Glamorous rail journeys that evoke a bygone era have never been more popular. Now they are being joined by the Danube Express, thebrainchild of a former BR employeeHoward Trinder was bitten by the railway bug when he stood as a child in a Paris station and read down a departure board offering direct sleeper trains to Venice, Istanbul and Berlin. Throughout his subsequent 30-year career in British Rail, he retained his dream of reviving a golden era of rail travel, with its hand-built carriages and glamorous evenings in a restaurant car trundling across Europe. Later this week, the improbable vision of this self-confessed "rail nut" son of a Durham ticket inspector will become reality, when the gleaming 12-carriage Danube Express, built at a cost of more than £5m from rolling stock that once belonged to the Hungarian postal service, pulls out of Budapest on its first journey to Warsaw. The trip will herald the arrival of the first luxury train service in continental Europe since 1981, when the Venice-Simplon Orient Express - the modern successor to the 1930s express which epitomised high-end rail travel - was revived. The Danube Express will be the only opulent sleeper service operating between such evocative destinations as Berlin, Istanbul and Prague.
Howard Trinder was bitten by the railway bug when he stood as a child in a Paris station and read down a departure board offering direct sleeper trains to Venice, Istanbul and Berlin. Throughout his subsequent 30-year career in British Rail, he retained his dream of reviving a golden era of rail travel, with its hand-built carriages and glamorous evenings in a restaurant car trundling across Europe.
Later this week, the improbable vision of this self-confessed "rail nut" son of a Durham ticket inspector will become reality, when the gleaming 12-carriage Danube Express, built at a cost of more than £5m from rolling stock that once belonged to the Hungarian postal service, pulls out of Budapest on its first journey to Warsaw.
The trip will herald the arrival of the first luxury train service in continental Europe since 1981, when the Venice-Simplon Orient Express - the modern successor to the 1930s express which epitomised high-end rail travel - was revived. The Danube Express will be the only opulent sleeper service operating between such evocative destinations as Berlin, Istanbul and Prague.
I saw the train parked at West Station just today. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
