Letting off steam: Australias legendary luxury rail line rolls out sumptuous new suites
The rebirth of luxury train travel has stocked fresh elegance, polish and nostalgia into the most harried part of any journey, getting from boring here to exciting there.It’s been a whistling success.Today you can ride the Royal Scotsman into the heart of the Highlands, the ever-expanding and incomparable Orient Express across Europe, Rovos Rail to Victoria Falls in Africa, or the sleek Seven Stars line in Kyushu.It’s all thanks to a growing demographic with cash and time to spare who have once again made a cabin on rails a privileged and competitive position, best booked a year in advance.But black-tie dinners and arsenals of Champagne that taste of brioche and butter aren’t entirely what made first-class train travel in the gas-lamp past worth resuscitating.
Whether you notice it or not through your rosè-colored lenses, the ingredient that gave the golden age of train travel its capital-R Romance is, in our opinion, mostly missing.But this just in: We might have found it … aboard an odd and adventurous old train destined for the middle of nowhere. The northern territorial capital of Darwin is the most Australian part of Australia.
Come for beachfront amenities like blazing wet heat, man-eating crocodiles, Biblical flies and citizens that seem somewhat steamed in the cerebellum.It’s a compact community, where a 15-minute drive can take you outside of town.
Do just that to reach your station, the Ghan Passenger Terminal: the departure point for luxury rail’s most authentic journey into the bush. For 97 years, the Ghan has cut an 1,851-mile transcontinental trail between tropical Darwin and the steeples and bluestone suburbs of Adelaide, with stops in places like Katherine, Alice Springs and the wild, subterranean mining town of Coober Pedy over four days.It’s a journey, and name, that pays homage to the Afghan cameleers that crossed the Aussie Outback in the 1930s.And to this day, it’s still the only coaching stock railway that attempts the...