Search - Luxury Trains of the World: The Rovos Rail on DVD

Interesting Railroad Story

Jeffrey Ornstein | Brooklyn, NY United States | 06/14/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"While I couldn't give this DVD five stars like the Imperial Express or The Great South Pacific Express, it is an interesting railroad story nonetheless. It's a little too heavy on the interview with the founder of Rovos Rail which detracted from the train.

However, it's very interesting to learn that the founder was originally seeking a "rolling home" of sorts and started by buying one railroad passenger car, then a few more, then a locomotive, then some unused yards and turned it into a luxury train operation with 170 employees. The cars have the largest private rooms of any train anywhere (at least according to the video) and is all-vintage.

It also looks like for part of the journey the train is pulled by an electric locomotive, but it is not seen. Only the steam locomotives which are quite nice anyway. There's some good pacing and aerial shots during the second half of the show.

Overall, a nice story of one man's travel quest and how he got into the luxury train business."