Blue Train Trip

[hansieswart]

My wife and I had were fortunate enough to experience a trip on the Blue Train from Pretoria to Cape Town these past two days. I don't know enough to report on matters technical (except to say that the same two locomotives did all the work from Pretoria through to Cape Town station), so I will stick to a general description:

Through reading reviews on the internet beforehand, I got the impression that previous travellers' experiences ranged from "very good" to "very bad". I am pleased to report however, that this trip was an absolutely marvellous experience. The only minor negative was that we arrived at Kimberly too late to do the Mining Museum Excursion as advertised, (due to a failed goods train causing us to be late, apparently). Apart from this, everyting went like clockwork.

The train is beautifully appointed on the inside. The solid wood doors, panelling and intricate inlay work delighted my hobby woodworker's-heart for a non-stop 27 hours. The large windows with their electric blinds made viewing easy (although the fact that they can't be opened makes it impossible to take photographs of the train from the train). The decor is stylish and comfortable, the rooms well-designed and luxurious and the ride soft and quiet (compared to e.g Premier Classe trips we have done before).

The best feature of the train for us, however, was the staff. From the Train Manager down to the very last waiter or barman (not to mention the personal butler) everyone was friendly, helpful and accommodating and nothing was too much trouble. This is no mean feat considering that they started work at 06h00 the first morning and the patrons at the last dinner sitting left the dining car at about 11h00 that night. I thought that the Train Manager's "24-hour Availability" was a nice marketing pitch, until I joked about it to him this morning and he told me how he got 2 hours' sleep last night after a passenger got ill at 2 o'clock in the morning and he had to arrange for the train to stop at Laingsburg and have an ambulance come from Cape Town to collect her there. There was a clear majority of foreign passengers on this trip and the staff (to the last one) really made me proud to be South African.

I have an uncontrollable weakness for making rough calculations in my head while having an experience like this. I did it again this time and the conclusion bothers me. Those of you who run trains should know best what these things cost, but it cannot be cheap to move that train with such a large staff from Pretoria to Cape Town. Even with the Blue Train's not insignificant ticket price, my rough estimates do not leave a large margin, if any. One could conceivably make a case for subsidizing public transport for people to get to and from work, but what motivation does one offer for a loss-making Blue train? That is assuming that my gut feel isn't completely wrong - even though I sincerely hope that it is!

Be that as it may, it still was a wonderful experience - one which we are very glad we had.

[John Ashworth]

Thanks, Hansie. I rode the Blue Train from Pretoria to Victoria Falls in the year 2000, and it sounds as if it is still as good now as it was then.