The glory of rail

If I'd written this on Friday, this would have been an entirely ironic post. However, hang on to the end for some pretty pictures...

After 19.5 hours just sitting on trains between Monday and Thursday while the UK capital totally failed to cope with half a dozen inches of the white stuff, I was not feeling enamoured of rail, the rail authorities, and First Capital Connect in particular.

(My absolute favourite moment this week was Monday afternoon when, having battled my way down to work and found the weather getting worse by the moment, I attempted to get home again in the early afternoon with some project work - only to find that the shuttle from London to Cambridge failed to connect with the hourly shuttle from Cambridge to King's Lynn by THREE MINUTES. Both emergency timetables, both run by the same company, meant to join up; left hand, right hand, etc., etc., etc.

Although that was nearly eclipsed by my second favourite moment on Wednesday night, when, having foolishly gone knitting, rather than telepathically working out that the overhead lines would go down at Hitchin in the intervening 90 minutes, I was sent from King's Cross to Liverpool Street because there was going to be a special 20:58 service directly to King's Lynn. I really shouldn't have believed the FCC worker, but after the preceding three days I was gullible and desperate enough to try. On arrival at Liverpool Street, predictably, this train turned out to be some sort of cruel fiction; but I did manage to get home an hour earlier than the alternative bus-and-train service, so even being lied to has its uses)...

That's nearly it on the snow; except to say that when you get concerned enquiries from friends in Toronto and Chicago, both cities which regularly laugh in the face of severe weather, you might as well create possibly the first LOLtrain image

HOWEVER. The trains did let me get down to Hove to see Jan, and to Brighton for the ICHF show. Yvonne and Fred were both there, as was Ness from I Knit. Purchases were made (particularly when offered Sublime angora/merino for £20 a bag...), very good Indian takeaway was eaten, and the trains back worked fine yesterday. Being a Bad Blogger the only photo I took was this one of Flossie...

And then to cheer me up still further, I had half an hour to spend and went to St Pancras station, which reminded me of what rail travel ought to be.

See this departure board?

I love this. You can go to Sheffield, or to Paris or Brussels. It's like the departure board in other proper stations in Europe, which laconically advertise local services alongside the Grandes Lignes to Milan, Vienna or Berlin...

The ground floor is utterly modern; but once you head up in the very efficient lift, or up the escalators, you get to the Eurostar floor and a wonderful combination of the ancient

... and the modern... in this case the John Betjeman bar facing the Eurostar platforms (note the blankets...)

A Eurostar train coming in...

The man himself...

And some of his words.


And that's why Trains Are Good.

I'll try and remember that this week..