The Utopian Golden Age of Steam

Transport, especially trains, has a bad name. Some might say it is well earned, others that the comments and accusations, when taken in context of the whole picture, are overblown and unnecessarily damaging. The fact remains, things are not what they used to be, and many hark back to the days of steam, when trains were punctual and clean, as if they had lived those days themselves. Here, in a country where the punctuality of trains is always talked about as being perfect by those from other countries, things are as they have always been, and as they are in most other western nations. The trains and buses run, that is the main thing, but often with no close relation to what is in their timetable.

I have a rather ambivalent attitude toward travel. I use trains and buses at least twice a day, six or seven days a week, and have experienced much that there is to offer, with such modes of transport, other than a train crash. This, I hasten to add, is an experience I am quite happy to forego. I am content in the knowledge that my ticket, for an entire month, now costs fifty-three euro, whereas last year it was forty-nine, and next year it will probably be sixty-three. My ticket takes me across the entire country for that price, admittedly not on the fastest trains, but it does what is on the label. A weekly ticket, last year, for just one of my journeys between two defined stations, cost one hundred and ninety-seven euro. There are, though, other things which make me grimace, if not quite to the state of clutching my pearls.

To be fair to the transport system here, I suspect most European countries have much the same problems with timetables, keeping the time, with other traffic impeding movement and, especially, with their customers. Those people who hurry for a train which could leave punctually, and then hold the door open for their colleague or friend who, not quite seeing the same level of urgency, saunters in as if the world waits upon their bidding. Those who board a bus and confront the driver with all of their ticket needs, but haven’t taken the time to remove their wallets from within the depths of an almost inaccessible pocket or bag, and almost certainly will not have the right change or, hard to believe, expect the driver to have change for the largest banknote they were able to find or afford. And those who insist on conducting their business with the driver once the vehicle has re-entered traffic.

I would like to say that my journey today, to a small village quite some way out of the safe confines of the Big City, was one without trial and tribulation but, aside from the train crash – or any crash for that matter – it had almost all the ingredients for a good comedy. A comedy, that is, where you have the advantage of being in the audience, and not a main character. My outward journey was without any form of problem; which should have been warning enough. I caught the bus from close to my home, transferred over to the train – with an egg roll and a cup of coffee in hand – then into a second bus and, finally, a third bus. The roll had just the right amount of mayonnaise, the coffee strong with a suitable quantity of sugar, there was room to sit and stretch out my legs on all my modes of conveyance. In the small village I conducted my as my needs dictated, and then made my way back, with plenty of time to spare, to the bus stop.

It would seem, and I might be the only one who notices this, that not all bus stops are what they should be, what we expect them to be. To all intents and purposes, this bus stop, complete with glass-sided shelter, seat and waste bin, looked like all others. There was a large sign next to the road with the name of the bus stop clearly shown. My first problem, however, was to find out in which direction my chosen bus, the twenty-eight – would be traveling. Small villages are sometimes laid out in a different way to larger towns and most cities. You expect your mode of transport to go in the direction of your destination. In this case, however, it was clear to me that the bus I was waiting for would initially go in the opposite direction, turn off the main road, take in a few side roads and their bus stops, and then return to the straight and narrow. What I had not taken into account is that one bus stop, with its singular name, is not necessarily the bus stop that one needs, and that a second could be hidden from view, but with the same name.

I have experienced this in the Big City too. I travel to a certain part of the city and seek out the bus or tram which I need to catch in order to return home. The tram stop has the same name as the bus stop, and the same name as the railway station they both serve. They are not, however, on the same street, which can lead to some confusion. How, for example, am I expected to catch the tram back into town, when there are no tram tracks, no rails? Not expecting such complexities out in the simple world of the countryside, I waited patiently at the side of the road, next to the correctly designated bus stop, and watch for the bus to come along that road toward me. As you, the gentle reader, might well have guessed, this is not what happened. The bus did not come along the road to the bus stop where I was waiting, rather, it came along a side road and drove across the main road with my bus stop, and disappeared down another side road where, I suppose, there must have been another bus stop of the same name.

The countryside, for those who venture out beyond the city boundaries, is not the same as the Big City. I can wander out of my house at almost any daylight hour, and know a bus will be along either in ten minutes or twenty, depending on the time of day. Out in the sticks, as I was today, a bus might come along once an hour, but only on schooldays, and rarely later than four or five in the afternoon. It is a very relaxed, very laid back, very unworried kind of life where, if you do not have an automobile, you walk or stay home. In my case, having watched my desired mode of conveyance drive by, and having another bus and train to catch to get back to the bright lights, was faced with the prospect of walking. Which, of course, I did.

And should anyone imagine that was the end of my adventures, then they have not read the occasional reports I’ve sent out on social media lauding the weird ways of travel, and the bitter taste of fate and circumstance. I walked, and arrived at the end of a lightly rained-off journey of three kilometers at my first destination. Here, fortified with another cup of coffee – and if anyone wishes to complain about a certain American franchise selling the same sized servings of coffee in different sized cups and charging horrendous sums, I have a tale to tell – I caught the bus before the bus I could have caught had I caught the bus I wanted to catch, and drove off in a completely different direction. This, to gather up a few loose threads from above, is where the person with the many tickets but no thought as to having their wallet ready to pay, allowed us a break from the burden of punctual driving of five minutes. Fortunately the changeover time between this bus and the next available train back to the Big City was such that we need not worry and, as luck would have it, the train was also running ten minutes late. Which is nothing compared to the train in the opposite direction, and that following it, which were delayed by sixty and fifteen minutes respectively. Not that their train could have made it to the platform anyway, since that side of the tracks was blocked by an InterCity Express, facing in the wrong direction.

Ten minutes or so is hardly late at all, for those of us who are used to traveling so often here. Slightly different is when you have settled comfortably into your seat, and the announcement booms across all channels that the departure will be delayed by an unspecified length of time, as a railway switch has broken. That, for those who are following the story rather slower, is why the InterCity Express was still sitting there, facing the wrong way.

I’d like to say it all ended there, that after a certain length of time all the trains were able to continue with their journeys, and we all arrived home tired, but content. And that would, indeed, be true, when I leave out the further delays at other stations, the trains from behind allowed to overtake, and the section of track which, because workmen were fixing the broken switch point and – Daylight Saving Time be thanked – it was pitch black outside, had to be driven with nothing exceeding fifteen kilometers an hour. And then, looking back from the comfort of my own home, I consider whether it was all worthwhile; traveling out to a village in the middle of nowhere, cut off from civilized transport systems and decent sized cups of coffee, just to hand over a front door key to an electrician.

Now, if this had still been the golden age of steam, my journey would have taken much longer and, knowing my luck, I would have been that unfortunate person Miss Marple saw in the adjacent train, gasping out my last.