An Unpleasant Railway Journey

 

King's Cross Station in London has a mystical aura. The origin of its name is contested and might refer to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The station has become even more of a tourist attraction in recent years because in the Harry Potter universe there is a gateway to the magic world on Platform 9 that leads to "Platform 9 3/4". I arrived at the station to catch a train because I was speaking that evening at the Mablethorpe Group in Lincolnshire, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2022/09/mablethorpe-presentation-videos.html. Because of a mess-up on my part, I had to abandon my outward coach journey and make last minute arrangements to travel via the Oxford Tube to London and catch a train from there. I don't often use railways, much preferring the coach; which is slower, but is far more comfortable and relaxing. King's Cross is like its twin station, St Pancras, in that it has been built in several phases between the mid 19th century and today. There is a new concourse that is lined with inviting shops, pubs and cafes, but most passengers were not in them. They were assembled shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowd of hundreds underneath the notice board. They were staring intently as if not daring to look away. I wondered why until I saw the notice for my own journey, the 14.30 to Peterborough, was not displaying a platform number. The clock ticked down and no number appeared. What's more the same was happening to all the other departures on the board. I went up to the help desk and I was not the only one. Dozens of people were milling there with the same thing on their minds. The person behind the desk reassured us that everything was fine and that the platform number would appear shortly before the train was ready for boarding. She wasn't kidding about the "shortly"; it was literally five minutes before departure. That's why people were crowded round the board staring at it. If you miss an announcement you miss your train. Everybody bolted for the correct platform, some were actually running. A group of station staff stood in two lines goading us in the correct direction like sheepdogs. They clearly were trained to do that and I realized that this procedure was completely normal. There was literally five minutes to get hundreds of people into a nine carriage train. We squeezed in through the doors. When there was too big a crowd outside one door staff instantly directed us to another one. Once inside the train I headed for my designated seat; an announcement told us only to sit in that seat. The problem was that most of the people in the cabin were standing in the aisles, manoeuvring large suitcases and trying to find their own seats; which were often at the opposite end of the cabin. The aisles are only wide enough for one person so everybody was leaning into seat spaces, in some cases almost having to sit on somebody's lap, while another person lumbered past with a fifty pound trunk. We had still not all sat down when the train pulled away from the platform.
 
The train was a brand new one, the famous LNER Hitachi, which is much faster than any other train except the Eurostar. I was impressed by its speed. It made the journey to Peterborough in just forty-six minutes. However, most of those forty-six minutes were needed simply to de-stress from the boarding process. (There is a cafeteria on board which is, of course, cashless.) In the olden days, and even still today on some stations like Swansea, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2022/03/skeptics-2022-at-sufon.html, passengers are told which train is theirs a good half an hour before departure. They are usually allowed to board a good twenty minutes before, so they can take a slow stroll up to the platform. There are usually benches they can sit on and wait if necessary. People not travelling used to be allowed to follow you onto the platform to wave you off. That way you won't get a massive throng of passengers all desperately trying to get onto the train at once. There is something intensely romantic about a traditional train departure which is why they so often feature in classic movies, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEiDZ9Rgd3s. That romance has been destroyed by modern railway practices. Even the word "railway" is hardly ever used nowadays. It is almost always shortened to "rail" or substituted by "train". Can you really imagine Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman waving to each other across the contactless turnstiles? My experience at King's Cross Station is typical of the increasing speed of living. Every moment of every day, we are urged to get somewhere as quickly as possible. Transport is exclusively geared to speed. Enjoyment of the travelling experience is now considered irrelevant. Passenger ships at sea are the same. In my childhood I regularly crossed the North Sea on car ferries from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, which took about eight hours; but it was eight hours of great fun. I used to make entire condensed friendships with other children in the playroom or onboard cinema. Many lines have now replaced their old fleets with "sea-cats"; giant catamarans and trimarans that are fast enough to do the same voyage in three or four hours... but are far less enjoyable, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDF0qciznBU. What benefits do we get for being delivered to our destinations so speedily? Well, usually none. Most of the time there is just another place to get to next, again as quickly as possible! Alan Watts was right in his "music and life" lecture, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4. I would really have been much happier to have been able to stroll gently to my train at King's Cross; and as for the train itself, does it need to be so fast? I would be happy for it to take an hour and a half or longer to reach Peterborough. I would have time to sit back and read a book, or pay for cash to eat a full meal. Of course, the point of my trip was that I had somewhere I needed to be in order to do something at a certain time; well, couldn't I just leave home a bit earlier? Duh. That's why I prefer the coach (as well as it being much cheaper). I can do all the journeying things I like on National Express or Megabus.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/11/hs2-extension-scrapped.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2009/07/turnstiles.html.