Driving along the Blue train Route

Hex River valley vineyard patchwork

As we drove along the N1 on our way from Cape Town to the Karoo for our weekend of birthday stargazing, we realized we were paralleling the same route we had taken on the Blue Train just two months ago for an early birthday present. And here we were on our real birthday weekend passing by the same vineyards and mountains of the Hex River valley that we had spied from the Blue Train's plush observation lounge in March!

train tracks and overhead wires of the Blue Train

the Blue Train in front of some solar panels!

In fact, we even saw the Blue Train itself traveling along its tracks in the opposite direction towards Cape Town.

Can we get a little Happy Birthday toot, Blue Train?

I got my postcard!

Anytime I get actual mail delivered to my post office box in Benmore is cause for celebration. And today, my Blue Train postcard arrived! Woo hoo!

Let's see, I wrote it on March 11 and I am sure our compartment butler Liphert mailed it promptly on March 12. So that would make it 23 days or approximately three weeks for it to travel from Cape Town to Sandton. In TIA Africa, that would equate to a pitch perfect performance! (Really, I was just hoping to get it by our real birthdays in another month!)

Well done Post Office!

The Blue Train Diner

We stumbled upon a really cool diner in Sea Point after Sunday Mass at the Church of Our Lady of Good Hope down the street. The Atlantic Express Restaurant.

The Atlantic Express is housed in a carefully restored South African Railway carriage and based on the theme of a dining coach. The original coach was manufactured by the Birmingham Carriage and Wagon Company in England and was assembled in the Salt River Works of the South African Railway.

It was placed in service on the 4th of December, 1920 and was one of 10 coaches made. The carriage operated mainly on the Cape Town main line. More than 60 years to the day after it first went into service, the carriage opened its doors again, but this time to serve as a stationary diner.

The mid-Atlantic region where Vince and I lived in the USA is diner country and the Atlantic Express reminded me of another diner we sometimes frequented in Clinton, New Jersey. The Clinton Station Diner Restaurant. Like the Atlantic Express, the Clinton Station uses a carriage from an old railway as a dining car.

Like the Clinton Station, the Atlantic Express still had all its old brass fittings like this unused brass ashtrays.

But unlike the Clinton Station, the Atlantic Express windows had these really cool etchings of springbok.

Breakfast at the Atlantic Express was the perfect way to end our Blue Train visit to Cape Town. The kitchen car was even called The Blue Train! I mean, really.

Blue Birthdays

Vince and my birthdays are in May, three days apart actually and we usually plan a weekend away to celebrate them together. We were planning to take the Blue Train in May to celebrate our birthdays this year, but when I called to book our reservations I found out they were having a big special offering discounted  travel for South African residents before March 31. The seasons are so confusing here anyway and it is actually quite easy to pretend it's May when it's March. So we hopped aboard the Blue Train two months early for a pre-birthday trip.

Je suis arrivé

There are several options for itinerary and even travel direction on the Blue Train. We chose to go from Pretoria to Cape Town with a stop at Kimberley and an excursion to see The Big Hole. You can also choose packages which include accommodation in Cape Town, return flights and a limo ride to the Blue Train Station to begin and/or end the trip. We didn't need the hotel or the flight but we took the limo to Pretoria.

We had been to the Pretoria Blue Train Station before for A Murder on the Gautrain evening during Bloody Book Week but that time we naturally took the Gautrain from Sandton. After a smooth ride in our Mercedes limousine, we were met this time not by a dead body but by friendly butlers who greeted us with welcome cocktails and whisked away our luggage to a compartment. Much better reception!

Vince boarding the train

settling into our compartment before the trip commences

champagne on ice and a birthday card from The Blue Train

Our compartment butler Liphert offered to post our mail. Wonder if I will ever see this postcard again. I am still waiting for the one I posted in 2013 from The Post Office Tree in Mossel Bay. TIA indeed.

Once we got underway it was time for Brunch in the Dining Car, followed by Afternoon Tea in the Observation Lounge, Sherry in the Bar Car after visiting Kimberley and finally Dinner back in the Dining Car.

Elegant dress was called for at dinner. Which in South Africa by the way means the same as in the USA. A little black dress for ladies. Jacket and tie for the gentlemen. There was at least one couple I saw in black tie but mostly everyone else were just dressed elegantly.

Brunch in the Dining Car

The trip took 26 hours - not including the two hour stop in Kimberley. Outside of Gauteng, the train skirted the eastern edge of the Northwest province, went through the heart of the vast Great Karoo in the Northern Cape, and through the picturesque wine valleys and mountains of the Western Cape.

flamingos on Campher Dam

vines of the Worcester Valley

At only one point - in the Hex River Valley - were we able to see the front of the train around the bend. It was at the Bainskloof Pass near Tulbagh.

We spent alot of time in the non-smoking bar car!

Kimberley station

There was a smoking car in the front of train with cigars and a whiskey bar. I did not check it out but Vince did. He said it looked like a gentleman's club car.





 



We stopped in Kimberley for an excursion to see The Big Hole. The stop was not guaranteed, a point which they made repeatedly in print and speech. Schedule permitting. I didn't think they really meant it but our tour guide said the Blue Train hadn't been able to stop in Kimberley for the last few weeks due to train delays and other unforeseen problems. That would have been a bummer!

We also made a ten minute stop in Worcester to change train engineers after the long night's journey. See you again in a couple of days Worcester!

a rooster weathervaned steeple in Worcester

The food was delicious and the amenities were first class. When we came back from our very formal dinner, there were chocolates and champagne waiting in our turned down rooms.

birthday cake in Cape Town

I only had one almost near-disaster. As dinner was ending, the wait staff began coming out to deliver cakes to other dining car tables for birthdays and anniversaries. Not a novel idea to take the Blue Train to celebrate a big occasion I guess! Along with the cake came the requisite song which we were all encouraged to join in. "Happy Birthday to you!"

I panicked! I hate having Happy Birthday sung to me in a dining room with strangers. But lo and behold. No one brought a cake to our table. At first I was relieved and then I was angry. Hey, keep the song but where's my cake?

We stopped in the bar car to drink our dessert wine before retiring to our compartment for the night. When we did, we found a beribboned blue box, a blue bag with two more bottles of the wine we drank with dinner and a gold-wrapped box containing a miniature blue train carriage clock. Nice and private! How did they know? That is service!

relaxing in the observation car before arriving in Cape Town :(

Bloody Winners

We won!

I know it's not about winning. It's about participating in the creative process and trying on the shoes of the murder mystery writer, blah blah blah. But we had crafted a really good story with intrigue, subplots, sabotage and double-crosses. We tied it up with a biblical bow and Amanda, our group's author, presented it flawlessly.

And our story won!

Team Amanda at work.

About 60 of us - plus seven authors - gathered in the Rosebank Gautrain Station last night for a Murder on the Gautrain. The mastermind behind Bloody Book Week and the mistress of ceremonies for the evening was Jenny Crwys-Williams, the radio talk show host whose weekly Book Show (Wednesdays on Talk Radio 702) is a forum for author interviews and reviews of the latest releases in the book world.

We were separated into groups of about eight and teamed up with one of the celebrity authors with whom we would travel on the train. Our team was assigned Amanda Coetzee. Amanda was the perfect leader for our little group's part reality show / part master class. When she isn’t writing crime thrillers, she works as a deputy headmistress. She grew up in Bedford, England, and now lives in Rustenburg with her husband and son. Her novels include Flaming June, Bad Blood, Redemption Song and her latest, One Shot.

Furnished with two typed copies of a description of a murder scene full of clues - and red herrings - we were instructed to pick up where the story ended so far and solve the murder. Present day Joburg. The apparent murder of an already terminally ill Russian nurse and former hit woman. A gang of five. A hand-picked investigator named Hitch. A cat.

Amanda in the zone

We huddled in the train car as it hurtled towards Pretoria and ironed out the basics of our plot. The why, the how, and the who, all whilst trying to be extra careful not to let another group overhear our ideas. We had the skeleton of an outline concocted even before the train entered the final station.

Once we arrived at the exclusive Blue Lounge, Amanda was handed a laptop and she quickly got into the writers' zone. She wrote the first attention-grabbing line which she read to us for approval and then she was off.

But she needed details. Who was on the other end of that phone call? What did Hitch see that turned his blood cold? What kind of alcohol would Hitch drink? What was the code name of the 5th man? The code name for the gang of 5? Where was the secret place where the gang would reconvene? How would justice be served? What did the riddle mean?

What is a nickname for Svetlana?

We got out our smart phones and our iPads in order to look up facts. What are the symptoms of digoxin poisoning? How do you say, "the truth is revealed" in Russian?

Jenny introduces Penny Lorimer

After about an hour, some wine and some really delicious snacks, we all reconvened back in the Blue Lounge and one by one, each group's author was called to the high hot seat to read their team's chapter. Next to them on the couch sat the judge and author, Alex Eliseev, who would ultimately decide whose ending he would use to finish his story and be published on the Bloody Book Week website

Peter James

Some stories were really funny. A little bloody 50 Shades of Grey anyone? Some ideas came straight from the front page headlines. The scandals of Pistorius and Malema and Zuma. They were all really good and surprisingly very, very different.

Amanda and Alex

But as Amanda read, you could see that she had the audience on the edge of their seats. You could hear a pin drop in the room as she made her way through the twists and turns of the action. Alex was listening intently too.

Team Amanda with Jenny

After the readings, Jenny and Alex deliberated behind closed doors. The guests were served more wine and hors d'oeuvres. Back in came the judges and the verdict was announced.

Amanda Coetzee's team were the winners. Bloody brilliant!

Murder on the Gautrain

Tonight we are going to reenact a scene from one of my favorite movies, Murder on the Orient Express. Vince and I have ridden on the Orient Express from Paris to Venice as well as its sister train, the Eastern & Oriental Express from Singapore to Bangkok. But alas, no murders either time.










But tonight as part of Bloody Book Week in Joburg, the brainchild of Talk Radio 702's Jenny Crwys-Williams, a murder is guaranteed. And we will play the part of Agatha Christie's renowned Inspector Poirot as we come up with the ending for a murder mystery by investigative reporter turned crime novelist Alex Eliseev along with best-selling authors and writers Peter James, Amanda Coetzee, CM Elliott, Dr. David Klatzow, Penny Lorimer, Jacques Steenkamp, and Mandy Wiener.

The murder unfolds on the ride between the Johannesburg's Rosebank Gautrain station and Pretoria. There we will convene in the Blue Train Lounge and brainstorm whodunnit and how it was done!

Someday we hope to take the famous Blue Train from Pretoria to Cape Town. In the meantime, the game's afoot ... or in this case, a-train.