Why do we all go giddy for the British Pullman? On paper, it’s just an old train, serving posh nosh, rolling on the same steel that ashen bankers do their daily schlep. And yet when Belmond’s Pullman is uttered something funny happens : pupils flare, envy foams. Atavistic instincts signal to the listener that being aboard this ballad to that nice moment between the wars is guaranteed to offer the very zenith of experiential pleasure.
I, it turns out, am among the beguiled. I was invited aboard to test run the train’s new Carriage Club. “The UK’s first cabaret aboard a train,” they said.
And, well, I yanked their arm off. I don’t even like cabaret. But aboard the Nostalgia Express, with its invitation to act fancy and ignore the trauma of modern living, I would channel my inner Luhrmann.
The fact that I’d be sleeping the night at the nearby Cadogan hotel (also under Belmond’s aegis) meant I could really lean into some jazz-hands carousing. Before you arrive, the train’s halcyon powers get into your head and a Kingsman-like transformation occurs. The dusty tux is exhumed, you Google “cummerbund” and your late grandpa appears in a dream, giving you the nod to wear his bequeathed Breitling.
You and your guest then sashay through rush-hour Victoria station with bullet-proof politeness and rented panache, delighting in asking someone, anyone, the way to the Pullman lounge. The soft swing band playing yonder gently smothers “See it. Say it.
Sorted” and th.