Letter from Mombasa Rob CrillyThe "Lunatic Express" judders into motion more than three hours after it was scheduled to leave Nairobi station for the Kenyan coast.
Ahead lie about 400 miles of railway built a century ago by British engineers with Indian and African labour.
At that time it was viewed as an expensive folly - nothing but a costly example of colonial hubris. Who would use a lunatic line through a deserted chunk of Africa, populated only by malarial mosquitoes and man-eating lions?
Today, the lunatics are perhaps the backpackers and adventurers prepared to endure delays, cancellations and thieves at the window to experience a faded piece of colonial grandeur.
Our late start is down to a problem with the restaurant car. It was accidentally shunted off the rails, delaying our departure to 10pm. Once we are under way, dinner is announced with a four-tone chime.
Waiters in white jackets serve first-class passengers at tables in a restaurant car straight out of the 1930s. Much of the elegance, however, has faded. The leather seats are scuffed and splitting at the seams.
Most of the first-class cabins have no electricity, leaving passengers to fumble with torches. And the stewards' white jackets are stained.
"The sooner the South Africans take over, the better," says one of my dining companions, a Kenyan.
A South African consortium is due to take over the railway on November 1st, charged with turning around the decline. It plans to invest more than €225 million in the line and this week sacked more than 5,000 of the railway's 9,000-strong workforce.
For James Kangere, one of the train stewards, the changes cannot come a moment too soon. He slumps down on a leather seat at the end of the third sitting for dinner. "The coaches are in a very bad state, the service is not good enough," he says sadly. "Sometimes there are cockroaches. That is not good enough."
It is a sad time for one of the British empire's great engineering feats.
The detractors may have scoffed at the thought of spending £5.5 million on a railway through territory with little in the way of commercial agriculture, industry or people, but the line went on to become one of the most famous in the empire.
Construction began in 1896 and the first phase - from the coast to Lake Victoria - took six years. Thousands of Indian and African labourers - and one or two Britons - died. Most succumbed to disease, but hundreds were also killed by the feared man-eating lions of Tsavo. The predators brought construction to a halt when hundreds of workers fled in fear, only to return when the two animals had been slain.
The line took on a central role in east Africa's development and its modern history. Nairobi was little more than a watering hole before the railway arrived on its way through to Uganda. And such was the expense of the line that the British Foreign Office had to encourage white settlers to come to Africa so that costs could be recouped through carrying agricultural produce and passengers.
The rot set in during the 1990s, when a series of corrupt deals saw Kenya Railways pay too much for its fuel and other services. Lengths of rail and chunks of land were sold off.
Passenger services to Uganda were cut altogether in 1996 and most freight travels by road now.
That does not bother the passengers in first class - they are mostly backpackers thrilled at the prospect of stepping back into history.
Early next morning they watch the sun rise over Kenya's thick acacia scrub, tucking into bacon and eggs, spotting giraffes looming out of the distance. But as the train lurches along the uneven tracks they swap tales of broken toilets and unwelcome nocturnal visitors.
Ceri Jones (23), who has just graduated from Southampton University, woke to find a shadow looming over her.
An intruder was clinging to the side of the rattling train. He managed to force his head and arms through the window as he searched for her bags.
"I'm laughing about it now, but it makes you wonder whether someone was watching you in bed - wearing next to nothing. It is frightening," she says.
The train shudders to a stop not long after breakfast. It is still 100 miles from Mombasa. A freight train has derailed, halting all movement along the single track.
An hour later we are under way again, but not for long.
We were due into Mombasa at eight in the morning, but morning turns to afternoon, with the train making short bursts of progress before halting once more.
At first, the stops are fun. Schoolchildren arrive at the side of the track to gape at the train or play with the white passengers.
"I'm not in a rush," says Nadia Khan (25), a Canadian lawyer working in Nairobi. "This is all part of the charm - a real sense of adventure."
Later, as the day slips away and the train is not much nearer its destination, the mood changes.
People have been drifting away at each halt, stumbling through the bush to hitch rides from buses, trucks or matatus - the minibuses which serve as local taxis.
Ms Khan is one of the unlucky ones, stuck on the train as night falls. "I think I've had enough now," she says.
Eventually, with her 13-hour journey turning into 24 and a hotel booking in jeopardy, Ms Khan manages to hitch a ride at Mariakani for the final leg into Mombasa. She is one of the last passengers to escape.
By the time the "Lunatic Express" pulls into Mombasa, it is a ghost train.