Traication

~ tidalscribe.com

A Traication is when you go on holiday by train so you cannot take everything but the kitchen sink. Packing has to be undertaken with great planning. I cheat by having a huge bag of stuff at the headquarters of Team H, so I only have to stuff clothes, Kindle, sandwiches and water in my rucksack, though it’s still heavy. People do get on the train with suitcases big enough for a kitchen sink and I have seen women with rucksacks big enough for a commando training exercise. My main aim is to be able to get on and off the train and negotiate the underground.

You could spend hours on line getting the best bargains by booking a specific train or a journey split into several stages on the same route. A friend naturally assumed you had to get off the train and catch a different one so she was surprised to hear on the last stage she could have stayed on the same train all the way. Goodness knows who thinks up these ideas. My off peak cardboard ticket, bought well ahead at our friendly ticket office, is an off peak return, leave on a specific date and return within a month, worrying for your hosts in case you stay with them for a whole month! If they ask what time train I want I explain I just want to turn up and get on the next train going to Waterloo and I especially want the trains to be running. The day I sauntered into the station to buy my ticket it seemed very quiet, it turned out there were no trains running due to a trackside fire further up the line. On the news that evening was film of passengers evacuated off the train and walking up the track.

Fortunately the day of my journey all was going well. The current government pledged to bring the railways back under state ownership and South West Trains were one of the first to be reclaimed last year and sport new livery as South Western Railway. If you had a Brio wooden railway when you were a child you will recall the carriages linked on by magnet. Our trains work just like that… I was waiting for the 11.22am and at 11.10 am four carriages arrived. At this point passengers either rush to get on or stand in confusion in case a different train has slipped in. A few minutes later another four carriages roll in behind and click on. So there is plenty of time to get on the train and no worry which carriage if you are going to Waterloo. But all may not be well if you have a specific ticket. There were regular/annoyingly frequent announcements…

‘If you have an evening out return or a summer special extra cheap off peak and it does Not say 11.22am, you are on the WRONG train and liable to pay another £40.

On the final stage of my journey, London Victoria to Margate, it was my turn to make sure I was on the right carriage, the rear four carriages. The advantage of a London terminus is trains end up at the buffers so what was the first carriage is the last carriage so I should be okay. After every single station would be a reminder that the train was going to split and the stations recited. After our carriage had disgorged quite a few passengers and with the moment of the great split fast approaching, a couple now had room to spread out their picnic and sat back and relaxed. Then one of them thought to lean over the aisle and ask another passenger where the train was going. When she said Margate there was panic and a gathering up of the picnic. They were right at the back of the train when they should have been at the front. The young woman said to them ‘Don’t stop, just keep going till you get to the driver’s cabin .’

My return journey from Waterloo was simple. The train arrived at the buffers with fifteen minutes to spare so we could get on and relax. All trains stop at Bournemouth and this train was going to unclick in half and carry on to two different directions. You really needed to pay attention to the announcements because even before the chopping in half there were some stations with short platforms so you had to make sure you were on the right carriage.

‘If you are getting off at Remote Halt you will need to be in the front three carriages, if you are going to Forest Dene you must be in carriages two, three and four. Passengers wishing to alight at Littledene should be in odd number carriages except one and seven. Passengers for Old Milton please make sure you are in the even number carriages except for two and six.

Have you had any interesting train journeys lately?

39 thoughts on “Traication”

  3. I once got on the right train, in the right carriage and checked thoroughly that both of those things were true. I then made the mistake of putting headphones on and at some point they changed the destination of my carriage to a station that hadn’t even been an option at the start of my journey. Apparently I’d have needed to get off and change two stops earlier to go to the original destination.

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    1. Oh no, that would have been me. I don’t put on headphones, but I do play with my phone. Things like that always happen to my sister when she’s over from Australia. Once we were going to meet her at Bournemouth and they turfed everybody off the train at Brockenhurst.

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    1. Just ask, usually other passengers or staff on platforms are helpful. To be fair the trains have electronic signs on each carriage telling you all the stations on the route. But there was a funny story years ago when my friend’s relatives were visiting from India. We lived in Hayes, Middlesex. The relatives went up to London on the train to Paddington Station. Later in the day they somehow ended up at London Bridge Station, saw a train for Hayes and boarded it, but it was going to Hayes in Kent!

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  6. I so envy your public transportation system! Our trains, of which there are few, are almost useless in as much as they don’t go to the airport (one needs to catch a bus from the train), the tracks are rough making the ride uncomfortable, they are regularly a couple of hours late (the cross country trains) and even can even be days late, and they’re not inexpensive. But, yes, one can carry prodigious amounts of luggage.

    I encountered the split train in the Netherlands; fortunately my uncle had warned me to pay attention when boarding as I don’t speak Dutch, so the announcements were wasted on me.

    This was one of your most interesting blogs!

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    1. Thanks Judy. People more competent than me have train apps on their phones to check on train timetables and messages and when my sister and I were on the train going up to visit my younger son he was following our train and knew where we were better than we did!
      I live in a busy place, but there are plenty of parts of the country where people are stuck for trains or buses.
      We don’t actually have a bus to our little airport, but apparently one is coming soon. Maybe next I’ll write about trains and Heathrow Airport.

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  7. There are few short distance trains in Canada. I believe around Toronto there are some, but my few train trips have been long distance ones. You get on board and stay there for a day or several. Stops are few and far between so there’s no confusion.

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    1. I have never been on a long distance train. You can take the train from Perth to the other side of Australia, several days journey. I would like the train if it was comfortable for a long trip. My daughter and family got on the sleeper train in London to go to Scotland, the boys loved it. Only one night, there is nowhere far enough away in the UK to do several days.

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  10. Oh for the days when you just showed up at the station, bought a reasonably priced train ticket, and the train was just one train. I have only made two train trips in the last 14 years. Both were a bewildering maze of fare options, all of which were so expensive I felt as if we had been ‘robbed at trainpoint’. And we were lucky to get seats on both occasions, as people were having to stand in the carriages. I could have flown to Europe for half the cost of the ticket from Norfolk to London.

    Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. Hello Pete, yes why does it have to be so complicated. I have seen passengers ask the price at the ticket office then wave their phone around trying to get a signal so they can see how much it would be on their Trainline app.
      My sister and I booked seats on one leg of our journey and that was the train that was cancelled!

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  11. This reminded me of the time my wife had to go into Philadelphia for Federal Jury Duty consideration. Rather than drive, she wanted to take the train which drops patrons off right at the courthouse in question. The question was…could we figure out for sure which train to put her on to get her down there…and back. After looking at the schedules, we had our plan. I just worried when she went to come back out of the city whether or not she’d catch the correct train. I envisoned seeing her on a train flying by me while I was waiting to pick her up. All worked out well, but it wasn’t as simple as it could have been!

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      2. There are plenty of maps and signs Debby, but I did once go the wrong way round the circle line! Our friend from our mother and toddler days actually became a tube train driver, a very successful one as she went on to become a driver trainer and a union rep. She has just retired.

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  13. Blimey. Confusing!

    It’s a long time since I’ve been on a train. I like train travel but there is certainly a lot of scope for error. I once went to Ormskirk by mistake. The conductor told me there was no point getting off becuase the line was a single track and I would just have to wait for the same train to come back. He was very kind and didn’t charge me extra!

    I once also leapt onto a train at Waterloo East thanking my lucky stars that I’d just made the London Bridge train. But they’d changed the board for the next train before the one I’d hopped on had left the station.

    That time, I had to go all the way to Tonbridge in Kent and back, which took over an hour, rather than the five minutes to London Bridge.

    It was awkward, because I missed an appointment with a customer. My customer was very dubious about my excuse, because who would so stupid? Well, that would be me!

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    1. That reminds me of working at Heathrow when the Heathrow Express was new. One of the Qantas staff was meant to pop over from Terminal three to Terminal four, but she went in the wrong direction and ended up at Paddington!

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  14. I had a similar splitting train on my journey home from Bristol. As the train changed direction a couple of times saying “the first four carriages” was not very helpful!

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  15. See how simple it is? 🤪
    It’s quite fun to see people on our local groups advertising things they are selling or giving away. The only slight problem is settlers in Australia and New Zealand used names from their home towns when they established new communities.
    The $ sign is a clue that ‘child’s bike for sale’ might involve more than a few plane and train rides to collect the item from somewhere not in South East London.

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