A summer day at Nuneaton

When I think of the days that I’ve spent cowering from the rain or nipping into station refreshment rooms to get out of the cold, here I was in the West Midlands without any means of protection from any rain or even so much as a jumper. Now it was more a matter of not getting burnt and using the platform canopies to good advantage.

A day with the trains was the perfect antidote to the disappointment of the England Argentina world cup semi-final the previous evening. They do get worked up about stuff in some parts of the world. Here at the junction station, the phlegmatic English were just going about their business quietly and without fuss as though nothing had happened. Perhaps it’s for the best. It was getting quite confusing trying to work out which England flags were the angry Reform and Restore flags and which were the innocent and positive football supporting variety.

It was announced that my train from Hinckley was delayed. The extent of the disruption to my day was soon made clear. It would arrive one minute after it was due. This is getting close to Swiss or Japanese standards of punctuality, surely, if we are getting obsessive about missing 60 seconds out of our otherwise purposeful lives.

It was busy as usual at Nuneaton, but it’s not the passenger trains that I’m there for. I noted 21 freight locomotives from classes 56, 66 [mostly], 67, 70, 88 and 90 in four and a half hours, so a pretty good rate. I try to hold out for my lunchtime sandwich until 12.00, but Realtime Trains kept me on my toes until after 1.00 as I tried to find the right angles to get some decent photos. The configuration of Nuneaton station does not necessarily make that as easy as it sounds, nor does the roughly north-south station layout and bright sunlight in the southern sky.

I really appreciate my train days. All other concerns are put on hold. It’s just me and the trains, unless anyone asks me anything [which they did, about telephoto lenses] or I need to check a number I wasn’t sure of [which I did, for a double-header Class 90. I know it’s solitary and mindless escapism and I love it. I also know, that I’ve currently nothing particularly that I need to escape from, though, as for everyone, that has not always been, and will not always be, the case. Maybe that’s the point. At the back of my mind, I know that nothing lasts for ever. I’m going to go on savouring my lifelong hobby for as long as I can.

Football matches, prime ministers and presidents [including of FIFA] will come and go, but Everton Football Club, the Houses of Parliament and Nuneaton station will still be there. So too, will be the forces that created them in the interests of the [usually] beautiful game, tolerant and liberal democracy, an international law-based order that can’t unravel the colonialism of previous centuries at a stroke but can only respond sensibly to the current state of affairs, and decent and efficient public services for all. My belief in people and the future at least partially restored, I caught the 15.24 back to Hinckley, which was four minutes late leaving Nuneaton but I didn’t mind a bit.