The majority of the episode was filmed at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, where the design team built a believable replica of an Orient Express carriage.
Agatha Christie took her first journey on the Orient Express in late 1928. Months later, in February 1929, the Orient Express was marooned for six days near Cherkeskoy, Turkey due to a blizzard. In December 1931, Christie's return journey on the Orient Express was delayed for 24 hours due to a flood which washed away sections of track. Christie used these elements as inspirations for her novel.
The Orient Express passenger train service was created in 1883, originally covering the distance from Paris to Vienna. In 1889. the eastern terminus of the line was moved to Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire (renamed to Istanbul in 1930). The service continued to operate with minor changes until 1977.
At the time of the original novel's publication in January, 1934, nobody had been arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. The case was unsolved. In September 1934, German carpenter Richard Hauptmann was arrested for the crimes. His trial lasted from January 2 to February 13, 1935, and he was found guilty of first-degree murder. Hauptmann was executed on April 3, 1936, dying in the electric chair.
From Andrew Martin's Night Trains: The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper, Chapter 6 NVR refers to the Nene Valley Railway near Peterborough in the UK The NVR runs a Blue-Train-themed dining evenings ... The mocked up bar car will strike many visitors as being mysteriously familiar, because it stands in for the W-L [Wagons-Lits] dining car in the version of Murder on the Orient Express made in 2010 by ITV, and starring David Suchet as Poirot. In fact, there was never any bar car on the Orient Express, but for filming purposes, it is easier to muster the dozen suspects in a bar car than a restaurant car, which is where Poirot convenes them in the novel.