Shosholoza Meyl- A Pleasant experience.

[allanroy]

Just had a look at there website and you can book and pay online.

http://www.cbsc.co.za/shosholozaonline/

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

This must be new. When we went I still had to go to CT station to book. What a pleasure. They are moving in the right direction. More Marketing and advertising needed.

[allanroy]

Just booked and paid online, with in seconds got a sms to confirm the booking. Very impressed, and i can pickup my ticket at Cape Town.

[Jerome West]

The same system at https://www.cbsc.co.za/expressonline/ books for the Business Express.

[Luca Lategan]

Sorry to say, but this looks just as fake...

[Jerome West]

Both the Shosholoza and Business Express were done by the same company. The link to the BE one is on the www.metrorail.co.za website. They were done through PRASA. How and if it works I don't know. Has anyone got experience on buying tickets through these gateways?

[allanroy]

Yes I just booked and paid for the Shosholoza Meyl

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

It was sad to see Ben Trovato rip Shosaloza Meyl off in the Sunday Times. Just because he had a bad experience in Durban he followed that with an alledged bad experience on the train from Durban to Cape Town where he was cynical about everything. I have E Mailed him and suggested he sticks to flying and let his luggage be lost or stolen and be delayed or have bad weather and then can complain about that as well.

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Well done Stephan!

I did not see the piece but I can imagine!

[John Ashworth]

I Googled it and found this - is it the one you're referring to? Apart from his rant against Shosholoza Meyl, the whole tone of the first few paragraphs is pretty racist. Somebody added the comment: How interesting - black people the majority in KZN and a Sunday Times columnist playing a spot the white person game. Glad I read it online by accident and didn't pay.. I'm rather surprised that this sort of stuff gets published at all.

Time spent on the wrong side of the tracks

The Whipping Boy
Nov 29, 2009 12:00 AM | By Ben Trovato
Sunday Times

With the holiday from hell coming to an end, Brenda and I took a walk through central Durban.

We started at the disaster area formerly known as the Golden Mile and headed for the city hall. As I mentioned last week, everything from North Beach to Addington has been smashed down or dug up. I have no idea if the council is upgrading the beach front or if this is city manager Mike Sutcliffe's idea of what an authentic tourist attraction should look like in Africa.

Brenda suggested we play a game while we walked. The stakes were R10 for every white person spotted. We had covered eight or nine blocks and neither of us had won a thing. "This is a stupid game," I said. Just then I spotted a white man. "There!" I shouted, jumping up and down. "You owe me R10." Brenda snorted. "That's a vagrant," she said. "He's worth only R5."

I was mystified. Where had all the white people gone? Emigrated? Surely not. Moved to Cape Town? Quite possibly. I began a series of deep-breathing exercises to prepare to fight our way back to the hotel, but the Zulu hordes ignored us and went about their business as if it were the most natural thing in the world to take over an entire city without a shot being fired.

After a week of rain, wind and temporary insanity, one might think one would do the sensible thing and fly straight home. But no. Brenda thought it a good idea to return by train. Not on something sensible like Rovos Rail, of course. We had to travel with the widely feared SA Railways.

In the old days, a list of names would be put up on each carriage. That way you could stroll along the platform until you spotted your compartment. This quaint practice has been done away with. Now there is only one list. It contains the name of every passenger on the train and is tucked away behind a pillar. From where I stood, at the back of a hysterical throng of people 10 deep, the names may as well have been ants for all the sense they made. Fortunately, I had a pair of binoculars on me, but more on those in a moment.

Struggling with our bags - porters are apparently no longer required to perform this duty and are instead expected to stare at white passengers as if they were personally responsible for apartheid - we eventually squeezed into the compartment. I had barely sat down when a woolly faced red-eyed beast of a man banged on the door and said he had booked adjoining compartments to accommodate his extended family. I extended my sympathies and pointedly ignored him. He said he would have me killed if I didn't move. Well, he didn't actually say that, but his eyes certainly did. I told Brenda to get the bags and meet me on the platform.

Eventually we were escorted to a shoe box. Some might know it as a coupé. We took it in turns to go inside and sit down for a bit while the other waited outside in the corridor. Our coupé made Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island look like a suite at the Mount Nelson. Don't believe me? The coupé measured 1.8m x 1.4m. Mandela's cell measured 2.4m x 2.4m. Our basin was blocked. His probably worked. Like his cell, our door could be opened at any time by authorised officials. Where Mandela had intelligent neighbours who shared his views, we had surly sheep farmers on one side and shrieking harridans from the Cape Flats on the other. Okay, we might not have spent 18 years in the coupé, but by the time we reached Cape Town it certainly felt like we had.

Repairing to the bar out of fear that Brenda and I would begin devouring one another like rats in a sack, I ordered a Coke and reached for my binoculars. I bought them in Fish Hoek and they are by far the best pair I have ever owned. They are hollow. The eyepieces unscrew, allowing one to fill up each side with a spirit of one's choice. I had it loaded with brandy on the left and gin on the right. Things were going splendidly until I went to the bar to fetch a fresh Coke and returned to find a fellow passenger fiddling with the binoculars. She was about 104 and wanted to take a closer look at the springbok. I told her there were no springbok and that she was probably losing her mind. She seemed disappointed, but nowhere near as disappointed as she would have been had she poured 250ml of neat Gordon's and Klipdrift into her eyes.

Smoking is no longer allowed on trains. And since drinkers are invariably smokers, the bar stands empty while passengers drink and smoke in the privacy of their own compartments. This is no fun at all.

Vendors selling coffee and chips and bedding and all sorts of nonsense banged on our door at ungodly hours. Late on the second night I went from coach to coach banging on other people's doors. "Police! Open up!" I shouted. Then I ran away. Childish, perhaps, but it added to the excitement of passing through stations like Bosvark.

The credit card machine was broken, as was the air-con in the dining car. There were long delays at stations and a bag we left on the train became an early Christmas present for one of the staff. Good luck for 2010, Shosholoza Meyl.

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

Yep thats the one. What attracted my attention was large photo of o Shos train

[Luca Lategan]

Ag, this man should just jump into the ocean with an anchor around his neck.

Don't worry Stefan; I met hoards of them while working on the RS trains. It doesn't matter how perfect the day might be, they will ALWAYS find an excuse to complain. The best thing one can do is just to ignore them and try your best, that’s seldom enough though. It's just a shame that this one ended in the papers.

Just a bit of background: I travelled on the Southbound Transkaroo on Monday. I also had my car on the train as I didn't want to come back to Cape Town by tiresome road. The week before I went to the station to hear if there wasn't maybe any space available on a later train, but no luck. On the way back to Germiston I luckily saw a sign next to the road that said Shosholoza Meyl platform access and car loading, so I marked it on my GPS, else I don't know how I would've found the place. The whole car loading experience was a very good one and they are really very efficient. They just forgot to ask me for my ticket so I received a call in the Wimpy and they promptly came to fetch it. The train did depart more than an hour late due to a sitter set on our platform and our set still in Braamfontein yard. We made up some time and only arrived in Worcester 5mins late. Unfortunately some things delayed us especially from Wellington so the arrival in Cape Town was again almost an hour delayed. All in all, a Pleasant Experience

HOWEVER: As much as I want to see Shosholoza's clientele pick up, they still have a bit to catch up on.
I don't know the setup at Durban station, but at Johannesburg you didn't really knew where to go if you were a normal passenger in the main complex, as most probably know, Park station is huge and there's not a lot of signage to direct you anywhere. Finally I did come to a tucked away corner where you went through gates, but no real check in. The train manager was a Mr Peter van Zyl and he really wasn't the friendliest guy. Everyone just sad around patiently on the platform waiting area, not to bad. There was a board that directed had the passenger list on in alphabetical order, no hurry to get your name and really not that bad.

The dining car aircon did NOT work AT ALL and during the afternoon it was EXTREMELY hot I tried to cool down by sucking on ice and broke a crown in doing so. I later went for a cool shower, but that didn't help much either. At least the Savanna and Beef curry went down well. During the afternoon while I was in the Dining saloon, eating ice and catching up on emails, I locked my coupe and when I wanted to go back I needed a coach key to open it. What a mission as no one suddenly appeared to have one. When we got to Kroonstad I just pushed my door closed to go and have a look at the loco plinthed there in very good condition. Unfortunately the catch must've fallen closed again. Mr Van Zyl stood barely 2m away from my coupe and I politely asked him for a coach key. He gave me a very rude answer about me being a nuisance and how he would call the SAPS if I will ask him again, this being the first time and me being very polite towards him. Talk about customer service. Unfortunately he disappeared during the night and I couldn't take him on on his offer. So the staff wasn't very considerate except for two coloured staff members, the one coming from SATS days, which he referred to as the "good old days".

So it was not TOO bad, but they really need to work on those customer relations skills.

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

Kroonstad Luca? I assume you mean Klerksdorp! I know they are working on the new Century City station and I see trains stopped on the top of the junction (Montegue Gardens, Paarden Eiland, Main line.) Only one line is operational and one can wait up to 15 minutes for another train to pass.

[Luca Lategan]

Sorry, yes, I mean Klerksdorp. Century city was a big delayer yes. I don't know why they don't reroute the trains via Woodstock

[Derek Walker]

How can the guy threaten you with the SAPS because you legimately want to enter your locked compartment? If I was you I would go after this guy and plaster his name all over the internet and report him to somebody or other. People like that should be named and shamed. One of those petty empire people that needs a swift kick in the pants.
But, twas an interesting report, I just wish somebody would photograph the interior of the coaches so we can see what has changed.