Compared with the US, Britain has a fabulous rail network. You can get to places small and large by rail in Britain, far more than you can in the US, where your options are really limited to the Northeast corridor (Washington DC to Boston) and perhaps the odd train to Chicago. Over the past two days, I have gotten to know the rail network much better, traveling from Dundee down to Nottingham for a quarterly research project meeting. Over the course of two days, this has meant approximately 10 hours in the train, and thanks to travel agents who apparently didn’t both checking that we used the most efficient routes, a lot of changing trains. I don’t really have sour grapes about this – we made all the changes with relatively little effort, as it was just myself and my boss, Wendy, traveling (with the addition of our colleague Mike from Edinburgh on the way back). But here is the synopsis of our travel (with the long, boring parts removed for readability).
10 am Thursday: we are on the platform at
the Dundee station, drinking tea and coffee and eating pastries. The weather is sunny – if you stand in just
the right place on the platform, the sun filters down from the street above and
warms you up. I am amused by a sign
posted on the platform encouraging people to clean up after their dogs –
something Dundee citizens need to be reminded of, given the frequency with
which I run across dog poop on the street, left as a little present to
passer-by.
Until they have their own toilet...priceless. |
The day’s journey starts smoothly, and then
we begin the string of train changes.
First in Edinburgh, then in Newcastle, then in Sheffield, then finally
arriving to Nottingham close to 5 pm.
Not too tiring – we have managed to read and work pretty much the whole
way. We walk around the corner to the ticket office on Nottingham (literally,
around the corner, since the whole station is under construction) to see if we
can get better seats for the train home the next day. The ticket agent says, “it’s a good thing you
stopped in” because the time of our train has been moved up 10 minutes, due to
a landslide and poor track conditions near Sheffield, with no notification to
us. Good thing we did stop in. She can’t really help us with the seats, only
about to give us a different seat for the very last leg of our journey –
Edinburgh to Dundee. Before hopping in a taxi, we stop in at the sweet shop to
buy some “sweeties” for the kids in Scotland.
After the meeting the next day, taxis
arrive slightly earlier to get us to the train station on time. Although things are only a few miles apart in
Nottingham, it seems to take 20 or 30 minutes to get anywhere, sitting in
traffic for an interminable amount of time, waiting to turn right across
traffic, taking many detours that seem to point us away from the station, until
we finally arrive. I am in a mild panic,
thinking it’s nearly time for the train, but in fact it’s only 16:16 and the
train doesn’t depart until 16:38. As the
time for the train draws closer (16:37 and still no sign of the train arriving
on the platform) the number of people waiting grows, and we realize that
because of the track problems, they’ve put two trains-worth of passengers of
one train, and any hope of having a reserved seat flies out the window. We muscle
our way on and grab a seat, leaving the unlucky Nottingham students to stand.
Although we leave late, we make up enough time to catch our connection at
Sheffield – even having to a wait a bit for it, time to take a picture of the
Victorian bar, the Sheffield Tap, a World Beer Free House – not, Wendy
explains, that the beer is free, but that the bar is not connected with any
particular brewery and can serve whichever brands it pleases.
Sheffield Tap, a Victorian bar in the rail station. |
Colleagues Wendy and Mike waiting for the train in Sheffield. |
Our train arrives and we board, finding our
seats in the front coach (coach F…not the most intuitive one to put first, but
I spy the letter as it goes flying past, leaving us scurrying up the platform
to board). This a long haul. After the first train, I am ready to be home.
Forget flying cars – I want to skip straight to teleportation. We stay on the train for a long time. I
finish my book, and we are still an hour and a half from Edinburgh. To make
matters worse, the train is slow – 12 minutes slow, to be precise, shaving our
comfortable 10-12 minutes change time at Edinburgh to a perilous 6 minutes or
less. If we don’t make the 21:40 train, there’s another on at 22:08 but it’s
the “milk run” – stopping at every podunk station between Edinburgh and Dundee.
C’mon train, speed up! Just a few minutes will make a difference between making
or missing that connection. A few minutes, and the luck of where the trains
happen to be parked…if we step off one and just have to cross the platform to
the other…
Divine intervention – and the nicest train
conductor ever…intervene. They identify eight or nine passengers (including
Wendy and I) hoping against hope that we can make the connection to the 21:40
train. Although we’re due to arrive at
21:35, the conductor talks to Edinburgh Waverly and gets us a track as close to
the departing Aberdeen train as possible. They also talk to the other train and
they agree to hold the train for 2 minutes. The conductor gathers us all in the
end of the First Class carriage and gives us directions on how to go from track
11 to track 15, and says maybe the staff will even open the ticket barriers for
us. We pull into the station, and Wendy says “Ready, set, go!” The first man
opens the door and sprints out of the train, followed closely by the other 7 or
8 of us. We run flat out across the platform, crossing the road in front a
bewildered taxi driver, not used to seeing eight or nine people dashing across
his path, even at the train station. We race toward the ticket barrier, and the
staff open up the handicapped gate, allowing us all to flow through at top
speed. “The end of the platform for
Aberdeen” they yell helpfully, as we dash pell-mell down platform 15, finally
reaching the still-open door of the train. We pile in, breathless. I was tired
before, but now I am awake. We made it! After catching our breath, I enquire
what carriage we are currently in, and realize our carriage is just one up, so
we walk through and sit down just a half a minute before the train departs from
the station. And the boredom resumes. But only for another hour. And then I don’t have to take a long train
journey for another month….
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