A true and avid railfan !
... Departing from Paris’s Gare de l’Est, the train [the Orient Express] crossed Europe and the Balkans and in eighty-two hours arrived at Istanbul, where steamer tickets to any Asian port could be purchased.
One regular passenger was King Boris of Bulgaria, a serious "foamer" [= "railfan"] who had his own pair of canvas work overalls custom-tailored in Paris. Fascinated with the steam engine, he loved nothing more than to ride in the locomotive and ask all kinds of questions of the driver and the fireman. The directive eventually came down: anyone who let King Boris talk his way into the cab would be fired on the spot. The king retaliated by ordering the train stopped by the military once it had crossed into Bulgaria. Then he would seize the controls and "defy anyone to stop him from driving a train across his own kingdom," reported journalist Martin Page. The sneaky child-king was part of the lore that grew up around the Orient Express and made a ride on it a guaranteed story at a dinner party.
One regular passenger was King Boris of Bulgaria, a serious "foamer" [= "railfan"] who had his own pair of canvas work overalls custom-tailored in Paris. Fascinated with the steam engine, he loved nothing more than to ride in the locomotive and ask all kinds of questions of the driver and the fireman. The directive eventually came down: anyone who let King Boris talk his way into the cab would be fired on the spot. The king retaliated by ordering the train stopped by the military once it had crossed into Bulgaria. Then he would seize the controls and "defy anyone to stop him from driving a train across his own kingdom," reported journalist Martin Page. The sneaky child-king was part of the lore that grew up around the Orient Express and made a ride on it a guaranteed story at a dinner party.
Tom Zoellner,
Train , pp. 193-194
