Travel: Luxury Abroad

Once upon a time, traveling in the U.S. meant trains, and trains meant living it up. In 1911, for instance, the Santa Fe’s De Luxe between Chicago and Los Angeles provided passengers with tubs and showers, a library, stock quotations and news reports, and the services of a barber, manicurist, lady’s maid and train secretary. And, reports Railroad Buff Lucius Beebe, “at the top of the Cajon Pass out of San Bernardino, uniformed messengers boarded the De Luxe with bouquets of fresh flowers for every lady passenger and alligator billfolds for the gentlemen.”

U.S. railroads today would far rather haul freight than people—and they show it. But things are different in the rest of the world. Though the glamorous Orient Express, beloved by mystery writers, has been curtailed because of international red tape and visa requirements, the luxury train still belongs to the European way of life. Latest and best is West Germany’s sleek new Rheingold Express, which clicks along at 100 m.p.h. between Basel and Hook of Holland. Its six cars offer the latest in air-conditioned high living-roomy six-seat compartments, contoured reclining chairs, a glass-walled observation car for Rhineland castle watching, cocktail lounge and gourmet restaurant, plus telephone service and a trilingual secretary for eager businessmen.

Even more de luxe is the Japanese National Railways’ Kodama, which has eight trains daily each way between Tokyo and Osaka, covering the 345 miles in 6½ hours.

Car attendants, known as “boy-san,” offer cold or hot towels to travelers, and serve them cups of tea as soon as they settle in their reclining seats equipped with earplug radio receivers. Passengers too indolent to make their way to diner or buffet are served by uniformed girls trundling carts richly laden with food and sake up and down the aisles. Not the least of Kodama’s claims to fame is its split-second scheduling. Trains leave with the precision of a time signal, are allowed errors of only 15 seconds in passing major stations along the route. Five minutes’ leeway is permitted on time of arrival but more than a minute of this margin is rarely used.

In fact, railroads are booming in Japan. One reason, of course, is that the highways are too bad for buses and trucks to offer any serious competition, while the cost of airplane travel is still out of reach of most Japanese. But another secret of Japanese rails’ success is the high standard of service epitomized in Kodama.