Asytek.159
net.railroad
utzoo!decvax!cca!hplabs!menlo70!sytek!msm@sri-unix
Wed May 5 10:47:08 1982
Luxury Trains
>From menlo70!ucbvax!C70:daemon Wed May 5 02:15:47 1982
Mail from SRI-UNIX rcvd at 3-May-82 1933-EDT
Date: 3 May 82 16:23-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-UNIX
To: weinstock at cmuc
Subject: Luxury trains
Remailed-date: 4 May 1982 0844-EDT
Remailed-from: Charles B. Weinstock <WEINSTOCK AT CMU-20C>
Remailed-to: railroad at MIT-MC
a205 1014 03 May 82
AM-Focus-Train, Bjt,750
TODAY'S FOCUS: Luxury Train, Leisurely Travel
Laserphoto NY33
By ANDREW TORCHIA
Associated Press Writer
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - On the platform, a timeless
African scene: a black woman in coveralls ambles by, sipping a fruit
drink and effortlessly balancing a tray of dishes on her head.
On the train, a scene of European luxury: white passengers settle in
upholstered chairs, sipping the sparkling wine that South African
Railways provides to begin one of the world's great journeys.
On a crystal-sharp morning in the southern hemisphere autumn, few
things sum up the contrasts in this land as well as the Blue Train.
Lessons unfold in history, geography and the forgotten joys of
traveling slowly, as the train covers 1,600 kilometers - 1,000 miles -
in 26 hours.
Passengers, up to 106 of them, discover that it all slips down as
easily as the buttermilk pudding that ends a seven-course dinner in
the dining car.
According to railroad spokesman Ernest du Plessis, no one knows why
the Blue Train is blue; other South African trains are red.
The gold train might have been a more fitting name in the country
that produces 55 percent of the world's gold. Carpets and metal
fittings are golden in color and a microscopically thin layer of gold
on the windows deflects glare.
For gadget lovers, there are electrically operated Venetian blinds,
temperature controls in each suite and four music channels.
Two identical, 16-coach Blue Trains were built in South Africa at a
cost of 5 million rand - now $4.8 million - and put into service in
1972, successors to a train of World War II-vintage. The Blue Trains
provide two or three departures a week from Pretoria and from Cape
Town.
The Blue Train, like about 70 hotels in South Africa, is open to all
races. ''But if you see 20 non-whites in six months, it's a lot,''
said chief steward Harry Joseph. ''The ticket costs too much.''
A recent 25-percent increase put the fare for a one-way
Johannesburg-Cape Town ticket at 225 rand - $213 - with meals included
but not drinks. A first-class ticket on a plane that covers the
distance in two hours costs about 183 rand.
No conductor calls, ''All aboard.'' Passengers find suite
assignments on a printed list posted on the platform.
The train is nearly always full, largely with American, British and
other foreign travelers who purchase the trip in package tours.
South African bureaucrats favor the train as a last calm haven
before a parliamentary session, when the government moves south in
mid-January from Pretoria, the winter capital, to Cape Town, the
summer capital.
The train rolls across the mile-high veld outside Pretoria, past the
massive Voortrekker Monument to the white, Afrikaner settlers who
came north in ox wagons 140 years ago, at the same time as American
pioneers were trekking west. Silent and gently swaying on air springs,
the train passes flat-topped piles of mine waste at Johannesburg, a
gold-boom town that grew up to have 70,000 swimming pools.
Farther on are vast cornfields, auto scrap yards, rural black slums
where the roofs of metal shacks are held in place with stones, and
immaculate playing fields where white children test themselves at the
national sport - rugby.
As a white-jacketed waiter serves the trout mayonnaise for lunch,
there is Potchefstrom, a theological center where a siege during an
Afrikaner-British war 101 years ago forced townsfolk to boil grass to
stay alive. Dusk brings Kimberley, where a diamond rush in 1871 made
South Africa's first overnight millionaires.
The train changes to a diesel engine for the night-long haul across
the Karoo, a semi-desert region of windmills, sheep and stubble,
where electric lines don't reach. Shoes left in a locker under a bunk
are removed through a small door opening into the corridor, shined
and returned before dawn.
An early riser sees Matjiesfontein, an oasis where, legend has it,
an oldtime hotel keeper sold train travelers soup so hot that they
couldn't drink it during a brief stop. The untouched soup went back in
the pot for the next train.
Then comes the drop through mountain passes into the coastal grape
country, where every village seems to have a white, church steeple,
wine tanks near the siding and advertisements for apartheid - railroad
station signs marking separate toilespokesman du Plessis said.
''We keep it going as a prestige thing,'' he said. 'T
TRAIN HAS A REMAINING LIFE SPAN OF 1/4? YEARS. Whether there would be
another one after tha
ap-ny-05-03 1314EDT
**********
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