Rovos Rail

node · earth · Southern and Eastern Africa

A private South African train operator founded by Rohan Vos in 1989, running from its own restored station and workshops at Capital Park in Pretoria. Its first train ran on 29 April 1989 with one locomotive, seven carriages and four paying passengers. Where the Blue Train is the surviving state boat train, Rovos is a purpose-built commercial reconstruction: it acquired and rebuilt withdrawn stock and then invented itineraries, including Pretoria to Cape Town, Pretoria to Victoria Falls, and the long Cape Town to Dar es Salaam run over colonial-era Central African alignments. The routes are old; the service is thirty-seven years old.