War I, CIWL held a monopoly being the only group catering to the needs of the international railroad traveller.

The Company's trains also reached Manchuria (Trans-Manchurian Express), China (Peking, Shanghai, and Nanking), and Cairo.

CIWL also commissioned renowned artists such as Adolphe Mouron Cassandre to design posters advertising its services.

Because of World War II and the subsequent communist expansion, CIWL lost more markets in central and eastern Europe.

It sold or leased its coaches to the SNCF, FS, SBB, DB, ÖBB, NMBS/SNCB, NS, DSB and Renfe.

An international sleeping car pool named TEN (Trans Euro Night) was founded at that time and took over and managed (until 1995) many of the carriages of CIWL and of the Mitropa-successor DSG.

At the time, CIWL included the hotel brands Altea, Arcade, Etap, PLM and Pullman.

Catering organisation Eurest and, in the automobile world, Wagons-Lits included Europcar rental and motorway break specialists Relais Autoroute.

[9] In May 2011, Accor announced plans to auction residual historic assets of Wagons-Lits, including posters and tableware.

[11][12] In 1996, all copyrights and trademarks concerning the use of historical brands and archive photographs were transferred to Wagons-Lits Diffusion in Paris.

[15] The Carlson side of the merger had grown from a travel agency founded by Ward Forster in the United States in 1888.

In 2003, the company restored seven cars of the famous Pullman Orient Express and made it available for tourist events.

Begun in 1884, the service is now run by DB NachtZug from Paris as far as Hamburg, although it previously served Copenhagen.

The famous Art Deco poster "Nord Express: (1927) by Cassandre (Adolphe Mouron Cassandre) shows a stylised version of the train that traveled from London and Paris to Riga and Warsaw (Varsovie)[17] The Southern Express connected Paris–Lisbon starting in 1887, to provide the second-half of the through connection from St. Petersburg (Finland/Russia) via Paris to the west coast of Portugal.

The Night Ferry was a through London Victoria to Paris Gare du Nord overnight boat train.

Wagons-Lits operated the service from October 1936 until December 1976 with specially constructed cars designed to fit the smaller British loading gauge.

Agatha Christie set two of her Hercule Poirot mysteries on or around CIWL trains: Sidney Gilliat and Clifford Grey wrote the script for the 1932 British film directed by Walter Forde: In 1991, David Copperfield performed a televised illusion which caused a recently restored "Orient Express dining car" (in fact an American dining car decorated in Wagon-Lits colours) to seemingly vanish into thin air.