Tuesday 15 August 2000. We are at Zell-am-See railway station where we are about to board the Gisela Express to Kitzbühel.
The train was one of the first electric trains in the world. Most of it dates from the 1930s but the original mail sorting room housed in a 1920s carriage is attached to the train.
The coach, with John driving, will meet us at Kitzbühel.
Keith is on his day off and so in civvies as he cheerfully waves us onto the train. He'll jump onto the Leger coach with John for the day.
We have a reserved carriage and get to know a few more people during the journey. The carriage is full, it's just that everyone else is crowded up to the windows! However, on the left, Barbara sticks her elbow out for the camera...
Once the train has got going lunch is served by costumed waitress service. Hot dog in a bun.
Well, nearly all in a bun as can be seen here! Barbara laughs as her hubby (whose name I didn't get, sorry!) wonders why the bun isn't bigger... The buns weren't cut in half, there was just a hole in them. People kept wandering down to the buffet car to see how it was done whilst everybody hoped it wasn't the same implement used to put holes in the doughnuts...
Lunch over, there was time to go out to view the mountains. The carriages were too old to be fully enclosed at the couplings and we had a great time standing on the footplates, taking photos of the scenery.
These little wooden bits of decking were safe enough for intelligent people. I have to wonder whether they would be considered so now after decades of people expecting to sue because they are too stupid to keep themselves safe without being told explicitly not to chop their own hand off with an axe... Common sense is pretty rare these days I find.
"I just wanted to see if I could stand on it..." Well, who could have guessed?
Meanwhile we are approaching a stop. This was to be a photo stop for people to take photos of the train and costumed staff and to have a look at the 1920s postal sorting office in the specialised carriage.
Here it is - dear me, there's not been a lot of mail to sort on this particular journey!
The guard and stewardesses pose outside the postal carriage.
The locomotive was an electric locomotive 1020.44 dating from 1945. The Giselabahn railway was opened in 1876 by Emperor Franz Joseph and was named after his second daughter with his wife, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary,Elizabeth, nicknamed Sisi. The opening of the railway made it possible to travel from London to Istanbul by train for the first time and it thus started the almost legendary Orient Express.
"Bo-o-o-o-a-rd!" It's time to take a last photo and get back onto the train as we carry on into Kitzbühel. We take our seats for a good minute or two before it's back to looking out of the windows and standing on the footplates. As we pull into the station at Kitzbühel we can see the coach waiting in the car park. We have a couple of hours free time to look around the town first though.
