Devil's Advocate:
to compare it to Rapido's Canadian,
The Canadian has been in service for about 60 years
There have been 3 main paint schemes, all pretty simple (until recently)
The car structure has been unchanged until the current rebuildings
The cars have run in other trains, as have the locos.
The train does run through a country with a population comparable to London (well, it was when I was in school).