h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today is T for trains.

I seem to have spent an unreasonably large part of my life travelling on trains. This is partly because I worked in central London but didn't live there. The railway line I know best runs from London to Brighton (or the other way round, depending on which direction you are going.) I've sometimes thought it would be an interesting project to write stories or poems for each of the places on the line. But which places would it include? London Victoria, Clapham Junction, East Croydon, Redhill, Gatwick Airport, Three Bridges, Balcombe, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Preston Park and Brighton. That leaves out a number of places on the way.

What memories stand out of places or incidents on the trip? Some, of course, are bad. There were times in the 1980s when the IRA would give a warning it had put a bomb on one of the London stations, and complete paralysis ensued. People had a choice of waiting for hours in a crowded station, with no definite prospect of getting home, or travelling to another station to see if there were trains running from there. With buses and Tubes crowded, I remember yomping across central London looking for a place where there might be trains.

You could never be sure about your fellow passengers, either. I remember changing trains at Clapham Junction, when a woman getting off the train I was about to board said "Don't get in there. There's a man with a broken bottle." Of course, the trains themselves changed. When I first started commuting, there were some compartments which ran across the train, with doors onto the platform and the track, but no connection with the rest of the train. When I travelled late in the evening, I used to avoid those compartments, along with those where smoking was permitted.

One of the pleasures of coming home on the train was that I would travel for miles between terraced houses, office blocks and factories, to come at last to countryside. I have seen deer in Balcombe Forest and the train crosses a viaduct over the River Ouse, from which there is a vista of fields and woods. When it was dark, I noticed the patterns the lights made - rectangles of light from house windows, strings of light along roads - moving as the train travelled, looking like dancing fireflies.

Oh, mvp, this is so soooo evocative! I want to get on a train now.

I used to travel on the London to Hastings train, at weekends, to see my family.

And the Hastings train would clatter through my dreams for years and years.

It still does, occasionally. Just after my father died, it haunted my dreams quite regularly. I had such vivid memories of getting out at Battle or Crowhurst, taking a huge gulp of fresh country air on the platform, then going out to the carpark where my father would be waiting for me.



I remember those compartments. Some of the smoky ones had kind of murky yellowy windows.

I love your description at the end, with the dancing fireflies. You poetic train traveller, you.



One of my favourite train journeys these days is Brighton to Eastbourne. The best bit for me is when the train pulls out of Lewes, into the South Downs landscape, and its all chalky and South Downsy (as it would be haha), and I peer through the window, and then the Long Man of Wilmington appears.



Interesting how trains affect us. hmm. Thanks for the evocative writing.

Thanks cc.
I suppose one of the most atmospheric railway journeys I've done was Shrewsbury to Aberystywth. It was single track part of the way, so the driver used to lean out from time to time and pass a big metal token to the signal man. I remember the train passing through mountainous country near Machynlleth, then emerging into the Dovey Estuary, with views of the sea.

I love reading your journals MVP -


(sorry I was AWOL for a bit, have a lot of catching up to do)

Thanks Lanzababy.

[Amy P]

I used to commute by train into Birmingham and I would thoroughly enjoy the 45 minutes each way, engrossed in a book. But the worsening delays and the frustration that caused meant that as soon as I passed my driving test I started driving to work.

Deb

I wouldn't recommend commuting on a long-term basis.

Great journal! It made me think of "Italian Ways, on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo" by Tim parks, a British expatriate who moved his family to Verona some decades ago, and has since written some charming books about Italian life and culture as seen through the eyes of an Englishman. If you like what the English call football, you might also enjoy his "A Season with Verona," in which he tells of his adventures going to all the Verona team's games for an entire season. This latter book also entails riding on a few trains.