Travel Back In Time

To glimpse the world as it was, generations ago, all you need to do is rethink your method of transportation. On a nostalgic train journey across Ireland, complete with formal dinners and luxurious carriages, ANDREW MARTIN embraces the rhythms and pleasures of a bygone era.

- Andrew Martin

Beyond the windows of the gently swaying dining car, darkness descended. The heaviness of the rain and our speed were increasing at roughly the same rate—optimal conditions for cocktail hour on a luxury train. With an Irish gin and tonic in my hand, I watched the manager of the Belmond Grand Hibernian place a line of small electric lamps on the long table. As the author of a number of books about trains, I had hoped for just this kind of nod to railway history when I’d put this journey on my travel to-do list. Table lamps in the restaurant cars, often shaded in pink silk, were symbols of the trains deluxe of the late 1800s and 1900s, especially those of the Wagons-Lits company, whose sleepers—including the various Orient Expresses—carried stylish travellers across Europe until the 1970s.

The Wagons-Lits carriages were midnight blue, as are those of the Grand Hibernian, but in other ways this new offering from high-end train operator Belmond strikes out on its own. The carriage interiors are modelled not on those of earlier trains but on notably immobile phenomena: the Georgian mansions of Dublin. Hence, wood panelling in the sleeping compartments, tweed upholstery in the observation car, and an actual mantelpiece in one of the two dining cars.

The train manager switched on the lights. “We always have the lamps on for the last night,” he said. This would be the final evening of six for those on the Grand Tour of Ireland itinerary; for me, it was the last of two, since I was on the shorter Taste of Ireland route. I had boarded on Saturday morning and eaten lunch as we headed north from Dublin, the train gliding above the silvery water of the Malahide Estuary under a misty Irish rain.