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Andrea Thompson - Newsreader
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I fell in love with the south of France a long time ago and try to get back there as often as I can. There’s a local train from Cannes along the coast which crosses the border with Italy. It takes you past some of the most amazing seascapes. It never matters what the weather is like, or what time of the year it is, it is always enchanting. Out of the other window are some of the best back gardens and residences in the whole of France. You feel like someone peeping into the property of the rich and famous. The travellers themselves are always lively because there is an interesting mix of tourists and locals, all with different itineraries but all admirers of the breathtaking journey.
I have enjoyed so many rail journeys through the years, but if I had to pick a favourite it would be the Nile Valley Express, which runs across the desert of northern Sudan. The one misfortune in my youth, growing up in South Africa, was missing out on a family train journey from Cape Town to the Kruger National Park. I was regarded as being too young and troublesome and was sent off to an aunt. When I came to live in England as a teenager, I still hadn’t travelled by train. London Waterloo was the first real station I ever saw and its great glass dome filled me with wonder.
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Betty Cooper - Novelist
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I am indebted to one train in particular: the Blue Train, which took my husband and me on our honeymoon across France to catch a boat to Egypt. It was on the train that my husband gave me a pink dress, which I thought was absolutely wonderful. Someone happened to mention that pink was good for the brain, and I’ve never stopped wearing the colour since. What I remember about the journey itself,
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however, is how lovely it was to travel through France and then by boat up the Nile to Luxor. It was, without a doubt, the perfect way to wind down after all the wedding preparations.
We were working on a series of articles based on a round-the-world trip and had to cross a desert in an African country. There wasn’t a road, so the only way we could continue our journey was to take what was affectionately known as the Desert Express. The timetable was unreliable - we were just given a day. We also heard that, in any case, the driver would often wait for days to depart if he knew there were people still on their way. When it appeared, there was a sudden charge of what seemed like hundreds of people climbing into and onto the carriages - people were even allowed to travel on the roof free. During the night, the train crossed some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. It was like a dream, like travelling across the moon.
I imagine most people’s favourite impressions of trains and railways are formed when they are young children, but that’s not my case. I was brought up in Singapore and Cyprus, where I saw very few trains, let alone travelled on them. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that trains began to dominate my life. I made a film which featured a railway in Yorkshire. Most of the filming took place on an old, disused stretch of the line which had been lovingly maintained by volunteers. That’s where my passion for steam trains began. When we weren’t filming, we took every opportunity to have a ride on the train, and, when I went back last year, it was as if time had stood still. Everything was still in place, even the gas lights on the station platform!
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