“The restlessness and the longing, like the longing that is in the whistle of a faraway train. Except that the longing isn’t really in the whistle – it is in you.’’ Author Meindert DeJong,
My life’s journey has always been defined by trains, at home and abroad, until I boarded my maiden flight as a teenage-student. Later becoming a frequent flyer as a frontline journalist and adventurer bent on pushing back the frontiers of the home front and the world.
From the complex jigsaw puzzle of the 1980s London Underground over three years, experiences on the 1990s Euro Tunnel/ Chunnel Eurotunnel Le Shuttle, a fascinating 50,45km stretch under the waters of the English Channel’s Straits of Dover from Calais to Folkestone; the underground railways of Paris, Brussels, New York, Washington, then making the quantum leap into the 5-star The Blue Train, dinner date on the Shosholoza Meyl, and the 2010 FIFA World Cup wonder airport shuttle – Gautrain – my passion for trains, aeroplanes and ships still pulls my heartstrings until I board the Royal Scotsman, Maharaja Express and the Trans-Siberian Express.
Under apartheid, third-class tickets and seating on wooden benches hauled us on the long, overnight sleeper coaches from 1960s Durban to Johannesburg’s Park Station, run by the SA Railways and Harbours. The network began in Natal in 1877 and spread nationally when diamonds were discovered in Kimberley – hence The Blue Train for new, wealthier classes.
The Real McCoys of the railroads are the veterans of our own railway networks. Since 1982, the USR (Umgeni Steam Railway) has preserved and promoted the steam train history, heritage, legacy and culture. Ex-SAR & H employees, engineers, enthusiasts and volunteers – as young as Jaggers Williams at the rear-end of the last coach that ferried us along a majestic Valley of the Thousand Hills before we reached journey’s end at Inchanga – are behind this unique campaign to keep the steam trains, like the Berlin-built Class 19D 2685 Wesley or the 4-8-2 wheel arrangement designed Mountain, on track.
A cacophony of sound and cultures greeted us as the craft flea market came alive and travellers browsed around and picnicked in the sun before long we were all on board as the locomotives chugged along the lines – a flightpath of the gradients and countless curves of 90-metre radius, dark tunneled passes, sheer cliffs, and picking up stories like an intrepid woman losing her mobile phone while attempting a selfie, a young couple rekindling their romance, and families tugging along grandchildren for a scenic, breathtaking and beautiful ride that gave us a window into the exotic Inanda Dam.
All aboard. All on board. The shrill of the station master’s whistle and the engine’s loud-hailing symphony pierces the autumn air for the Easter ride: “We are buzzing with business after the lockdowns because of the train,’’ beamed the waitress at the Stokers Arm pub.
• Footnote: I was inspired by How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 narrative of Huw Morgan’s boyhood in a Welsh mining village, touching chords of love and loss of lives, livelihood, home, community and migration, rolling green valleys to a 1941 Oscar-winning film.
• Time’s up for Transnet and Tourism MEC Ravi Pillay to come on board for the party of supporting this travel-by-train initiative.
Marlan Padayachee is a seasoned journalist who heads a media communication strategy, publishing and research. Contact Marlan on: marlan.padayachee@gmail.com.
