AI Goes Blue. Leitz Elmar 50mm

Back in 1991, a dear friend and I were able to fulfill a long-held wish to make a journey on South Africa’s world-famous Blue Train.  This perfect, beautiful, elegant blue-and-white streak can only be described as a five-star hotel on wheels which makes the 1000 mile, 24 hour journey between Cape Town and Pretoria twice weekly in each direction, conveying its passengers in silent, air-conditioned and pampered comfort.  Our trip was on the second incarnation of the train; the first was introduced to service in 1939, the second in 1972, and now there is a third, introduced in 1997.  For us back then, this was the trip of a lifetime; I will not do it again.
Some time ago, I bought a slide and negative scanner, and digitized the photographs I took on that journey.  Now, with the use of AI photo-editing software, I am able to bring out the very best in this image.
At the time I didn't think about it; just pressed the shutter release. But now, with 30+ years of hindsight, this one frame in particular seems to convey perfectly the dichotomy that was – and still is – South Africa:  extreme poverty and extreme wealth, extreme First World technical and cultural sophistication, and extreme primitiveness, co-existing side-by-side. The photograph taken from the hermetically sealed train as it traverses the sparseness of the great inland semi-desert, the Karoo, seems to encapsulate these variances. The window glass on the train is tinted with gold dust to cut the glare.  It suffuses the light inside with a warm hue, while outside the harsh African sunlight pours down on the landscape. The train passes a simple farm in the middle of nowhere. What must the farm workers think of this White Man’s “spaceship” intruding on their lives as it glides by?