Soon after, though, I was utterly lost in the experience of the train itself, in the nostalgically rickety-ness of locomotion, in the feeling of being in a rolling reenactment of "Out of Africa." ...

Lelyveld, who died last year, added, “Outside the train, you can catch some reasonably telling glimpses of the uneven ways in which land and labor are apportioned under the South African system.” ...

A passenger train known as Phelophepa — or “good, clean, health” in the Sesotho language — had been transformed into a mobile health facility. It circulates throughout South Africa for much of the ...