My Day Out

It has become a bit of a pattern that I celebrate my birthday with a trip on the trains, and so it was again two years ago, with an East Midlands Trains Day Ranger ticket, chosen destination - Nuneaton. Cheaper than the equivalent day return, it was very good value for my day out.

The 10.04 to Leicester, a two-car Class 156 unit, is busy and I now know that I have walked to the wrong end. As I sit down there is a very pervasive smell of sweaty feet. It is almost overpowering, but this is the only area that has vacant seats and now I know why. I survey my fellow passengers for visible signs of less than rigorous personal hygiene. I decide on a middle-aged man with metal studs around his mouth and very greasy hair and when he gets out at Nottingham the odour goes with him, but there again, so do 90% of the other passengers. I have no proof that his socks are not spotless. I wonder where the smell is going next, but only for a second.

It is obviously going to be a day of new notices. The one in the toilet says, “Please don’t flush nappies, sanitary towels, paper towels, gum, old phones, unpaid bills, junk mail, your ex’s sweater, hopes, dreams or goldfish down this toilet.”

Our chatty conductor guard opens the doors at Syston. “My god, where has everyone come from?” is his greeting to those approaching the train. “You can tell its half term,” he concludes. He has already told me he has renewed his house insurance twice over by mistake, and that he has bought himself a conservatory on ebay. We have only been friends for five minutes. “Going to Nuneaton, are you?..... Are you sure?” he quips.

Leicester station is a hive of activity. The public-address system is having a field day. I am requested to tell a policeman if I am suspicious of anything, roughly the same advice my mum gave me about 60 years ago, so it must be right.

My next train is a two-car Turbostar Class 170, which is obviously a great name for a space rocket as well as a train. It is on its way to Birmingham and it’s packed. Like the Class 156 before it, the décor is attractive, and it is comfortable, smooth and very nippy.

I am getting quite peckish by the time I get to Nuneaton, so, as always, lunch becomes the priority. Unfortunately, it is raining steadily and I’m not exactly sure how far I would have to walk to enjoy the delights of the town centre. The conductor guard has hardly gone out of his way to sell it to me. I opt for the buffet on the station, although I don’t recognise the name of the franchise and it definitely isn’t part of the chain that my wife would recommend as providing the best coffee of all.

I settle for a poor cup of coffee that she would have certainly left standing and one of the blandest sandwiches I have ever tasted. Actually, I don’t think my taste buds were employed at all. They were superfluous to the exercise.

My snack is partly rescued by a packet of crisps which tries gamely to help my sandwich over the line. On the side of the packet it says, “Can you help an older person get out more?” Well, in a way, they just have. “Too many older people are stuck at home, day after lonely day.” Not yet, mate, I thought. So, says the one who treats himself to a ride on a train once a year on his birthday.

I had chosen Nuneaton for what I believed was a very good reason. It is on the west coast main line. I live near the east coast main line. I thought I would see what was happening over the other side, as it were. I walk along platform one, passing the location of what I guess was once an acceptable BR buffet. The rain drips through the holes in the roof. The feral pigeons are staying put somewhere up there, too, as the spattering of droppings below their roost testifies. They’ve probably had their fill of discarded sandwich remains, if they think they are worth bothering with at all, that is.

Between platforms 3 and 4, the Pendolinos shoot through at, I was told, 125 mph, a little faster than the Voyagers at 120. You really do have to stand well back from the edge. As the Pendolinos approach, there is a noticeable spray from the contact between their leading wheels and the wet track. Momentarily, it reminds me of steam from the Coronation Pacifics that took the same road in times past. Where there is contact with the overhead wire, the rain shoots off the pantograph in a fountain, too, all adding to the overall effect of grace and speed. It is actually a very impressive sight.

I notice that I am not alone. There are other spotters here. I even see a young lad in a bobble hat, just like the one I had worn on Crewe station in 1963. The notes he is making in his notebook are meticulous and more detailed than anything I would ever have considered necessary. Another youngster is filming the action with a tiny camera sitting aloft a full-size tripod. My generation is well represented as well.   

As I am spotting the spotters, I am interrupted by a middle-aged lady in a long-flowing skirt who looks a bit the worse for wear. She has an unintelligible question for me about the timetable she is pointing at. I mime ignorance and shrug my shoulders, which luckily does the trick as she turns away to see if anyone else is listening. A group of men of a certain age are huddled at the south end of platform one. These are the regulars, I tell myself. The two enthroned on fold-up camping chairs are holding court. There is another group on numbers 4 and 5, sitting on and standing around a bench, eating chips out of paper.

The freight trains keep on coming. It is great to see that that side of the railways is so busy. Classes 37, 66, 70, 90 and 92 are represented. The container trains are full and there are car carriers and ballast trains in the mix. I strike up a conversation with a bloke who is on his own, like me. He has come up from Rugby because he knows that a landslip near Coventry had lead to the diversion of even more freight trains through Nuneaton than usual.

The water continues to pour through the holes in the roof, but the spotters are undeterred. My new mate says that he has noticed that another group of them are holed up in a waiting room in the middle of the station. He does not associate with them because he thinks they can be a little intimidating to members of the travelling public, swearing and talking loudly and obsessively in a way that others might find uncomfortable and off-putting, as though they had stumbled in on a private party that just goes on for ever.

As we chat, we are interrupted by a man wielding an umbrella. He talks passionately about five or six random issues that are much on his mind without stopping to draw breath. He then promises that when he returns from the toilet he will tell us exactly why his shoes are so dirty. They are extremely muddy, but as he has not come back we are denied access to the mucky shoe story. Perhaps he is saving that one for someone else.

I say goodbye to my interesting and knowledgeable recent acquaintance and I take off again on the Turbostar to Leicester, passing that station’s First-Class Lounge on the way in. I settle for the Pumpkin coffee bar instead and sit by the radiator. I reflect on my lack of gadgetry. Everyone in here has got something to listen to or some piece of equipment or other to fiddle with. I notice that head-sets, which started off large and then went small, are now large again.  

The train home from Leicester is a busy commuter train, as well as carrying families back home after their half term city treat. It has been a good day. The railways are buzzing. I sense a perceptible self-confidence, exemplified by the manner of many of the employees. I’ve dipped into my old hobby again and found myself quite comfortably at home with it.

[Taken from an article of the same title in the current edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette. I am grateful, once more, to the editor, Tim Petchey.]