BEST FOR RAILWAYS
JOURNEYS Rose gardens, pigeons and the vinegar whiff of fish and chips: the
ambience that lingers in the avenues just beyond Cape Town station would have
seemed familiar to a past generation of British-born colonials, reacclimatising
en route to motherland. The forecourt itself, though, is a tribute to modern
South Africa, log-jammed with taxi drivers and snack merchants loudly appealing
to a new breed of commuter.
This clamour fades beyond the blue rope that cordons off a
private platform, home to a quarter-mile of gleaming azure metal. The Blue
Train is a luxury sleeper service that began life in the 1920s, and its current
incarnation is a happy marriage of vintage opulence and contemporary comfort.
Double-size compartments eliminate the yogic contortions demanded aboard a more
typical sleeper train, and are furnished with geometric brocade and dark
marquetry in homage to this mode of transport’s Agatha Christie heyday. Best of
all, there’s a yawning, gold-tinted picture window showing this magnificent
country slide by.
Table Mountain is left behind swirled in its mist, slipshod
suburbs give way to flamingo-dotted lakes and then it’s out into a rolling
enormity of vineyards and orchards.
Amongst the waistcoat ted butlers in the lounge car is Frits
van Helden, who at 56 has been swaying down the Blue Train’s thickly carpeted
corridors for 39 years. ‘Everyone who worked on the railways wanted a job on
this train,’ he says. ‘We were all hand picked.’ The trains have evolved since
then – ‘we ran steam locos well into the ‘80s, and our best suite took up half
a carriage’ – but the view is ageless. ‘It’s a thousand miles to Pretoria,’
says Frits, looking out at the Hex Valley’s snow-dappled crags,’ and I know
every one of them like an old friend.’
Lunch, dispatched amid a festival of linen and crystal, is
parsley-crusted rack of lamb with many toothsome courses either side of it.
Between the dessert wine and the cheese board the train is swallowed by a long
series of tunnels; the last opens into the Karoo, a coppered scrubland that
covers a third of South Africa and most of the voyage.
The Blue Train pitches itself as ‘a window to the soul of
Africa’, a maxim that isn’t confined to the scenery. If Dutch-born Frits is the
oldest hand aboard, then Takunda Mposhi is the youngest – a 24-year-old in his
third month of service. ‘Our country has seen great changes in my lifetime,’ He
says performing the deft mechanical original that converts a compartment’s
armchairs into a wonderfully plump bed. ‘On this train, people from every background
and of every colour work together and play together. When we get back to Cape
Town we will all go down to the beach.’
Suites are butler-serviced and include digital entertainment
systems and marble-fitted en suite bathrooms with baths. The dining car
specializes in native produce such as Karoo lamb and Knysna oysters (including
all meals and drinks; bluetrain.co.za).
