the times | Saturday December 18 2021 45
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fine way of reaching the Netherlands, but now you
have to get a connecting tram to Amsterdam; and the
direct service to Berlin (with through carriages to
Moscow) which I remember catching the year I left
school is long gone.
Other routes have disappeared. The Brighton Belle,
a Pullman with more character than today’s
Thameslink, provided crumpets on the afternoon
run and Welsh rarebit on the midnight service to the
coast. That was axed in 1972. The Golden Arrow
went in 1972, too, the fast Pullman day train from
Victoria to France. The alternative direct night train
lingered on until 1980, clanking aboard a ferry while
passengers tried to sleep.S
leep, of course, was often impossible: on night-
trains it often still is. That is why food and
drink mattered so much. George Behrend, a
man it is hard to imagine travelling without a
glass of something special, recorded the glory
days of rail dining in his wonderful books. Pullman
services invented the quarter bottle of champagne,
he notes. Fussy English travellers got their own
menus: the Flêche d’Or, the French part of the
Golden Arrow, reassured them with the Franglais
“Sweet du jour”. The night train welcomed you to
France with “le meat breakfast”. Coffee cups were
designed with narrow tops so they did not spill.
Those days have mostly gone, though I was lucky
enough to travel on the Venice Simplon-Orient
Express in a wagon-lit so carefully preserved I was
shown the little real coal fire at the end of the carriage
which heated the water.
Even if the bill for that trip is too high, there are still
affordable adventures to be had. At 19.30 each night
the sleeper from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls still, I
hope, runs. Last time I caught it, in elderly carriages
still marked Rhodesian Railways, I ended up drinking
cold beer and talking politics in a packed bar car. A
friend travelled this route a few years back when the
train hit a buffalo and derailed: villagers rushed to the
trackside to cut up the free fresh meat.
From the falls, there’s a basic Zambian train north; a
connection takes you into Tanzania. Reach Kenya and
a slick Chinese-built route can take you to Nairobi;
from there the old British narrow-gauge “lunatic line”
(so-called because of the insanity of building it) is
being revived to Lake Victoria. North of there, Sudan’s
railways are in sad disarray but Egyptian railways can
get you to the Med. Israel is building new lines.
Politics have wrecked the little steam rack railway
through the Lebanon mountains to Syria (I once
walked its route regardless). Just before the Syrian
war I got the train from Aleppo to Istanbul (staying
at the Baron Hotel in the town where Agatha
Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express begins).
We crossed great mountain ranges as we drank milky
raki on ice.
From there I made the mistake of flying home, so
the journey back through the Balkans still awaits me.
I’m going to do it next spring, as soon as the borders
reopen, heading to my favourite hotel in Greece, the
Aristide on Syros. Work can wait. I am dreaming of
great rail journeys. Soon I will be making them again.Julian Glover is a transport adviser and author of Man of
Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britainsingle TGV a day and you
have to stay overnight at least
once on the way from London.
Gone, too, is the Sud Express
which I caught in 2019 from
Hendaye (the station on the
Basque border where, in 1940,
General Franco met Hitler), which
got you to Lisbon in time for breakfast
by the Tagus.
Railways can be introspective, averse to
crossing borders, and the economics of running
long-distance international trains are tricky. Spain’s
Renfe has wonderful high-speed routes but it’s almost
impossible to cross by rail into Portugal; you have to
drive or fly. France’s SNCF is just as bad. It runs
trains grudgingly into Switzerland but cuts keep
coming to what should be a fine through route along
the Mediterranean coast from Nice into Italy.
Just not worth the hassle, its bean-counters say. They
forget that train travel has always been about more
than profit.
In the glory days after the Second World War,
things were different. There was a conscious effort to
tie nations together with luxurious fast services. When
Kraftwerk chanted out the electronic rhythm of
Trans-Europe Express the tune was linked to
something real. Rail operators even competed to
provide the most stylish trans-Europe links. Italy won
with the Settebello, a train so magnificent it is hard to
believe it ever existed, the rail equivalent of a 1960s
Alfa-Romeo or Fellini film. Passengers could sip
Campari in glass-windowed observation cars, while
the driver perched in a little cab on top. One of them
has been saved and makes rare trips; I am determined
to catch it in 2022.
Almost as magical was the Rheingold, another first-
class-only affair which ran from the Hook of Holland
to Geneva until 1987. It included a dome car with a
glass roof, as well as a grand restaurant. Today,
there is still a ferry link from Harwich to the Hook, aSouth Africa’s Karoo desert,
or the Alps, or the Devon
coast, while you lie in the dark
under a tangled blanket. The
economics of running these
trains make no sense; but for me
life feels better for the fact that six
nights a week you can leave Euston
station in a bed that will carry you
direct to Rannoch Moor in the Highlands.
You don’t even need to make the trip to dream
of doing it.
In France this week, President Macron’s admirable
promise to revive overnight travel saw the return of
couchette trains to Lourdes, with more routes to come
next year. A few weeks ago I took one of the few
overnight routes to survive SNCF’s cull of night trains,
from Paris to the Spanish border near Andorra. Any
romance was cut short before dawn at Toulouse where
rail officials decided to cancel the rest of the trip. The
president doesn’t always get his own way, even in
France.
W
e are promised other new night trains,
including on the line up to Stockholm
from Germany. Perhaps from France
to Italy, too — the route of the
romantic Palatino Express (with time
for a pre-departure dinner in the Train Bleu
restaurant at the Gare de Lyon, a friend recalls), a
service that was lost at the start of the pandemic. I did
it a couple of times; once, as a child, in a wood-
panelled, creaking pre-war coach lit by the pale blue
night light fitted to every true wagon-lit.
The journey I want back most of all is from Paris to
Madrid. I was a regular user of the Trenhotel, which
did the trip nightly, its wheels adjusting automatically
at the border to Spain’s wider tracks, until 2013, when a
high-speed line opened instead. That rapid route is no
use to travellers from Britain trying to reach southern
sun without flying: at the moment there is a meagre
Chicago to California
It takes two nights to
cross the Mississippi and
head west through the
Rockies on America’s
most scenic train ride
Sydney to Perth
The Indian Pacific is on
hold because of Covid.
When it returns you can
cross Australia in style
as the desert stretches
away outside
Bulawayo to Victoria
Falls Zimbabwe’s
railway system has
struggled but this ride
remains special. Watch
out for elephants and
spot the cloud of spray
above Victoria Falls as
you approach the town’s
flower-clad station
London to Fort
William Dream your
way from Euston to the
Highlands on the most
scenic British journey
of them all
Belgrade to Bar A
monument to the
ambition of Tito’s
Yugoslavia, this stunning
line now crosses
national borders as well
as Europe’s highest
viaductNew for 2022
Amsterdam to Zurich
sleeper This is one of
the new routes served
by the smart overnight
trains run by the
Austrian railway
network ÖBB. Ta k e a
morning Eurostar from
London to Amsterdam,
spend an afternoon
wandering the city then
sleep your way to
Switzerland
Laos on track
A lavish Chinese-funded
link between the capital
Vientiane and the
Chinese city of Kunming
completes the route to
Singapore from Europe
More bullet trains
Japan’s railways are the
best in the world and
keep getting better. Next
year the bullet train
extends to NagasakiGreat rail journeys
to take in 2022A Swiss train winds its way across the Alps. Crossing
borders sometimes brings its own particular challengessi
ha
on
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got you to
by the Tagus.
Railways can be in
crossing borders and theee
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Highlands.
e trip to dreamALAMY