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Sentimental journey
A Yorkshireman is bringing retro luxury back to European railways. Michael Hickling talks to Howard Trinder and Michael O'Flaherty takes a trip.
In Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood get it together on a train and at the same time foil assorted foreign blackguards aiming to de-rail a fellow passenger bearing secrets to London.
Deserving equal billing in the film is the train itself which steams out of a snowy Ruritanian country at the far end of Europe and rattles across the pre-war continent as the plot unfolds.
When I first saw this on television in the less expansive early 1960s, it seemed to sum up the magic and mystique of trans- European expresses of a bygone age when boarding one of them promised unlimited horizons and potential adventures.
Howard Trinder from Harrogate has now put some of that glamour back on track. His long career journey on the railways started in a more workaday way however as a British Rail trainee surveyor at York. BR switched him to work for their pension fund as a property investor and then made him redundant in 1991 when his job went to outside consultants.
In his last 10 years with BR, Howard had been organising office staff trips for a hobby, using colleagues' travel concessions and this coincided with the Channel Tunnel opening up whole new vistas for the rail traveller.
He then drew on this experience to set up his own company, Great Rail Journeys, in York in 1993. "We found a niche market from people who wanted more than Brussels and Paris – our first trips went to Switzerland and further afield," he says.
It did so well, a firm of venture capitalists decided it was just the ticket for them too. Three-and-a-half years ago they bought the business. "They made me an offer I couldn't refuse," says 57 year-old Howard. "I'd have loved to have continued doing it, but it was the right time to sell. It was a very large figure, I'm not prepared to say how much."
Among his network of rail contacts was someone at Hungarian Railways in Budapest from whom he had chartered trains for his BR chums. He got in touch again and the outcome was the Danube Express which will take you from Budapest to Istanbul in a style which even demanding film stars in the Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood mould would find acceptable. The key to it is a set of three new sleeping cars costing about 2m designed to look old-fashioned but with a specification which matches those of a top hotel of today. Howard says they are the best on mainland Europe.
"Would you stop in a hotel where you didn't have a private shower and a toilet? The concept of the night sleeper – scenic journey in the day-time and waking up in a new destination next morning – is a wonderful way of doing things. This is a top-end train, an iconic train."
At one time we used to build and run iconic trains in this country every day of the week. Most of them are now in the National Railway Museum and we order our new ones from Italy rather than from Doncaster or Darlington.
Where does this former BR surveyor reckon we went wrong?
"Privatisation was a concept devised by politicians and the idea of competition has not happened," says Howard. "What you have is a railway run by bus companies which does not provide the integrated system this country needs. When I worked for British Rail, the public subsidy was was 1.25bn, now it's over 5bn. If BR management had had that money in the mid-1990s, you would have had a fantastic railway.
"But I also have mixed feelings about abroad. The French market their TGV very well, but the cost is phenomenal and their secondary lines are deteriorating and going to the dogs. The German and Swiss railways are fantastic and the general public use them more than in the UK because the fares are lower.
"In Hungary, the railway has suffered terribly since the break with Communism. Some of the stock is in a dire state and they had to follow the European Commission ruling to split the track from the traction, as we did here. They have slashed the fares on the buses which has made things very difficult."
The Hungarian equivalent of BR is called MAV which is three-quarters owned by the state. Howard's arrangement is with MAV Nostalgia who provide the restaurant carriages, classic carriages and the running licence. The Budapest to Istanbul run is the longest they do and takes 48 hours, hauled by an electric loco.
"Hungary to Istanbul is the most popular route, but I'll go anywhere. I can arrange to put steam in front, but over that distance they are unreliable. I know they have just built a new steam loco to run excursions out of York, but who would go and construct a fleet of them? When you are on the train, it doesn't matter what's in front. When you open the windows you just get filthy when it's steam." MAV Nostalgia also organises the permission to run into other countries and here the soaring costs have put a bit of a brake on progress. Howard had planned this year to go from Brussels, linking up with Eurostar out of London St Pancras. That could have meant Yorkshire passengers departing mid-morning from Doncaster and boarding the Danube Express mid-afternoon. Track access costs have ruled it out. "The further east you go, the cheaper access becomes – costs are 40 per cent higher in Germany and Belgium than in Bulgaria." MAV Nostalgia also runs the Hungarian national railway museum. "It's more a railway park than a museum, not like ours in York. That's the best in the world – I know, I've been to them." So in the international railway league, at least we lead the field in looking backwards.
Danube Express 01462 441 400 and www.danube-express.com.
Opulent elegance that's fit for a Queen
Michael O'Flaherty writes:
The special cabins with double bed, bathroom with shower and lavatory give the Danube Express an edge over its rivals like Orient Express where passengers must march along swaying corridors for their ablutions – anathema to Americans in particular.
Our compartment has a table, two chairs, a double bed, a wardrobe, full-length mirror, personal safe, power sockets, fresh flowers, even a hairdryer in that impressive ensuite bathroom. As in other carriages, there's rich beechwood panelling – Howard Trinder chose the trees from which it was fashioned – and brass fittings. Further along the train are Communism-era refurbished classic cars dating from the 1950s and once used by ex-president of Hungary Janos Kadar.
Our first stop is Dresden, destroyed in a firestorm by Allied bombing, now lovingly restored. Boarding the train again, it's time for dinner – caviar, followed by goose with mashed potato and braised red cabbage, and pancakes for dessert, along with a selection of Hungarian wines.
Next morning, we pass through a wondrous area known as Saxon Switzerland, with dramatic rock formations, mountains and tumbling waters. Via Slovakia we arrive at our ultimate destination, Nyugati station in Hungary's capital, Budapest. Its magnificent waiting room, redolent of times gone by, was built for the Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elizabeth, known as Cissi.
She had an annexe to herself at the station, claiming that the emperor's waiting room was too ornate. Even so, I think she would have enjoyed today's Danube Express.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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