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 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 ********** ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.