The Trains Now Departed

by Michael Williams

  Of course, there have been other boat trains – and glamorous ones too. None more so than the Golden Arrow, which also ran between Victoria and Paris, with its famous umber and cream art deco Pullman cars and haute cuisine menus. Then there was the Emerald Isle Express, connecting London with the Holyhead boat to Dun Laoghaire in Ireland, and the Hook Continental – infinitely glamorous, despite its mundane name – which conveyed its passengers comfortably to Holland from Liverpool Street via Harwich. But none could match the mystique of the Night Ferry, whose comfy sleeping cars rolled effortlessly onto specially adapted ships in the middle of the night, speeding on to their destinations on the opposite side of the Channel to arrive in time for breakfast. And nobody ever had to leave the warmth and comfort of their bed.

  When the train was launched in 1936 it seemed such an obvious and brilliant idea. Yet astonishingly the idea of a roll-on, roll-off train had been tried in Britain only once before – back in time on 3 February 1850, when the directors of the newly opened Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway were the first passengers to go to sea in a railway carriage, making an historic journey from the Scottish capital to Perth. When they got to the banks of the Forth, their train ran down a specially built drawbridge laid with track, known as a linkspan, connecting with another set of rails on the deck of the 389-ton ferry Leviathan. After the four-and-a-half-mile crossing to Burntisland on the other bank, the train was drawn off using a similar linkspan arrangement. Unfortunately, the twenty-foot tidal fall meant that the pitch of the drawbridges was too steep for the safety of passengers, although the Leviathan ran for another forty years, successfully transporting freight wagons until the opening of the great Forth Railway Bridge in 1890.

  The idea of train ferries across the Channel might have seemed an obvious one. But the reality was endlessly delayed by plans to build a Channel tunnel, which were so plausible that digging on both sides of the Channel actually started in 1880. This was abandoned only because of British security fears, as war seemed to be on the horizon. Ironically, it was the military supply demands of World War I that finally got the cross-Channel train ferries going, with the first running from Southampton to Dieppe in December 1917, followed by Richborough in Kent to Calais, and Newhaven to Dieppe in February 1918. But although empty passenger carriages destined for use as hospital trains were conveyed on ferries across the Channel, there were still no services carrying real people.

  Fast-forward to a very extravagant and lavish party in the port of Calais on 9 December 1922, attended by two of the grandest British grandees of railway travel, Sir Herbert Walker, chairman of the newly formed Southern Railway, and Lord Dalziel, chairman of the management committee of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, which in its short history ran some of the most sumptuous, luxurious and sybaritic trains in history. The champagne in Calais was flowing for the company’s relaunch of one of the world’s most star-studded services, the Calais-Méditerranée Express, otherwise known as the Blue Train – Le Train Bleu. This was the fabled night express that conveyed some of the world’s richest people from northern Europe to the French Riviera.

  There was only one engineering firm in the entire world which could supply new carriages for the launch quickly enough, and that was the Leeds Forge Company, which had pioneered the use of pressed steel – much lighter than the wood traditionally used for building railway carriages. The company engineered forty luxury sleeping cars of all-steel construction, the most comfortable ever built. And there was no better way to ship them over to the Continent than aboard one of the specially equipped wartime train ferries.

  The CIWL was the brainchild of an obscure Belgian, Georges Nagelmackers, who had been sent by his family to the United States in the 1860s to recover from a broken love affair. Instead he transferred his affections to luxury trains. So impressed was he with the ultra-comfortable night trains of George Pullman, American founder of the famous Pullman Car Company, that he vowed to bring similar luxury to Europe. Soon after its foundation in 1874, the Compagnie’s WL trademark, brandished by two lions, had become the favoured brand of luxury travel, patronised by kings and presidents, princes, sheikhs and sultans.

  The Compagnie was never defined by any borders, and its coaches ran magisterially across Europe, either as entire formations, such as the Orient Express, or attached to normal service trains. Although it never owned any locomotives, its trains, like the Nord Express from Paris to St Petersburg, or the Sud Express from Moscow to Vladivostok, became the stuff of legend, with carriages decorated by Lalique and publicity produced by Cassandre. Peking, Baghdad, Cairo, Tehran and Bucharest were among the roll-call of exotic destinations included on their routes.

  How logical it seemed back in the 1920s to add another great international express – between the English and French capitals – to the stable, especially as the technology was there to make the crossing between England and France. And British-built sleeping cars had already done the trip. But who could have forecast that the great financial crash was about to unfold, and it took years of dreaming and planning to build a ferry dock suitable for the trains at Dover, where the connection would be made to Dunkerque and then on to Paris. The engineering problems were enormous, compounded by the twenty-five-foot rise and fall of the tide at Dover, the rough Channel seas and fissures in the porous chalk beneath the dock. When finally completed, the Railway Gazette pronounced it one of the great engineering achievements of the day.

  Even so, there was an embarrassing mishap when the inaugural VIP train ran from Paris on Tuesday 13 October 1936. Quelle horreur! One of the brand-new sleeping cars, carrying no less a panjandrum than the British foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, derailed on the quayside at Dover after being shunted off the Hampton Ferry, although there were no injuries. The first public train the following evening had a trouble-free passage, although it must have made a slightly odd sight, with the modern sleeping cars, specially built to fit the smaller British loading gauge, double-headed by two decidedly elderly locomotives, an L1 class 4-4-0 No. 1758, piloting a Victorian D1 Class 4-4-0 No. 1470. The return first class fare, including the sleeping car conductor’s gratuity, was £9. 4s. 0d.

  And there was such excitement! ‘Emotionally moving,’ is how the train’s historians George Behrend and Gary Buchanan describe it in their book Night Ferry:

  At long last, the comfort, convenience, elegance, allure and above all safety and privacy of international overnight rail travel by Wagons-Lits ‘Grand International Express’ extended to England … In the 1930s the Great European Expresses were the accepted ways of European travel. From Calais, sleeping cars departed nightly for Istanbul, Rome, Trieste, San Remo, Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes and Bucharest. Thrice weekly they ran to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Warsaw and on to the Russian frontier …

  So what a thrill to step aboard in London! To see the same glamorous gold and blue cars, with their foreign French wording, drawn up at Victoria, made many rub their eyes in disbelief. On the waist at one end were the words ‘Voiture-Lits 1-II Classe’ and at the other end ‘Sleeping Car 1-II Class’, while above the windows were the proud words: ‘Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Europeens’.

  You could almost smell the continental air as you passed through the tiny passport control room onto Platform 2 at Victoria. You surrendered your passport and your ticket (always known as a bulletin) at the door of the voiture to a conductor standing to attention, immaculate in brown uniform with gold piping and brass buttons, cap as flat as a French army officer’s with a shiny black peak. And, of course, black gloves. There was a personal number on his lapel and discreetly pinned on the left breast pocket a badge with a small chevron marking every five years of service.

  What a contrast to the scruffy porters of the domestic railway with their rolled-up sleeves and waistcoats. As one writer put it, ‘You feel your journey has really started as soon as you step inside your cosy compartment – T. S. Eliot’s “little den”.’ Even the business tycoons r
elaxed, especially if the conductor had discreetly popped the cork on a quarter-bottle of champagne. On the table was a little booklet, introducing the train, with all the connections from Paris, as well as a woodcut of Notre-Dame and a recommendation for a famous city-centre rotisserie. There was also a rather severe customs declaration form in four languages. It warned that you would be fined if you struck any item out. Many passengers were perplexed to be asked whether they ‘had brought a carpet on the train’, but woe betide any reckless passenger who deleted the question.

  The complement of the Night Ferry is described in all its grandeur by Cecil J. Allen in his book The Titled Trains of Great Britain, written in 1946:

  The formation of the train from Dover to Victoria at peak periods rises to as much as two French vans and ten sleeping cars, all of International Sleeping Car Company’s stock working through from Paris to London; then attached at Dover, a restaurant and kitchen car, buffet car, corridor first, two corridor seconds, another restaurant and kitchen car, and a first-class brake – twelve Continental and seven SR vehicles, making this about the heaviest passenger train in Great Britain.

  Snuggled into your berth at Victoria, you would soon be on your way – the only sign that this was to be a very unusual train journey indeed were life jackets in the luggage rack and netting to stop luggage falling out in rough seas. You had to hope that the noticeboard on the platform announcing the condition of the Channel did not read, ‘Heavy swell tonight’. Unusually too, for such a glamorous train, there would be nobody to see you off – bar a solitary railway policeman – and not a window to open, such were the strict requirements of the British customs.

  Nor was it possible to see the train’s two locomotives, way out in the darkness at the far end of the platform. If you had, you might have wondered, in the early days, why they should have been of such extreme vintage for such a state-of-the art train, causing them to puff and grunt, issuing huge billows of smoke and steam as each locomotive’s four modest driving wheels got a grip on Grosvenor Bridge as they steamed out of the terminus. The answer was that the Southern Railway did not have a single modern locomotive powerful enough to pull the train single-handed.

  To get over the problem, in 1939, Oliver Bulleid, the Southern’s ingenious chief mechanical engineer, designed the revolutionary streamlined 2-8-2 Mikado locomotive specially for the Night Ferry. Sadly, war intervened, but if it had gone ahead, it would have been one of the most sophisticated and powerful steam locomotives ever built. Luckily, the Ministry of War Transport permitted Bulleid to build his big Merchant Navy Class Pacifics, all named after shipping lines, which soon became regulars on the train. How appropriate to be steaming towards Dover and beyond hauled by No. 21C1 Channel Packet or sister engines with famous nautical names such as Cunard Line or French Line CGT. Soon the lights of the London suburbs would recede and the cool Kent night air would waft through the tiny louvres of the non-opening windows.

  Now the dining car beckoned, with plenty of time for a feast. Although the crossing was a mere eighty-seven miles from London, the journey to Dover Marine station would take nearly two hours. In the parlance of Pullman dining, dinner might consist of Soup of the Day with Golden Croutons, Roast Sussex Chicken & Sauté Potatoes, Petits Pois, Fruit Salad and Double Devon Cream and the Cheese Board. It might sound utilitarian today, but even in the post-war years it was an experience of positively gourmet quality. The Wagons-Lits conductors would also bring beer, spirits and champagne from the diner and serve you in your cabin, as British customs would not admit anything stronger than mineral water to be brought beforehand into the cabins.

  By the time they reached Dover, passengers were starting to doze off, lulled on their way through the Kent countryside by the gentle rhythm of the track under the sleeping cars’ firm suspension – helped on, no doubt, by the excellence of the fine wines in the dining car. With many in their slumbers, not all were able to appreciate the civil engineering marvels of the massive new ferry dock, specially constructed at Dover, that made their journey possible.

  There was a short pause on the quayside as the less exalted passengers got off to walk along the covered passage to the ferry. Meanwhile an ancient tank engine would edge down, propelling its ‘swinger’ onto the sleeping cars. The swinger, nicknamed Queen Mary after the famous liner, was an old coach underframe with a cabin mounted at one end to protect the shunters from the elements. Ever so gently, the engine eased its charges down the special track to the linkspan. Passengers with keen hearing would know they were aboard by the echo from the ship’s covered deck. Sometimes on warm summer nights an elegant crowd in silk dressing gowns would alight and head for the ship’s cocktail bar for a nightcap or three, while the crew attended to the complex engineering that would soon allow the ship to be on its way.

  The enclosed dock, which allowed the trains to run onto the ships no matter the height of the tide, had taken three years of work by a team of divers operating round the clock. More than 400 feet long and 70 feet wide, it initially defied almost every effort to seal it and hold back the rough waves of the Channel. There was even an outlandish proposal to freeze the encroaching seawater. Eventually the dock floor had to be laid with five-foot-deep concrete, reinforced with old rails and steel girders while still underwater.

  Berthing ships locked on to a screw below the waterline, allowing the rails on the linkspan to line up accurately with the deck – with two tracks on the quay branching into four on board, each track accommodating four sleeping cars. Each carriage was secured to the deck with eight chains, the springs on the bogies having been tightened down. There was enough choppiness on most cross-Channel journeys without bouncing coach bogies adding to the general air of seasickness. Pits were installed in the decks beneath the coaches so that the washbasins and toilets could continue to discharge – although the slopping effluent must have been vile in high seas.

  Throughout the sea journey scrupulous silence was supposed to be maintained. But although the crew crept around on their duties, this was not always to the satisfaction of the passengers. When one woman complained about the noise of the chains being attached to the coaches, she was told curtly, ‘Madam, men have been known to sleep in the heat of battle.’ But it was a rare passenger who was not eventually soothed to sleep by the lullaby of the ship’s turbines. Although the train ferries were not equipped with stabilisers or modern devices like bow thrusters, the regular captains, like the legendary Len Payne or Tommy Walker, were masters at keeping their vessels stable in the roughest seas.

  Not many would be awake when the sound of heavy chains announced arrival at Dunkerque at 4.30 in the morning. But it was always a delicate business getting the ferry into the lock, particularly in a heavy swell, which prevented the lock gates from being opened easily. But if you had slept through this, your instincts might have been teased awake by the unmistakable sounds of France, when, in steam days, a giant 0-8-0 locomotive would grip the train and haul it up the linkspan.

  ‘With some exceptions,’ as Behrend and Buchanan describe it colourfully, ‘French engines did not puff like British ones. They ran on briquettes of pressed coal dust and moved quietly, belching black smoke … Their drivers wore berets and goggles … the brakes were Westinghouse air type, and on Pennsylvania carriage bogies, created that special noise – a romantic descending musical chromatic scale.’ The authors continue with their description of an old France which has now almost vanished: ‘For some travellers all was strange: the language, the motor cars driving on the right; the frightful smell of drains, particularly pungent in Dunkerque’s docks, mingled with other French smells that time and television advertisements have lessened – the aroma of mixed garlic, papier-mais cigarettes and much rough wine.’

  Soon the tank would be replaced by one of the top-link André Chapelon Pacifics from the Paris La Chapelle shed for the run up to the capital. With their huge smoke deflectors, these locomotives were the monarchs of the French tracks – each one so cherished that it was
only permitted to be driven by one man, a veritable aristocrat of the tracks, whose name was painted on the cab. He could often be seen lovingly oiling his steed before departure. And so, to a chorus of seagull shrieks, the heavy train would pull slowly out as passengers dozed, drowsy with the rhythm of the rail joints. Shrouded in morning mists, the coal-mining country of northern France would give way to dewy fields, with great teams of Percheron carthorses, ploughing or haymaking or harvesting, according to the season.

  You could have your tea or coffee in bed served by your conductor, but most people in the heyday years of the train rose for Le Meat Breakfast, as Wagons-Lits called it. The atmosphere in the dining car (in post-war years a luxurious vehicle originally built for the French president’s train) is described by George Behrend and Gary Buchanan in Night Ferry:

  The metal floor plates [of the gangways] slid against each other as you exchanged the quiet of the Wagons-Lits for the cheerful clatter of the Wagon-Restaurant: its lofty ornate ceiling made the sleepers with their narrow loading gauge seem curiously English, whereas in London they looked so very French.

  Classical dining car ritual stayed unchanged from 1890 to 1960. On the tables baskets of wrapped biscottes and bottles of Worcester Sauce reflected the international Wagons-Lits style. Soup cups were used at breakfast for serving tea, coffee or chocolate. Connoisseurs of Wagons-Lits would purloin a few wrapped sugar knobs from the silverine bowl – these were by Beghin of Thumieres. Ouefs sur le plat with ham arrived in an almost red-hot metal platter straight off the coal-fired range, placed on a second plate above that on the table to prevent scorching of the cloth.