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The Trains of Cameroun
Jun. 3rd, 2002 09:18 pmSo Dru's no longer available through email - he's only able to access it when he makes the rare trip down to Yaounde. It's a rather involved trip, from the coast up through the mountains to the inland portion of the country, where he's posted. Dru describes the journey:
The trip north is via the train. It leaves at 6:20 at night and arrives usually before noon the next day. That is if there have been no derailments of the train. If there has one can spend anywhere from another three to 12 to 16 hours on the train waiting. The tracks are not that smooth and some of the drivers do not drive slow enough around the curves. The train will just bounce of the track. During the night there are numerous stops consisting of a ear splitting, brain knocking, earth shattering jerk of all the cars bouncing off one another. Some are hard enough to knock you off your feet if you are standing and even make you fall out of bed if you are near the edge. The bathrooms on the train are holes in the floor where everything just falls along the tracks. There are rooms with four beds and rooms with two beds. There is a dining car and they do serve dinner on the train but I usually try not to eat that much. At each of the stops at night and in the morning there are people selling fruit of various kinds, and random other food items that I don't care to descibe right now but trust me there is nothing like it in the states. On the ride down here we arrived on a normal schedule around 9 o clock in the morning. This time around I am taking a bag of pineapples back to the north to give to my friends since they don't grow up there. (too dry)
Back to the train. There are three classes of tickets that you can buy. I stay with the first class with a bed. There is also just plain first class that gives you a seat to sit in all night. There is also second class where they give you a seat that is unpadded and the seats are in sets of four facing each other so that you are banging knees with folks all night long. During the night in the second class there are people sleeping all over the aisles, in between cars, in their seats and is generally very crowded and is the most dangerous in terms of thieves. The length of the trip is the longest all the way to Ngaoundere for that is the end of the line. There are two trains and they pass in the night at a designated stop.
There the conductors and the drivers switch trains so that they always stay on one end of the line for the day. It is called Camrail. The train is roughly 10-15 cars long and red and white in color. It ain't no Amtrak that is for sure.
C'est la vie.
The trip north is via the train. It leaves at 6:20 at night and arrives usually before noon the next day. That is if there have been no derailments of the train. If there has one can spend anywhere from another three to 12 to 16 hours on the train waiting. The tracks are not that smooth and some of the drivers do not drive slow enough around the curves. The train will just bounce of the track. During the night there are numerous stops consisting of a ear splitting, brain knocking, earth shattering jerk of all the cars bouncing off one another. Some are hard enough to knock you off your feet if you are standing and even make you fall out of bed if you are near the edge. The bathrooms on the train are holes in the floor where everything just falls along the tracks. There are rooms with four beds and rooms with two beds. There is a dining car and they do serve dinner on the train but I usually try not to eat that much. At each of the stops at night and in the morning there are people selling fruit of various kinds, and random other food items that I don't care to descibe right now but trust me there is nothing like it in the states. On the ride down here we arrived on a normal schedule around 9 o clock in the morning. This time around I am taking a bag of pineapples back to the north to give to my friends since they don't grow up there. (too dry)
Back to the train. There are three classes of tickets that you can buy. I stay with the first class with a bed. There is also just plain first class that gives you a seat to sit in all night. There is also second class where they give you a seat that is unpadded and the seats are in sets of four facing each other so that you are banging knees with folks all night long. During the night in the second class there are people sleeping all over the aisles, in between cars, in their seats and is generally very crowded and is the most dangerous in terms of thieves. The length of the trip is the longest all the way to Ngaoundere for that is the end of the line. There are two trains and they pass in the night at a designated stop.
There the conductors and the drivers switch trains so that they always stay on one end of the line for the day. It is called Camrail. The train is roughly 10-15 cars long and red and white in color. It ain't no Amtrak that is for sure.
C'est la vie.
