Letting the train take the strain

I’ve done a few trips on trains recently; Everett to Seattle for a football game was rather a nice and low stress way to get to the game. Other than in airports and subways it was the first time I’ve ridden a train in the US in about 20 years, and that was between Boston, New York, Washington DC and my one long Amtrak “adventure” from Washington DC to Miami.

The year before I travelled down the East coast I got spent part of a long summer travelling around Europe, almost exclusively by train. Look at a map of Europe, draw a large triangle with corners in Budapest, London and Barcelona and that was about my range.

I racked up a lot of miles, a few nights on the train and my Thomas Cook European Train Timetable book was starting to get a little tattered. Fast, efficient and takes you right into the city centre. What’s not to love about this?

Oh, and then there is the people you meet, call it “local colour”. Always interesting and at it’s best wonderful.

I recall one trip from Zurich to Budapest I shared with a couple of Irish brothers, running through Munich station with just 3 minutes to make our connection. The Thomas Cook Timetable said it was possible and it was, just. The night was spent sitting up on the train with two drunk Hungarians who kept giving us some clear local firewater out of a series reused Grolsch bottles. No idea what we were drinking, but by god it was potent. It was a memorable night despite they not speaking English and none of us spoke Hungarian.

On another trip I discovered a beautiful narrow gauge line that ran from Domodossola in Italy to Locarno in Switzerland. I was travelling from Geneva to Locarno. I ended up going the long way round that went up and down and over the mountains. Stunning views and by taking the slow scenic route, lots of afore mentioned local colour that makes travelling so worthwhile.

Today I rode the Shinkansen from Nagoya to Kyoto, It’s about 135KM from Nagoya to Kyoto, and today the train covered that in 36 minutes.

I’ve said before that one of things l love about Japan is that it’s clearly somewhere very, very foreign, but not difficult in the way other places can be. I take some of that back today. This morning finding the right train and having the right ticket, I’m sure it was my fault, but it was not as straightforward as it should have been. Nagoya train station has 5 train lines (and over 20 platforms), some of which are privately owned, running through there. It’s a big station and today was a little confusing.

I have a set of instructions for getting to work tomorrow morning (I need to get the train from the same station); they are 32 pages long and lavishly illustrated. After today I understand why. It took a few attempts and a little help, but eventually I got the right ticket and at the third attempt the right platform.

The Shinkansen is quite something, even sitting there at the platform it looks fast, and it’s a perfect example of form following function. At one time I used to take the train the work in England, on time was arriving with in 10 minutes of so over a 15 mile journey. The Tokyo to Osaka line (that I was on) was less than six-seconds late over a few hundred thousand journeys. British rail gets thrown into chaos because there are leaves on the line…

I said Nagoya station was big, I take it back it’s got nothing on Kyoto station. That was huge, the main hall is about the biggest indoor space I’ve ever seen, and it’s seriously impressive.

Today, watching suburban and rural Japan  (not much of the rural I’ll grant you) flash past reinforced one of the reasons I so enjoy taking the train. It is unique in the way it give access to a small slice of the world in a way no other form of transport can.

The train journey I’m probably most familiar with is the trip into London Waterloo from Guildford. Once on the train we get to sit, relax and stare out the window, Over those 40 minutes we may pass horse racing in progress, cricket, football, an aircraft museum, one of the oldest race tracks in the world, we see the Post Office Tower, Battersea Power Station, the Houses of Parliament and the home of the British secret service and a selection of architecture that includes former Royal Palaces, Victorian row houses, some of the most brutal building ever put up to the clean lines of the ultra modern.

Driving a car typically means too much frustration, certainly driving into London would produce little other than a series of impressive bursts of swearing. Yeah, when there are leaves on the line or the wrong sort of snow and my train is delayed, I may get frustrated, the difference is in a car it’s guaranteed to happen.