The Blue Train
South Africa's luxury express between Pretoria and Cape Town, billed as a five-star hotel on rails.
Last updated
via Wikipedia: Blue Train (South Africa) · see source
The Blue Train is a luxury passenger train that crosses South Africa on a diagonal route of roughly 1600 km between Pretoria and Cape Town. It ranks among the most lavish rail journeys anywhere.
Guests travel in soundproofed, carpeted compartments with their own en-suite bathrooms, many fitted with a full-size bath, behind gold-tinted picture windows, with butler service, two lounge cars and an observation car. Its operators market it as a moving five-star hotel and point out that kings and presidents have ridden it. A trip takes about 27 hours on average.
Lore & Background
The train traces its roots to 1923, when the Union Express began running from Johannesburg to Cape Town, with the return working called the Union Limited. Comforts were added over the following years: a dining saloon in 1933 and air-conditioned coaches from Metro-Cammell in 1939. Steel carriages painted blue arrived in 1937 and earned the service its nickname.
Wartime suspension came in 1942, and when the train came back in 1946 the Blue Train name became official. Electric 3E locomotives took over between Cape Town and Touws River in 1955, and Union Carriage & Wagon supplied two new 16-carriage sets in September 1972. The train was refurbished and relaunched in 1997.
Did You Know?
- Past passengers include Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Quincy Jones and Kylie Minogue.
- Class 20E locomotives 20-031 and 20-032 replaced Class 18Es on the train in 2015.
- Shosholoza Meyl runs an ordinary, non-luxury train on the same Pretoria to Cape Town route.
- Special package tours have taken the train to Durban and the Bakubung Game Lodge.
More in Legendary Trains
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Blue Train (South Africa) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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