The Slippery Slope

My wife stood at the top of the piste and surveyed the slippery slope ahead of her. She took in the beauty of the peaks, glistening in the bright sunlight. She did not see the guy who cleared her out, smacking into her from behind, taking her completely off her feet and leaving her dumped in a heap on the snow. “He was a very nice man,” she said later, “He called back over his shoulder and asked me if I was OK.” “Yes, OK, thank you,” she had called out after him as he disappeared over the next ridge. That was before she had tried to stand up, when she realised that her wrist was at an unnaturally jaunty angle and was actually no longer working at all because it was broken in two places.

When she had first left for the slopes, I told her how much I would miss her, waved her off, and then immediately checked out the Northern Rail website and found that my chosen day ranger ticket would cover the Nottingham, Sheffield, Lincoln triangle within which we reside. I was quite excited by the prospect of riding normal service trains again, just for fun.

The 10.03 Class 156 Super Sprinter to Nottingham was busy with resolute shoppers and families getting in the mood for a half-term treat in the form of a day out in the city. The windows were filthy.

The conductor guard was being trained. He looked totally baffled by my unusual ticket request. Unfortunately, his overseer was equally perplexed, but eventually found evidence of a similar, but more expensive, version. When I questioned this, he kindly gave me the option to renegotiate at the Nottingham ticket office. This meant I had to tell the tale a third time to get me past the barrier and a fourth at the ticket office, itself.

The 10.45 Class 158 Express Sprinter to Liverpool was “have to travel backwards” busy. On such occasions, I try to squat on the edge of the seat so that I’m facing the window on the other side of the gangway and look out over my shoulder in the direction of travel. Fellow passengers viewed me with suspicion.

In Sheffield, there was just time to join the 11.44 to Lincoln. Our motive power had moved down market. The Pacer Unit sounded like a bus. Inside, it also felt like being on a rather grubby bus, but why does it have to look like a bus on the outside, too? It’s a train, for heaven’s sake.

I knew that Lincoln Central is handily placed for a range of enticing eateries but I found Subway pretty easily. I don’t have many opportunities to partake of a Subway sandwich.  I greedily went for the foot-long version and filled it with as many tasty extra bits as I could; olives, gherkins, peppers and chilli sauce. To say that it is not near the top of my wife’s list of favourite culinary establishments is to create an understatement, the enormity of which, I can only begin to convey. Luckily, my wife was in the French Alps and she may never know how frivolous and disappointing I was in her absence.

Back at the station the automatic barrier did not accept my ticket, throwing it back out at me. The attendant, no doubt poised alongside to sort out any such barrier problems snorted, “Humph, ranger ticket,” as though I was some sort of confidence trickster, only one small step up from having no ticket at all.

The 13.35 to Leicester was a Class 158 semi-fast service full of students going home for the weekend. Clattering over the East Coast Main Line at Newark crossing, we passed an Immingham-bound oil tank train. There was no chance of making out what was hauling it, though the young man opposite me noticed my conditioned and uncontrollable whisk of the head, when I first saw it. I checked with a paper tissue that I had not got any chilli sauce on my chin and then I tried to adapt my demeanour so I came over as a normal passenger for the rest of the journey.

I arrived in Nottingham in time for a cup of coffee in Waterstones before joining the exhausted shopaholics on the Lincoln stopper with the dirty windows - so dirty, in fact that the little boy opposite couldn’t make out Sneinton windmill when his granny tried to point it out to him. I think she was going on previous experience, rather than direct observation. It was definitely out there somewhere, last time we all passed this way.

In the car, I mulled over lessons learnt. I realised that I had seen only three locomotives all day and had not been able to identify any of them. I had remembered how important it is to be facing the direction of travel if you are interested in [a] railways [b] landscape

[c] avoiding dizziness and a cricked neck. I had witnessed some very well used trains and a lot of general good humour from those in transit. I had noticed how much smoother travelling by ordinary train has become on continuous welded rail and with improved suspension systems, when compared to earlier generations of DMUs. I had observed that railways now have bins again, after the no bin era. The authorities must presumably have concluded that bins are actually useful things overall and that those determined to do us harm, may not, in the end, be deterred solely by the lack of them.

I had heard far more bits of information being imparted than used to be the case - about the presence of CCTV, the importance of not smoking, of not leaving luggage unattended, of minding the gap, of remembering to take my belongings with me when I alight, alongside a repeated promise on certain stations, that there was a definite intention to check my ticket.

When I finally arrived at Fiskerton, I realised that I had prematurely pushed the button on the door before the light had come on, and I half expected a voice to announce, “Do not push the button to open the door before the light has come on,” to shame me publicly. On this occasion, I got away with it. 

 

[This article is adapted from that printed in the current edition of Railwayana Antiques Gazette, with thanks to Tim Petchey.]