The Old School 1%
June 21, 2017 12:47 PM   Subscribe

High-end cocktails at 60km/ hr. Luxury trains are special trains designed specifically to offer an elegant train ride, and evoke a strong sense of association as in history, heritage and decadence of a leisurely ride.
Maharajas' Express

Venice Simplon Orient Express

Rovos-the most luxurious train in the world

Palace on Wheels




Luxury train travel proponents assert that it has several advantages over travel on airplanes. Whereas during air travel the monotony of the journey is occasionally broken by the view of clouds through the plane's window, a winding luxury ride on board the trains provides ample opportunity to the guests to witness the local environment, social and economic conditions, and myriad colors of the places they are traveling to. There are a number of reasons for the growing popularity of the luxury trains over air travel, which includes ample space, restaurants and bars, spacious and comfortable sleeping and seating area and even wash/bath rooms.
posted by shockingbluamp (18 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Japan has an even newer luxury train than the one that article mentions.
posted by thefoxgod at 1:17 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Bookmarked! As a person who used to do adventure roadtrips but is now about as mobility challenged as you can get short of being entirely wheelchair-bound, these look like great vacations to interesting places, many of which wouldn't be so darned exhausting. Too expensive to do every year, but it might be doable to go on one every several years, especially the ones that are on the same continent I am. I will have to think about this.
posted by elizilla at 1:38 PM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


Wife and I keep talking about taking the Toronto to Vancouver train but still haven't actually gotten around to it.
posted by octothorpe at 1:42 PM on June 21, 2017


This time 2.5 weeks ago I was enjoying a glass of local sake aboard the Koshino Shukura, which runs between Tokamachi and Joetsumyoko in Niigata, Japan. Live music; onboard sake bar (they actually had free tastings but the most expensive drink for sale was 300 yen/less than 3 bucks for a glass); unbeatable views of mountains, rice fields, and the Japan Sea - and it was freaking free with a JR pass. I love Japan's train culture so much.
posted by sunset in snow country at 1:52 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I remember waiting for my (increasingly delayed) ordinary train in Verona and seeing the Venice Simplon Orient Express pull in on the opposite platform. It was so pretty.

... a winding luxury ride on board the trains provides ample opportunity to the guests to witness the local environment, social and economic conditions, and myriad colors of the places they are traveling to.

In the latter days of the USSR, I took the overnight train from Moscow to Leningrad, and was very disappointed to find that there appeared to be a general policy to plant trees the whole length of the route, to hide state secrets from prying visitors. There was remarkably little of interest to see.
posted by Azara at 1:59 PM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


As an American, pretty much any train impresses me. I took the sleeper from London to Edinburgh and was delighted. (My berth-mate was a Jehova's Witness but apparently English Witnesses roll in a very different way from Americans because she brought cocktails to share!) Then I took the West Highlands line to Oban and was in raptures the entire time. I'm on a train! There's cider! Cider on a train! THIS IS THE ULTIMATE IN LUXURY RIGHT HERE! My British friends moan endlessly about the train service and I am just standing there like OMG TRAINS! YOU HAVE TRAINS!!!
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:04 PM on June 21, 2017 [12 favorites]


Had a short overnight hop from Warsaw to Minsk. Not "luxury" but a private sleeping cabin with pre-war style accouterments. Tea in glass cups from a samovar, a plain working samovar but just way cool at 2am after trudging though a vast empty soviet style train station with no markings and few people none with a clue. (me being the bag carrier). But the best was changing track gauges. They lift the train up off the wheels and slide in a different set. Hard to see at sleepy 4am but just cool.

Also, octothorpe, the Canadian train is not to be missed.
posted by sammyo at 2:13 PM on June 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


London to Venice is ~$US2,400 per person for 2 days. That's a little rich.
posted by flippant at 4:04 PM on June 21, 2017


Oh! Oh! I took the Maharajah's Express! Here's a tweet with a couple of photos. More in this collection of tweets.

It was excellent. I mean it was ridiculously ostentatious and highlights the extreme gap between wealth and poverty in India. But it really was marvelous. Like being on a cruise, only on rails.

The best thing about the trip is that it's an easy way to see Rajasthan over a week. We wanted to see the Taj Mahal, Jaipur, Udaipur, etc. The usual way for wealthy American tourists to do this is by private car, long drives and new hotels every night. Instead we just unpacked once on the train and lived and ate in opulence, even by the usual wealthy-tourist-in-India standard.

The train company did a great job organizing events for every stop, too. It's not hard to plan a tourist event in Agra, you're there to see the Taj Mahal. But we also went a bit further afield on our stop in Jaipur to see the Jantar Mantar, an 18th century astronomical observatory. In places without a clear tourist attraction they made their own. We had a fantastic moonlight dinner out in sand dunes with dancers and musicians and also a lunch with a performance from the Black Sufis of Gujarat, a group of African-Indians. It was more or less exactly like the sort of tourist excursions cruise ships organize everywhere. Only these were very good and elaborate in a uniquely Indian way.

Back to the train itself, it was lovely. We had a fancy cabin, just two to a train car, so plenty of space. More-or-less working Internet the whole way. We had a butler, Sita, on call 24 hours. Free drinks (in India!). Excellent food in one of two beautiful dining cars. Laundry service. We had a bathtub, fer-cryin-out-loud. Just fantastic.

The main rough edge we encountered was it was hard to get a good night's sleep because the train was often on the move and Indian rails are not particularly smooth. I mean it was OK, but I think I was awake for an hour every night at some point. Also some of the other guests were pretty obnoxious. This kind of luxury experience attracts people who feel they have a moral right to being waited on hand-and-feet by people they consider inferior. Fortunately we were able to avoid the worst of them. Last caution is that the train itself is a bit unreliable, sometimes they don't sell out enough rooms and a trip will be cancelled. We had no problem though.

India has several different luxury trains, the economy there is sort of perfect for providing this kind of luxury experience. We're thinking about doing another trip on one in a year or two, probably in South India.
posted by Nelson at 4:12 PM on June 21, 2017 [7 favorites]


For contrast, here are the gourmet items for sale in the cafe car of an Amtrak train.
posted by octothorpe at 4:14 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I love trains. Even the Amtrak, as slow and cumbersome as it is, I have very many pleasant memories on it. I also get worried about being too sleepy when I drive as well, so I vastly prefer train travel because I can doze off without worrying. When I was playing 80 Days, I just loved the thrilling and romantic visions of train travel, and wish it was more reliable and luxurious.

I was very lucky to be on a Japanese bullet train, and that was just so beautiful in itself. Landscapes of farms and small towns that I can only see in passing - it's so interesting.
posted by yueliang at 5:06 PM on June 21, 2017


I love train travel.

It hardly qualifies as a 1%er train ride, but taking high-speed rail from Madrid to Barcelona and back, drinking wine and eating bocadillos de jamon iberico y Camembert while zooming along at 300 km/h, was well worth it.
posted by emelenjr at 6:55 PM on June 21, 2017


That was very interesting. Thank you.

The closest thing to luxury train travel for me was the Broadway Limited, Philadelphia to Chicago. It had a real nice dinning car and the food wasn't to shabby. But that's long gone
posted by james33 at 6:00 AM on June 22, 2017


To see how the other half ride the rails, I highly recommend the BBC series Indian Hill Railways. Start here.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:01 AM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


London to Venice is ~$US2,400 per person for 2 days. That's a little rich.

Oh my. Back in the day when the Orient Express was a scruffy, dirty, ramshackle working train, London to Athens via Paris, Venice, Trieste, Simplon Tunnel and Yugoslavia (can't remember if we stopped) was all-in on a one-month student railcard for £31.
posted by glasseyes at 11:42 AM on June 22, 2017


I'd never heard of the African Indians. Here's some info, it's an 8-minute United Nations film. In short, multiple origins and routes into India, including as railway labourers in the 19thC, minority status with some government protections (implying how much they need it.) There's more film on youtube but particularly the WildFilmsIndia stuff is using extremely perjorative language seemingly without being aware of it so I very much doubt they have much knowledge of context.
posted by glasseyes at 12:24 PM on June 22, 2017


The African Indian performance we saw in Balasinor was a bit uncomfortable making to my American eyes. Some fairly intense "exotic savage African" stuff: this video clip is representative, I think I recognize some of the dancers. OTOH it was also a really fun performance with excellent music and dance, and I'm pretty sure the troupe was having a good time and was well paid. And so much of the American tourist experience in India is WTF in various ways that early in the trip we learned to just roll with it and do our best to be extra-polite and respectful.

That dance performance was paired with a visit to a Dinosaur Fossil preserve. Both hosted by Aaliya Sultana Babi, a remarkable woman. She's the protector of the dinosaur park and has made herself an expert if amateur paleontologist. She is also heir to the old Balasinor royal family. After we looked at some fossils we joined her at the family palace under the imperial eye of her very traditional father, who seems to be living as if the age of the rajas is still extant. They served a nice lunch, and we saw the amazing dance performance, it was a memorable day.

Not bad for a train trip.
posted by Nelson at 12:47 PM on June 22, 2017


There's a whole discussion to be had about the juxtaposition of the luxury 5-star train with caviar and champaign and white people driving elegantly through poor african towns of poor african people (re south african luxury train). Dunno, made me uncomfortable.
posted by alon at 4:58 AM on June 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


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