You can read previous train tales here.

Tuesday Train Tales

Be careful what you say, the gods are always listening.

‘Don’t come out again in this awful weather, I don’t need a lift, it’s much quicker on the train.’

It is March 2020, we are about to go into lockdown, but at Southampton Hospital it’s like entering a busy airport terminal with shops and a huge Costa Coffee and other eateries. The only precautions against the new ‘Corona Virus’ are instructions to use hand gel. We and I have been visiting my husband every day.

Now, on a miserable wet late afternoon I manage to find the right bus to the station and saunter in looking around for a window with a human being behind it, so I don’t have to bother with a ticket machine. An androgenous person in a uniform approaches, I wasn’t expecting a welcome party.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I just want a single to Bournemouth.’

‘There are no trains to Bournemouth.’

‘WHAT!’

‘Tree on the line.’

‘So when might there be a train?’

‘Not sure, do you still want to go to Bournemouth?’

‘YES.’

Luckily the platform west has a café and waiting area, now full of grumpy commuters. I am not there long when there is a sudden exodus to the exit, I follow them as they all pile onto a double decker bus, asking if it’s going to Bournemouth. No one actually says no so I rush upstairs and grab the last seat. It is dark and still raining, the windows immediately mist up. If this ‘Corona Virus’ really is so infectious, this is when I’m going to catch it.

I can’t see a thing, no idea where we are, but presumably on the motorway. After a good hour the lights of Bournemouth appear. The train journey takes only 28 minutes if you get a fast train, a fast train being one that mainly stops where I want to go.

There are many good reasons for going by train, keeping traffic off the roads, enjoying a faster smooth journey, looking at the scenery and into people’s back gardens… and of course people watching and eavesdropping.

Autumn 2024 and we are leaving the Isle of Wight. Our lovely little B&B is only minutes from the ferry. This time we have looked on line to check if the trains are running smoothly. They aren’t, it’s Sunday engineering works.

At Lymington we disembark and have plenty of time to file out to the car park and get on a comfortable replacement bus which leaves at exactly the same time as the train would have done. We enjoy a pleasant ride.

At Brockenhurst all was not going well. Confused people were hanging around outside the station waiting their turn to consult a chap with a clipboard and a phone. His jacket says ‘Bus Replacement Service Director’ or some such words. Also ‘on duty’ was a fed up South West Trains chap who wandered off at intervals and returned to make remarks such as ‘Don’t travel on a Sunday, I don’t know what they’re playing at’ and ‘Tell your friends Not to travel next Sunday.’ A young woman in a light blue tabard was trying to be helpful. These light blue people don’t seem to actually belong to the railways; at Bournemouth I had wondered if they were students on work experience as they were very young. I think they might be employed to pass on information, give stress counselling and to take the pressure off other staff.

In the meantime the Replacement Director was doing a grand job in an impossible situation with passengers going in different directions and not enough buses. He promised he would get us taxis if there were not enough bus seats. At one stage a coach turned up already full, turned round in the car park and looked like it was going straight back out again. The Director suddenly grabbed an elderly lady by the arm, frog marched her over to the coach and returned empty handed to address the crowd.

‘I know you’re all going to hate me, but that lady was traveling alone and had been waiting a while to get to Southampton, so I took an executive decision to put her in the only empty seat.’

We couldn’t argue with that and nobody did. We gradually herded ourselves into groups according to destination. A few taxis turned up and some left as The Director remembered who had been waiting longest. In the meantime more passengers drifted in or were dropped off by loved ones expecting to say farewell to them.

A black van with no windows turned up and our Bournemouth group was summoned forward, surely we were not going to be piled in the back of a van like prisoners? It turned out to be a luxury mini bus with tinted windows and curtains. There then followed a tour of the whole of the New Forest as we visited every tiny rural station and halt, seemingly only accessed by narrow winding lanes. At each one we dropped off or picked up someone. It was more than an hour before we arrived at Bournemouth station. The train journey takes 26 minutes. We got home safely, but had not even glimpsed a train all day, let alone been on one.

Did I venture on to a train ever again? Yes, but that’s for another episode…

Have you had any interesting journeys lately?