The train to Simon’s Town is cheerier on the outside.

“Crack House” was the phrase that sprang to mind when I pried open the door to board the Metro Plus commuter train to Simon’s Town in Western Cape, South Africa on Saturday morning. Yep, it looked like a scary place. By the end of the journey, one of my fellow travelers reminded me that first impressions aren’t always correct.

A dark train is conducive to sleeping

Let me explain. First, there were no lights in the car and, as it was sitting in the station, no sunlight either. Not that much light could have permeated the scratched and fogged windows anyway.

So I could see very little, but I could smell and it was not pleasant. Nor was it unidentifiable. As my eyes adjusted, I saw several riders were slumped in their seats and one was sprawled out – fast asleep and who could blame him? In the center of the car someone was playing a guitar and singing. Loudly.

Everyone looked up to examine me as I entered, adding another element of discomfort, so I quickly took a seat. Soon I realized this performer wasn’t some drunken wanna-be rock star, he was good with a textured voice and an interesting way of re-working the rhythm of familiar songs.  I got up and moved closer, picking a seat across from him and recognizing as I did that he was riffing on the Lynyrd Skynyrd tune, Alabama.

The train had not yet left the station but the gloom in the car was lifting and it wasn’t just me getting the idea that we were in for an entertaining ride.

Paul Duhameau performing on the train to Simon’s Town

Paul Duhameau continued to sing, but between songs, he told me a little of his story. He grew up in Cape Town but traveled the world in the merchant navy. He learned to play the guitar from his fellow sailors and the songs, well, everyone of a certain age knows those songs. Paul was just lucky that his rugged rasp was so well suited for the genre, Eric Clapton, Otis Redding, Neil Young.

Duhameau learned the guitar at sea

He told me that his career on the sea took him to “the four corners of the world” and included a three year stint as a steward on the Queen Elizabeth 2. It was during this time that Paul decided to ditch his uniform on his off time and hang like a civilian with some of those well-heeled passengers out at sea.

“Oh there were some famous ones,” he told me. “We stood Rod Stewart for round after round of drinks one night,” he said. But even I know that’s so not allowed and he left the ship in 1989.

What he’s been doing since then, I can’t say. But his life as an itinerant troubadour didn’t begin until a year ago. He’s riding the train – riding out the last year before his pension kicks in and he gets a guaranteed monthly income. In the meantime, he pays a little extra for a first-class ticket, (you read that right, I was describing the first class car!) so he doesn’t get escorted off by security guards, as another rider was, half way to Simon’s Town.

Guards remove a rider without first class ticket

As passengers got off the train at their stops, nearly all of them dropped money into the cap Paul had left on the floor at his feet. Two passengers who had joined our conversation noted they had never seen him on the train before, which is what prompted the fellow named O’Gorman to chide me with the “you can’t tell a book by its cover” comment.

For sure, in his threadbare dungarees and well-worn sneakers, clutching a guitar that seems to have been used as both table and umbrella in the recent past, Mr. Duhameau doesn’t make a great first impression. And yet, here’s a man who can turn a gritty train car into a moveable concert hall transporting us with music alone to a better place.  From where I sit, that’s pretty impressive.

Christine Negroni

Author of The New York Times bestseller, The Crash Detectives, I am also a journalist, public speaker and broadcaster specializing in aviation and travel.