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33
ne day, this passionate engine driver found something that
went far beyond his beloved profession: at an old railway
station, he discovered a dilapidated carriage from the
workshop of the original imperial train, which had not seen active
duty for a very long time. This carriage kindled his imagination. He
started to do research: did some of the original carriages still exist,
and what was this imperial train in the first place? Until now, his
passion had been limited to modern trains and technical innovations,
even though the elegant luxury trains, the Pullman cars of the Orient
Express and the Chinese imperial train, had always fascinated him.
Now, suddenly, his curiosity for a specific Austrian kind of train had
been awakened; with the instinct and passion of a hunter, he found
documentation, found the original workshops, and bought – with the
help of investors – what he could get to fulfill his second dream: he
wanted nothing more and nothing less than to revive the imperial-
royal court train and to present its splendor and beauty to the
world. Gottfried Rieck wanted to transport people from the waning
twentieth and the emerging twenty-first centuries into a time and a
society of more than a century ago. In the old days, this splendor
would have been inaccessible to regular citizens – but now we can
enjoy its brilliance and splendor. In this train, we are not confronted
with the banal luxury that is repeated ad nauseam in hotels of all
countries and continents, but we encounter the luxury of another
epoch. Granted, we may idolize this time and think of it as free from
worry because we only remember its outward appearance and
not its fragility. However, it also provides us with a kind of historical
refuge and a certain degree of security. The "Majestic Imperator
– Train de Luxe" wants to be part of this memory, so that we can
submerge into dreams of a world of exclusivity that enables us to
imagine that time has stood still. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a
court society of long ago and happily enact a nostalgic play in which
we are both actors and audience.
O
Page 32: Arrival at Nyugati Station in Budapest
for the maiden voyage on October 20, 1990
(MI)
Bottom: Encounters in the Salon Carriage Ambassador
(MI)