Right now the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe steam train is pulling out of the Dias Museum Complex in Mossel Bay. We're heading for Mossel Bay station, then 2-hrs later, George.
The carriage is creeking and shuddering, there's a springbok head sandblasted on the window and the wood panelling is shiney with varnish. This is from another time and another place... a time and place more innocent than right now.
The nostalgic reek of the smoke from burning coal takes me back to my standard 4 camp at Happy Acres in the old Transvaal's Magaliesburg area (most probably the winter of 1978). Ever since then, no matter where I am in the world, coal smoke has the ability to push my 'happy emotion' buttons. Even roasting chestnuts on braziers in Soho streets, London have the ability to take me straight home.
The shunting sound of the steam engine - her name is Rosie - and the billows of steam means that the last scheduled-departure, short-haul steam train journey in Africa has begun. Trains remain a passion for me; anyone who still reads will understand.
The train offers museum-to-museum tours on a scennic, 100-year old line from the Dias Museum in Mossel Bay to the Outeniqua Transport Museum in George. It's route is more or less along the very edge of the Indian Ocean. Six tours a week in summer, three a week in Winter.
Time now to sit back and be lulled by the storm-lashed ocean and the rolling carriage while praying that someone will serve me some decent railway coffee. Life is bliss... especially as there's no hurry, no worries here in Mossel Bay. Right now I wouldn't want to be anywhere else... .
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