The Blue Train was not named by anyone in charge of it. The name began as a remark on station platforms, after South African Railways painted a dining car blue and cream and then, over several years, repainted the carriages behind it to match. When the railway adopted the words officially in 1946, it was conceding to the onlookers.
Promotional histories like to push the story further back and tie it to the 1890s and the discovery of diamonds and gold. The dates do not cooperate: the diamonds were found a generation earlier, the decisive gold strike came in 1886, and the train itself did not exist until 1923. The minerals did build the railway, though, and the railway is the better story.
Diamonds pulled the line inland
The first railways at the Cape went nowhere in particular. A private company had reached Wellington by 1863, and the mountains behind it discouraged further ambition. Then diamonds turned up in the interior at the end of the 1860s, and by 1871 there was a rush to what became Kimberley. The Cape suddenly had a reason to cross a triple barrier of ranges.
John Molteno, prime minister under the responsible government granted in 1872, used his first speech to parliament to announce the purchase of the existing lines and the founding of the Cape Government Railways. The same administration settled on a gauge of 3 ft 6 in, narrow enough to wind through mountains, which spread across southern Africa and is the gauge on which the Blue Train runs. The Hex River Mountains were overcome in 1876, De Aar was reached by 1884, and on 28 November 1885 the first train arrived at Kimberley, 625 miles from Cape Town.
Gold moved the destination
Gold rearranged the map almost as soon as the Kimberley line was finished. Jan Gerrit Bantjes and the Struben brothers made the first recorded finds on the Witwatersrand in 1884, but credit for the main reef generally goes to George Harrison, at Langlaagte, in July 1886. Johannesburg received its name that October. The economic centre of the region had moved north-east of the diamond fields, into a republic whose government was at odds with the Cape.
The obvious extension, from Kimberley through Klerksdorp, was blocked by that quarrel, which in practice meant Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger. The Cape built around the problem instead, going through the Orange Free State by way of Norvals Pont and Bloemfontein, reached in 1890, to the south bank of the Vaal. The Transvaal eventually agreed to build down to meet it, and a temporary bridge carried the first train from Cape Town into Park Station, Johannesburg, on 15 September 1892. The direct route, from the diamond town towards the gold town, had to wait until a junction at Fourteen Streams allowed through running via Klerksdorp in 1906.
A railway timetabled by ships
The advantage of the Cape over Durban and the other harbours was the sea. Cape Town was the first call for liners from Europe, so although it was the port farthest from the Rand, the ocean passage was the shortest. Before 1900 the shipping lines were advertising Southampton to the goldfields in 19 days, 17 at sea and two by rail, with a train waiting at the pier.
The rail leg was not, at first, much of a pleasure. Early South African railways offered transport superior to the ox-wagon and little beyond that. The turning point came in 1903, when the Central South African Railways took delivery of mahogany-panelled bogie coaches from the Metropolitan Amalgamated company in Britain for a premier service between Pretoria and Cape Town. When the colonial systems were merged into South African Railways in 1910, the southbound run still took 44 hours.
The Union trains of 1923
In November 1923 the railway gave the mail-ship connection a name in each direction: the Union Limited southbound from Johannesburg and the Union Express northbound from Cape Town. Both were first class only, charged at the ordinary first-class fare plus 50 per cent, and both ran to suit the Union-Castle sailings. Timings had fallen to 29 hours 21 minutes southbound and 30 hours north, the difference owed to the climb to Johannesburg at about 5,750 feet.
The early sets were six clerestory coaches from the 1903 stock, with oak and mahogany panelling. Passengers arriving by sea could book while still aboard and walk a few steps from the gangplank to the train; those going the other way had their cabin trunks delivered to the quay beside the ship. A dining car exhibited at the Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 and 1925 came home renamed Wembley and stayed in service for more than 45 years.
How a dining car named a train
The sources agree on the sequence and disagree on the car. The Railway Magazine, writing in 1983, credits a diner called Pretoria, in service from February 1930 in blue and cream. An account published by The Heritage Portal names Protea, added in 1933 with blue and cream sides and a silver roof, and says the remaining carriages had been painted to match by 1936. Either way, people on platforms took to calling them those blue trains, and the habit outran the official titles. France had made a similar habit of naming a train for its paint with Le Train Bleu on the Riviera run.
In July 1937 the railway ordered twelve all-steel, air-conditioned sleeping coaches from Metro-Cammell of Birmingham at £10,500 each, following up with lounge, dining and kitchen cars. They arrived as war began, in 1939 or 1940 depending on the account, and allowed the windows to stay shut against heat, dust and smuts. The interiors committed fully to the theme, with blue leather upholstery, blue carpet in the corridors, and blue bedding and towels.
One account has it working as a troop train until 1942; another records simply that the service was suspended that year and the coaches stored. It returned in early 1946, in February or March according to the source, inaugurated by the Minister of Transport, F.C. Sturrock, under the name everyone had been using anyway.
From mail connection to destination
The Metro-Cammell coaches lasted until September 1972, when two 16-coach sets built by Union Carriage & Wagon at Nigel replaced them. The old stock was repainted light green and carried on as the Drakensberg Express between Johannesburg and Durban until 1985. The new trains arrived in an age when an overnight flight from London to Johannesburg took less time than the train from the Cape. The Blue Train survived by ceasing to be transport, and routes were added with tourism in mind, among them Victoria Falls and Hoedspruit, for the Kruger.
- 1869–71: diamonds in the interior and the rush to Kimberley
- 1885: first train reaches Kimberley, 28 November
- 1886: main gold reef identified at Langlaagte
- 1892: first train from Cape Town reaches Johannesburg, 15 September
- 1923: Union Limited and Union Express introduced
- 1937: all-steel air-conditioned coaches ordered from Birmingham
- 1946: the nickname becomes the official name
- 1972: locally built sets enter service
Riding the diamond line
The traditional route of the Blue Train between Pretoria and Cape Town passes through Kimberley, De Aar and Beaufort West, which puts the diamond line of the 1880s and the junction of 1906 directly under the modern suites.
Readers more interested in the carriages than the minerals should turn to the story of how Rohan Vos rescued old rolling stock, the work behind the Pride of Africa. Our guide to southern Africa by luxury train sets the routes side by side, and the full range of luxury trains and further histories in the journal follow the same theme elsewhere. The ships that set the original timetable are long gone. The line they justified, and the colour a dining car passed on to it, have proved more durable.
