What do Bill Bryson, the Roosevelts, Churchill and the Queen have in Common?
Theyve all had the experience of riding on a railway completed in 1901 in Kenya. That line variously called the Iron Snake by the Africans, the Lunatic Line by Victorian tabloids, was later known as the Lunatic Express. It is still in use today. The trip from Nairobi to Mombasa, a journey of 13 to 14 hours across a panoramic savannah, was made in comparative luxury in 1907 by Winston Churchill who was impressed with the effort required to build it. The British art of muddling through, he said, was seen here in one of its finest expositions …Through everything through the forests, through the ravines, through troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the railway… It was the animal life that attracted Teddy Roosevelt and his son Kermit in 1909. In Kenya on a hunting expedition, they were provided with a bench bolted to the cowcatcher so they could witness the unparalleled vista, a pristine ecosy
