The Gubbins

There is some space-age gadgetry at the lineside these days, I thought, as I waited for the 10.00 to Nottingham this morning. My wife had abandoned me to my own devices again in favour of a girls' day out in London, so it was a trip on the trains for me, too.

I’d just about learnt what all the original bits were for and they’ve gone and changed it all. Grey boxes, rubbery egg-box carton “Don’t you dare walk here” pyramids, new cables wrapped up in plastic and miles of formidable spiky fencing. Railway scenery has certainly changed.

On our way now, and a very heavy-duty hedge cutter has been in action. The bushes put up no resistance at all. The trees stand scarred and wounded - there are amputations everywhere. It is hardly topiary. It has been said that I hack, rather than prune, in my efforts to keep the garden under control, but this is carnage. Those trees certainly won’t be making contact with any train windows any time soon. 

The uniformed revenue protection officer [it says so, on his back] wanted to see “all tickets, travel passes and railcards” and you could tell that he meant business. Then the man who was obviously training to be a flight attendant pleaded with us to “Keep the vegetable area clear of baggage.” I pricked up my ears and he said it again, but it sounded like “vestabull” this time, which I eventually took to mean vestibule.

I made it to my rendezvous with the West Coast Main Line, so infrequently visited these days, yet once such a regular haunt. The promising early morning sun had disappeared. It was freezing and then it started to rain. The PA and the VDU announced together that there were signalling problems at Rugeley and that trains in both directions were being “heavily disrupted” as a result.

That was enough. I went home. I took these photos of some of the more recently added gubbins at my local station. Last week, the Railway Gazette claimed that the 23^rd of February 2017 marked 10 years without a passenger or staff fatality in a train accident on Great Britain’s national rail network. If the cost of providing a safer railway is more grey boxes and giant egg-cartons, then it is all OK with me.