Perron

Two nights across the Karoo

Restored 1968 coaches · Cape Town to Klipplaat · four departures a month

See the four journeys

The train

Eight coaches and forty-four berths. Nothing on it was built after 1974, and nothing on it has been modernised.

The line

1 180 km of the old Midland main, Cape Town to Klipplaat, on rail that still carries freight three nights a week.

The clock

Out at 16:40, back mid-morning. We hold at Matjiesfontein, we take water at Beaufort West, and we are never in a hurry.

The table

One dining car, two sittings, everything cooked on board that morning from what came aboard at the last stop.

Four journeys, and that is the whole timetable

Fares are per berth and take in every meal on the train. We sell direct — there is no agent, and no fare is ever discounted.

Hex River Overnight

R4 850 per berth
  • Cape Town 16:40 Friday, back 11:20 Saturday
  • Two-berth coupé with the linen made up
  • Dinner, a nightcap and breakfast
  • First light on the Matroosberg from the vestibule
Check the dates

Matjiesfontein Return

R7 900 per berth, two nights
  • Out Thursday, home Saturday morning
  • Fifty-five minutes on the platform at Matjiesfontein
  • Four sittings in the dining car
  • Coupé for two or a compartment for four
Check the dates

Lootsberg Crossing

R11 600 per berth, three nights
  • Cape Town to Rosmead and over the pass
  • The summit at 1 749 m, usually before breakfast
  • Two hours at the Beaufort West loco shed
  • Home the same way, in completely different light
Check the dates

The Full Midland

R18 400 per berth, five nights
  • Klipplaat and back, 2 360 km on the line
  • Every station on the road, including the shut ones
  • Willem talks in the lounge car after dinner
  • Runs twice a year only, April and September
Ask about berths

Aboard

What is on the train, and what is deliberately not.

Two sittings

Dinner at 18:30 and at 20:15. You are given a sitting when you book and you keep it for the whole trip.

Windows that open

Every coach is 1960s stock. The window drops on a leather strap and the smell of the veld is most of the reason people come.

Coupé or compartment

Two berths or four, each with a key, a folding basin and a door that locks from the inside.

Four a month

First and third Thursday out, Sunday back. Nothing runs over the December works shutdown.

Forty-four berths

That is the whole train. When the last berth goes the run closes, and we do not put on a second one.

No wifi

There is no signal past Touws River in any case. We took the router out in 2021 and nobody has asked for it back.

Our own fitters

The coaches are kept in our shed at Salt River by four people whose names are on the board in the lounge car.

A guard awake

One of the crew is in the corridor all night, every second coach, from the time the lights go down.

What people write afterwards

We booked it for my father because he drove these engines out of Beaufort West for nineteen years. He spent both nights standing in the corridor with the window down and hardly said a word. That is the review.
Elmarie du Toit · Somerset West · Matjiesfontein Return
I had it in my head that a train trip is a hotel that moves. It is not. It is louder, it is properly cold at four in the morning, and it is far better than that.
Sipho Ndlela · Johannesburg · Lootsberg Crossing
The dining car is a 1968 car and they have had the sense not to modernise it. Lamb neck on the Friday, the same steward at both sittings, and a wine list of eleven things that all come from within 300 km.
Hannes Kritzinger · Graaff-Reinet · The Full Midland

Winter berths open on 1 March

Forty-four berths a run, and the July departures are usually gone inside a fortnight. Put your name down and Nomvula will phone you the morning the dates load, before they go up here.

Put my name down

About the line

Perron is four people and a shed at Salt River. Marika Fourie ran the catering car between Cape Town and Beaufort West for eleven years and bought the first coach at a 2014 disposal auction for less than the price of a bakkie. Her brother Deon does the mechanical work. Nomvula Sithole runs the office and answers the phone. Willem is the guard and has worked this line since 1989. The dining car is a 1968 car we pulled out of a siding in Bloemfontein with the panelling still in it. It took three years, most of it in the evenings, and we replaced the kitchen and nothing else. The tables, the lamps, the brass rail along the servery and the water carafes are the ones that were in it when it came off the line. The train stops where it stops because the line has water there, or a crossing loop, or a station that still has somebody on it. Matjiesfontein for fifty-five minutes. Beaufort West at ten past two for water. Klipplaat because that is where the shed is and where we turn around. We do not add stops to make a day feel fuller, and if there is nothing at a place we go straight past it.

Book a berth

Four departures a month from Cape Town. We reply within a day.

Stairs, a wheelchair, a birthday, a diet — tell us now rather than on the platform.