A Sapphire Streak Across the African Continent
There is a moment, somewhere between the sweeping grandeur of the Cape Winelands and the vast, silent immensity of the Karoo desert, when the Blue Train makes itself fully understood. You are sitting in your suite, marble bathroom gleaming behind you, goose-down pillows arranged against the headboard, a glass of South African Chenin Blanc catching the afternoon light, watching the African landscape unroll past the floor-to-ceiling gold-tinted window like the slowest, most magnificent painting ever made. No turbulence, no seat belt signs, no overhead bin. Just the rhythmic pulse of steel on rail, the immensity of the African sky, and the particular, irreplaceable pleasure of travelling at a pace that allows you to actually see the world.
This is the Blue Train. Sapphire blue without, opulent gold within, gliding through 1,600 kilometres of some of the most diverse and spectacular scenery on earth between Pretoria and Cape Town. It has been called a “magnificent moving five-star hotel.” It has hosted kings, presidents, Nobel laureates, and Hollywood stars. It has been running, in one form or another, for more than a century, and it remains, in the considered opinion of those who travel the world’s luxury railways, one of the finest train journeys on earth.
Origins: Gold, Diamonds, and the Railway that Built a Nation
The Blue Train’s story begins not with luxury but with necessity, the raw, urgent necessity of a continent being opened up by the discovery of enormous mineral wealth. In the 1860s and 1880s, the discovery of diamonds near Kimberley and gold on the Witwatersrand reef near Johannesburg transformed South Africa from a relatively quiet agricultural territory into one of the most consequential destinations on earth. Tens of thousands of prospectors, entrepreneurs, miners, investors, and adventurers poured in from Britain, Europe, and around the world, and all of them needed to get from the ships arriving at Cape Town harbour to the goldfields and diamond mines of the interior.
Before the turn of the century, advertisements offering direct-route journeys to the gold and diamond fields of South Africa were couched invitingly: “England to Johannesburg in 19 days, the first 17 across the ocean on board a Union or Castle line vessel to Cape Town, the remaining 2 on a train steaming through mountains and valleys and over the South African veld to Kimberley and the Reef.” The early trains that made this journey were, by all accounts, uncomfortable in the extreme: the heat, the dust, the insects, the coal smoke, but they were the only alternative to much longer and more arduous overland travel.
The Blue Train was established when the moneyed elite from around the world descended on South Africa in search of gold and needed a way to get from the Cape harbour to the mines near Johannesburg. The workaday passenger coaches would not do the job, and that led to the creation of coaches decked out with what were sumptuous features at the time: card tables, ceiling fans, and sinks with hot and cold water.
Soon, as the moneyed classes made their presence felt, the network added leisure travel to its list of duties, and in the slipstream of leisure came luxury. The Union Limited and Union Express, ferrying passengers between the mail ships of Cape Town harbour and the goldfields of the Witwatersrand, were the standard-bearers of steam-powered opulence in the easy-living heyday of the 1920s, boasting everything from card tables to ceiling fans to hot and cold water on tap.
By the early 1920s, the luxury trains connecting Cape Town to Johannesburg were called the Union trains, the Union Express running from Cape Town to the Reef, and the Union Limited travelling the reverse route. Their accommodation became even more luxurious and spacious with the introduction in 1928 of articulated coaches equipped with heating, hot and cold water, bunk lights and bells for the summoning of the coach attendant. In 1933, a new dining saloon called Protea was introduced on the Union trains, advanced in design, with revolutionary suspension.
The exterior of Protea was finished in very distinctive colours: azure and cream with a silver roof. By 1936, both the Union Express and Union Limited were painted in the same livery. Three years later, new train sets made in England were placed in service, luxury all-steel, air-conditioned trains, finished in blue and grey, and they became even more popularly known as “those blue trains.”
World War II brought suspension of service, but in 1946, the trains re-emerged, and this time, they carried a new name. The Blue Trains re-emerged as the premier express between the mail-boats in Cape Town and the industrial and economic hub of the country, some 1,600 kilometres to the north-east. Only this time, the locomotives which hauled them carried a new name board: Blue Train.
Although officially named The Blue Train in 1946, the train’s enthusiasts trace its history to the 1890s and the discovery of diamonds and gold. It is a pedigree that makes the Blue Train one of the oldest continuously operating luxury train services in the world, a heritage that stretches back over a century and is carried forward, in all its sapphire magnificence, on every journey today.
The Third Incarnation: A New Blue Train for a New South Africa
The Blue Train that glides across the South African landscape today are the third version of the service, the product of a comprehensive redesign and rebuild that was completed in the late 1990s and that coincided, symbolically and practically, with the emergence of the new South Africa after the end of apartheid.
In 1995, after 25 years of service, the time had come to build a new Blue Train. On 1st August 1997, the third incarnation of The Blue Train glided out of Cape Town station, heralding a new era in the history of luxury train travel. On 5th October 1998, the second new Blue Train commenced from Pretoria.
The Blue Train has defined a new era of luxury travel, making the switch from steam to electric and diesel, linking veld to sea, tradition to progress, with a sense of style, grace, and mesmerising power that has never come close to being matched.
There are, in fact, two Blue Trains, known as Set 1 and Set 2, operating simultaneously, one travelling north as the other travels south. The first train accommodates 74 passengers in 37 suites, and the second accommodates 58 passengers in 29 suites and has a conference or observation car at the back of the train. This arrangement allows the service to run with a frequency and reliability that a single trainset could not achieve across a 1,600-kilometre route.
The redesigned train retains everything that made its predecessors legendary, the sapphire blue livery, the gold-tinted windows, the commitment to five-star service, while adding every modern comfort that the most discerning contemporary traveller could wish for. The result is a train that feels simultaneously rooted in the golden age of travel and entirely of the present moment.
The Exterior: An Icon in Sapphire and Gold
Before a single passenger steps aboard, the Blue Train announces itself. Sapphire blue with gold-tinted windows, the Blue Train is almost incongruous against the rolling African landscapes it travels, taking passengers from Cape Town to Pretoria. The contrast between the train’s polished, jewel-like exterior and the vast, ancient, sun-baked landscape through which it moves is one of the defining visual experiences of South African travel, a civilised, gleaming object threading its way through a landscape of almost primordial grandeur.
The gold-tinted windows are one of the train’s most distinctive design elements, serving a dual purpose: they reduce solar glare in a country where the sun is a serious force, while simultaneously giving the train’s exterior a warmth and richness that perfectly complements the sapphire blue of the bodywork. From the outside, with the interior light glowing gold through those tinted panes, the Blue Train at night looks like a moving string of lanterns, an improbable, gorgeous vision drifting through the African darkness.
Two butlers in blue vests and white gloves greeted passengers by name and unloaded luggage before ushering them into a waiting room that was decidedly more upscale, with plush sofas, piano music, and a spread of fruit, pastries, sandwiches and sparkling wine. The experience begins, in other words, before the train has even moved.
The Suites: Your Home Across the African Landscape
The accommodation aboard the Blue Train is configured entirely in private suites; there are no open-plan sleeper carriages, no shared cabins, no compromise on privacy. Every passenger has their own self-contained world, and the suite serves as both a daytime sitting room and a night time bedroom of considerable elegance.
De Luxe Suites
Filled with light and decorated with polished wood panelling and lush fabrics, De Luxe Suites are as cosy as they are luxurious. There are four of these suites in each sleeper carriage, with three featuring two twin-size beds and the fourth with a double bed. Guests can watch South Africa’s ebbs and flows unfold while sitting in plush armchairs or on a lounge.
The De Luxe Suite bathroom features a three-quarter-sized bathtub and a handheld shower, a genuine bathtub on a moving train being one of the most endearing and indulgent luxuries that rail travel can offer. Monogrammed towels, bath salts, and fine toiletries are provided as standard. The suite is fully soundproofed, individually climate-controlled, and fitted with underfloor heating, a thoughtful detail that becomes greatly appreciated on cool mornings in the Karoo.
Luxury Suites
The slightly larger 5.13 by 3-metre Luxury Suites offer many of the same leisurely amenities with double beds. Touches of gold and marble finish off the bathroom’s interior, which features a full-length bathtub, indulgence at its best.
The extra metre of space that distinguishes the Luxury Suite from the De Luxe is devoted almost entirely to the bathroom, specifically, to a full-length bathtub of generous proportions, lined with marble and finished with gold fittings that make it one of the most photographed bathroom fittings in the world of luxury rail travel. To lie in this bath as the African landscape moves past the frosted bathroom window is an experience that passengers consistently describe as surreal, decadent, and entirely unforgettable.
Luxury Suite guests enjoy a private digital interactive entertainment system, with an inviting selection of music CDs and big-screen movies on Blu-Ray DVD. All suites are fitted with complimentary Wi-Fi service. The telephone system in each suite allows guests to dial their butler at no extra charge for an aperitif or a snack at any hour.
The Butler Service
The cornerstone of the Blue Train’s service proposition is its butler system, a round-the-clock personal butler service where one call ensures your every need is met, from an early morning wake-up call to a blouse in pressing need of pressing. Each suite is assigned a personal butler for the duration of the journey, and these individuals, many of whom have spent their entire careers aboard the train, develop a remarkable attentiveness to their passengers’ preferences and needs.
The Blue Train staff was friendly and competent, and the stewards, elegantly dressed in the traditional uniform, were obviously proud of their famous train, most considered the Blue Train a lifetime career. This continuity of service, the same staff, year after year, journey after journey, gives the Blue Train an institutional warmth that is quite different from the more transactional professionalism of hotels and airlines. These are people who love their train, and that love is perceptible in everything they do.
One veteran steward, Mr. Jan September, regaled passengers with stories of the famous personages he had served over the years: Margaret Thatcher, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former South African President Nelson Mandela, American musician Quincy Jones, British model Naomi Campbell, and American film stars Danny Glover and Farrah Fawcett, adding that he and the rest of the Blue Train staff were accustomed to treating all their passengers like visiting royalty.
The Public Cars: Lounge, Dining, Club, and Observation
Beyond the private suites, the Blue Train offers a sequence of beautifully appointed public spaces that form the social backbone of the journey.
The Lounge Cars
If you can draw yourself away from the serenity of your suite, the elegant Lounge Cars are situated at the centre of the Blue Train. Here, perfectly framed windows allow you to soak up glorious panoramic views of the South African countryside, with impressive works of art, all whilst sipping on award-winning wines or afternoon High Tea.
There are two Lounge Cars, one smoking, one non-smoking, providing spaces for passengers to gather, converse, and watch the landscape in comfortable, unhurried surroundings. Afternoon High Tea in the Lounge Car is one of the Blue Train’s most celebrated rituals: a traditional high tea served with the full complement of finger sandwiches, scones, pastries, and tea, while the South African countryside glides past panoramic windows. It is quintessentially, defiantly civilised, a very particular inheritance from the British colonial era, served at the heart of an African landscape that the colonists never really understood.
The Club Car
If you are in the mood to indulge in a Cuban cigar and a game of backgammon, then the Club Car is just for you. With gleaming wood-panelling finishes, a well-stocked bar, and the same relaxed atmosphere as a gentlemen’s club, there is no better place to unwind with a cognac before or after dinner.
The Club Car is the Blue Train’s most intimate social space, a place of dark wood, soft leather, and the particular pleasure of after-dinner conversation punctuated by the clink of crystal and the gentle sway of the carriage. After dinner, guests can enjoy included drinks, cognacs and Cuban cigars in the Club Car. The wine list consistently receives the Annual Diner’s Club Award of Approval, a recognition of the care with which the Blue Train selects and manages its cellar of South African wines.
The Observation Car
At the rear of the train, the Observation Car offers the most dramatic perspective available on any moving train: a panoramic view of the landscape receding behind the train, the tracks disappearing into the distance, the African sky arching vast and blue above the dwindling horizon. When not booked for use as a Conference Car, this space reflects and complements the amenities offered in the Lounge Cars, allowing passengers to watch South Africa’s changing face disappear into the distance.
The Observation Car is where passengers go to think, to be alone with the landscape, to fully absorb through what they are travelling. A glass of champagne in hand, watching the Karoo stretch away in all directions to the horizon, the silence broken only by the sound of the train and the occasional distant cry of a bird, this is one of those travel experiences that cannot be adequately described and must simply be lived.
Dining on the Blue Train: A Gastronomic Journey Through South African Cuisine
Polished silverware, glistening crystal glasses, custom bone China and crisp white linens await diners in the Blue Train’s dining car. Each breakfast, lunch and dinner is a memorable event, with up to 42 travellers accommodated during each seating, of which there are two for brunch and dinner daily. Breakfast has an open-door policy.
The dining car is where the Blue Train’s commitment to South African culinary identity is most completely expressed. During meals, guests are served only the finest offerings from South Africa, from succulent local fruits and vegetables to incredible regional cuisine, such as Karoo lamb and Knysna oysters.
These are not incidental menu choices. Karoo lamb, raised on the fragrant scrubby vegetation of the semi-arid Karoo plateau, is widely regarded as some of the finest lamb in the world, its flavour shaped by the wild herbs and grasses on which the animals graze. Knysna oysters, harvested from the pristine lagoon of the Garden Route town of Knysna, are celebrated for their clean, briny flavour and their plump, generous texture. The menu features dishes like ostrich and venison alongside the Karoo lamb and Knysna oysters, all served on crystal and fine China, with vegetarian, kosher, Halal, vegan and gluten-free alternatives all available.
The menu changes daily, so the culinary journey complements the visual feast outside. Professionally trained chefs work in the Blue Train’s on-board kitchen using fresh, local produce brought aboard at departure, preparing dishes that reflect both the classical traditions of fine dining and the particular richness of South Africa’s culinary heritage. Smooth jazz or classical music plays softly in the background as the white-gloved waitstaff move between tables with unhurried attentiveness.
The evening dress code adds a dimension of occasion to the dining experience. Lavish evening gowns, suits, and ties add to the royal atmosphere of this fine-dining experience, as guests relish the delicious food, notes of jazz, and camaraderie with other travellers. The act of dressing for dinner on a moving train, selecting something elegant from a suitcase in a gently swaying compartment, looking out at the African dusk as you prepare, is one of those travel rituals that, once experienced, becomes a treasured memory.
The Route: From the Mother City to the Jacaranda Capital
The route between Pretoria and Cape Town is a 54-hour journey of 1,600 kilometres through some of the most diverse and spectacular scenery offered by the African sub-continent. It is a journey of extraordinary contrasts, between urban sophistication and ancient wilderness, between the verdant coast and the parched interior, between landscapes shaped by water and landscapes that have not seen significant rain for months or years.
Departure from Cape Town
For southbound passengers travelling from Pretoria, or for those joining at Cape Town for the northbound journey, the pre-departure experience sets the tone immediately. When departing from Cape Town, guests check in at the Blue Train departure lounge at Cape Town Station, where they enjoy welcome drinks and canapes before climbing aboard. When departing from Pretoria, guests check in at the Irene Country Lodge, enjoy canapes and welcome cocktails in the serene gardens before a short transfer to Irene Station to board the Blue Train.
Cape Town itself, the Mother City, needs little introduction. Backed by the iconic flat-topped massif of Table Mountain, facing the cold Atlantic where two oceans meet at the Cape of Good Hope, it is one of the most dramatically situated cities in the world. The journey north from Cape Town begins in the Cape Winelands, where the train moves through landscapes of heartbreaking beauty, ancient mountains clothed in fynbos, valleys of old vines, Cape Dutch homesteads gleaming white against the green, that represent some of the most distinctive scenery on earth.
The Hex River Valley and the Great Escarpment
As the train moves north from the Winelands, it begins its ascent toward the great interior plateau of South Africa, and the Hex River Valley, through which this ascent takes place, is one of the most spectacular sections of railway in Africa. The valley is famous for its vineyards, table grapes grown in the shadow of dramatic mountain peaks, and the railway climbs through it on gradients that required extraordinary engineering to achieve, threading tunnels and rounding curves that reveal fresh perspectives on the valley with every kilometre.
Beyond the Hex River Pass, the landscape changes abruptly and completely. The vineyards disappear. The mountains recede. And the Karoo begins.
The Great Karoo: Heart of the Journey
The Karoo is one of the defining landscapes of South Africa, a vast, semi-arid plateau covering nearly one third of the country, treeless and apparently empty, stretching to every horizon in flat, scrubby immensity under a sky of extraordinary size and depth. To the uninitiated, it might appear monotonous; to those with eyes to see, it is endlessly, subtly magnificent.
As the train heads deeper into the semi-arid Karoo, passengers are treated to views of seemingly endless wide, open expanses. A scheduled stop in Kimberley breaks the journey, giving those on board the chance to go on an excursion to the famed Big Hole and Diamond Mine Museum, a poignant symbol of South Africa’s mining legacy.
The Karoo light is unlike any other, clean and pellucid in a way that is specific to high, dry places, and the night sky above the Karoo, far from any light pollution, is one of the finest in the world. Passengers who take their Cognac to the Observation Car on a clear Karoo night and look up will find a sky blazing with stars in a density and brilliance that most city-dwellers have never seen.
Kimberley: The City of Diamonds
The Blue Train’s stop at Kimberley is one of its most historically resonant moments. This is the city that diamonds built, the place where the discovery of extraordinary deposits of rough diamonds in the 1860s triggered the first great South African rush and laid the economic foundations for the industrial development that followed. The route pauses in Kimberley, where guests are invited to disembark and explore the region’s diamond-mining past.
The Big Hole, an open-pit mine that was, at its peak, the largest hand-dug excavation on earth, is the centrepiece of the Kimberley diamond story. Nearly a kilometre across and 240 metres deep, it was dug by thousands of individual claim-holders working with picks and shovels, connected to the surface by an extraordinary cat’s cradle of cables and ropes that produced one of the most chaotic and visually extraordinary work environments in industrial history. Today the Big Hole is a museum and historical site, and the excursion that the Blue Train offers allow passengers to descend toward its edge and contemplate the human ambition and labour that produced it.
Matjiesfontein: A Victorian Ghost Town
Northbound passengers stopping at Madisonian encounter one of the most atmospheric places in all of South Africa, a tiny Victorian settlement that has survived virtually unchanged in the Karoo since the 1880s. On arrival at Matjiesfontein, guests are invited for a glass of sherry at the bar. The Victorian buildings and original nineteenth-century London lampposts impart to the traveller an uncanny sense of entering a colonial time warp, an oasis suspended in a different age.
The Lord Milner Hotel, which anchors the settlement, was built in 1899 and named after the British High Commissioner to South Africa at the time of the Boer War. Its long veranda, decorated with Victorian iron lacework, looks out over the railway station and the Karoo plain beyond with an air of slightly dazed, permanent patience, as though waiting for guests who will eventually arrive.
Arrival at Pretoria or Cape Town
After the stop in Kimberley, the scenery undergoes an incredible change as the train approaches the Cape Winelands. The colour palette turns greener, the air grows cooler, and old vineyards stretch out all the way to the base of misty, brooding mountains. The route ends in Cape Town, where Table Mountain stands as a silent sentinel, a fitting finale to a route that looks just like a slow-moving postcard come to life.
For those travelling in the opposite direction, Pretoria announces itself with the colour purple: the Jacaranda trees that line the administrative capital’s streets are one of South Africa’s most celebrated natural spectacles, their extraordinary lilac blooms in October and November transforming the city into something from a dream. Pretoria is home to the Union Buildings, the seat of the South African government, and carries an atmosphere of institutional gravity and historical weight that makes it an entirely appropriate terminus for a journey of such consequence.
The Kruger Route: A Rail Safari Into the Wild
Beyond the flagship Pretoria to Cape Town route, the Blue Train offers one of its most distinctive and exclusive experiences: an annual journey from Pretoria to the Kruger National Park, a combination of supreme luxury rail travel and genuine African wildlife safari that no other form of transport could provide.
The Blue Train also travels to South Africa’s Limpopo Province, which is home to the Kruger National Park, one of the world’s finest game parks, and home to Africa’s Big Five. These one-way 19-hour journeys take place on selected months of the year, and offer guests an opportunity of some fantastic “rail safari” combination packages with the many private safari lodges found in the Greater Kruger and Sabi Sands areas.
This route takes passengers through real, African bushveld, river valleys, and the subtropical Lowveld, all areas of South Africa teeming with wildlife and a little bit of natural drama. To travel aboard the Blue Train through terrain where elephants, lions, leopards, and rhinoceroses roam within a few kilometres of the tracks is an experience that sits entirely outside the normal categories of luxury travel, something wilder and more surprising, a reminder that Africa, even when you are moving through it in five-star comfort, retains the capacity to astonish.
Famous Passengers: A Guest List Fit for History
Notable past passengers include Nelson Mandela, Quincy Jones, Paul Simon, Mia Farrow, Margaret Thatcher, and Kylie Minogue. But these famous names are merely the most celebrated representatives of a century-long procession of extraordinary individuals who have travelled on South Africa’s most legendary train.
Nelson Mandela’s journeys on the Blue Train carried a particular significance, a man who had spent twenty-seven years imprisoned on Robben Island, within sight of the very mountains that the Blue Train passes on its journey out of Cape Town, travelling in the finest comfort that South African hospitality could provide across the country whose future he had done so much to shape. His presence on the Blue Train was, really, a symbol of the new South Africa, a country that had moved, however painfully and incompletely, from the rigid racial hierarchies of the past toward something more just and more open.
During the apartheid era, the Blue Train had been notable as the country’s only desegregated train, though, as noted by journalists who travelled on it at the time, it was rare to see Black passengers because of the high cost. The democratisation of the train’s passenger list since 1994, the appearance of South Africans of all backgrounds, races, and occupations alongside the international visitors, is itself a story of the country’s evolution, and one that the Blue Train embodies in its daily operations.
The Blue Train and South African Identity
The Blue Train occupies a unique position in South African culture, simultaneously a symbol of historical privilege and a source of national pride, a reminder of the country’s colonial past and a showcase for its contemporary excellence. It is, in the words of its operators, “a window to the soul of Africa”, and while that claim might seem extravagant, the journey does offer something that few other travel experiences can match: a sustained, intimate engagement with the South African landscape in conditions of beauty and comfort that allow the mind to be fully present to what it is seeing.
From the comfortable confines of the Blue Train, the breath taking beauty, the rank poverty, the racial segregation and the complex, evolving story of South Africa are all visible. A train, like a cruise ship, allows you to see what you see as you keep going. The Blue Train does not pretend that South Africa is simple, or that its history is comfortable, or that the journey it offers is anything other than an extraordinary privilege. Its honesty, the honesty of a great luxury experience that sits within a landscape of extraordinary complexity, is part of what makes it genuinely interesting rather than merely glossy.
Chartering the Blue Train: A Private World
For those seeking a still more exclusive experience, the Blue Train can be chartered in its entirety, just for you. It can meander along its standard routes, or on custom-made trips and cross-border excursions that last from a few hours to several nights. It is your sojourn, it is your train.
Corporate charters have become an increasingly significant part of the Blue Train’s operations, the combination of a mobile conference facility, exceptional dining, and the productive enforced intimacy of a group of colleagues sharing a journey through magnificent scenery proving highly appealing to companies seeking unusual and memorable settings for leadership retreats, client entertainment, or team-building events. The fully-equipped Conference Car can comfortably seat 22 delegates boardroom-style or accommodate smaller work areas.
Private charters for weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries, and milestone celebrations are equally popular, there being no more romantic setting for such occasions than a private train moving through the African night with a sky full of stars overhead and the Southern Cross visible through the observation car windows.
The Blue Train Today: Enduring Glamour in a Modern Age
In an era when the assumption has too long been that speed is the only virtue worth honouring in transport, the Blue Train makes a different argument: that the journey itself has value, that slowness can be a form of luxury, that the time spent in transit need not be wasted time but can be among the richest and most memorable hours of a life.
The five-star, 54-hour experience offers round-the-clock butler service, two lounge cars, an observation car, carriages with gold-tinted picture windows, and fully soundproofed, carpeted compartments, each with its own en-suite bathroom. Every meal is included. Every drink, except Champagne, is included. The butlers are available at any hour. There is nothing to arrange, nothing to worry about, nothing to do but be present to the extraordinary gift of the South African landscape seen from the most comfortable vantage point imaginable.
There is not a single moment on board where you will find yourself wishing for the journey to end. That, perhaps, is the highest compliment that can be paid to any travel experience: not merely that it is pleasant, but that it creates within the traveller a genuine reluctance to see it conclude. The Blue Train produces this feeling in its passengers with a consistency that is, in itself, a remarkable achievement.
As the sapphire carriages pull away from the platform and the gold-tinted windows begin to fill with the South African landscape, something settles in the chest of every new passenger, a release of tension, a slowing of the mental clock, an opening of the attention to the world outside the window. Africa, seen from here, is incredibly beautiful.
The Blue Train has been showing people that beauty for over a century. It shows no signs of stopping.
“The Blue Train has defined a new era of luxury travel, linking veld to sea, tradition to progress, with a sense of style, grace, and mesmerising power that has never come close to being matched.” — bluetrain.co.za
“Kings and presidents have indulged on this magnificent, moving five-star hotel on wheels. From love-struck honeymooners to adulated celebrities. And even ordinary folk who fantasise about a life of spectacular luxury. Welcome aboard The Blue Train.”
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