Trains and Trainees
It took twelve hours to get from Cornwall to London last Saturday. Arriving early morning at Penzance, my friend and I were told there were no trains to Paddington. It was the rain at Reading. Come back tomorrow said a lugubrious man in blue. My friend was flying to Pisa on the tomorrow, so we decided not to believe what we didn’t want to hear.
Our disbelief proved right. After omelettes and hours of sitting with The Cornishman a train came. We didn’t know where it was going but we got on it. It collected the desperate from St Erth, St Austell, St Everywhere, and terminated, which is what trains do, at Plymouth. About a thousand of us then stood for ever on platform 7. At five-minute intervals a recorded voice said ‘This is an important announcement: smoking is not permitted anywhere on the station’. This was the only customer information. I am not a smoker, but what with the waiting and the not knowing, and the constant reference to it, I began to feel I could use a cigarette.
I talked to William, a nice man with a very large rucksack and a dog called Polly. She was from a rescue home and had a resigned air. William said she wasn’t very bright for a border collie, but that she’d enjoyed her holiday in Cornwall because the landlady at the B & B gave her an extra sausage for breakfast each morning.
William kept avidly texting and talking from behind his hand into some sort of smart phone. He was very knowledgeable about the railways, the evils of privatisation, the demerits of the various train companies, the state of the rolling stock and the track. Perhaps because I was interested in all he had to say, he confided he worked for First Great Western, but didn’t want the people on the platform to know. He feared violence. As he was clearly getting information from a train guru in a parallel universe I felt privileged to have won his confidence. Swathes of time passed. He texted and phoned then told me that in thirty minutes a Virgin train for Bristol would arrive, but that I shouldn’t get on it. I should wait for the 13.41 First Great Western to Paddington via Exeter. The 1400 advertised on the monitor wouldn’t happen, he explained. Station monitors were controlled from a central site and the operators, wherever and whoever they were, didn’t know what was happening where.
An announcement then came over the Public Address system. It was not about smoking. A train for Exeter was to arrive on platform 7. My friend and I decided to get on it whatever William said. We wanted to be anywhere that wasn’t Plymouth. The train headed in but stopped at the far end of the platform. It only had one carriage. I’d never seen a one-carriage train before. William explained its provenance, but my interest in railway history waned as I watched the panic scrum.
I asked him why rain at Reading should bring the whole network into chaos. He explained that the drains didn’t work. The pipes were full of roots. In the olden days this got sorted, but not now. And as rain was an act of God, train companies had no legal liability to sort things: no refunds, no alternative transport. Most real railway people had now gone, he said, trainees were now instructed by trainees.
The Virgin train came and went taking William and Polly. It was packed to capacity with people squashed in the aisles. My friend worried about our remaining on the platform, but I reassured her about the unadvertised 13.41. But then a train with two carriages arrived unannounced. It was pointing south and it put down roots on platform 7. My friend asked its driver where he was going and he said he didn’t know.
Our source of information switched from William to Hans’s father. Hans was from Vlaardingen in the Netherlands from where his father was texting information to him about the southwest network. He told him to avoid Bristol because there was nothing running between there and London.
Time passed, the 13.41 didn’t arrive, nor the advertised 1400. Hans said that in Vlaardingen railway travel was five times cheaper than here, trains always arrived on a designated platform, and that if a train was crowded people moved down the carriage to make room.
After an eternity another Virgin train pulled in on platform 8. It was going to Bristol. We scrambled aboard. It was packed to capacity. At Bristol there was a stampede to I didn’t know where. Down steps, up steps lugging cases. My friend told me to follow a man with a green suitcase. She said he was going to London. We squashed into a capacity packed departing train, commended our luck, bought much-needed wine from the buffet and listened to stories far worse than our own. A passenger from Truro told me a man in his compartment had been thrown off the train for smoking. I asked if those in charge had waited for a station stop before despatching him.
At Paddington no District, Circle, Hammersmith or Central line trains were running. I supposed it was the rain at Reading. I hope Hans got to Harwich in time for the midnight ferry. It is said that travel broadens the mind.