Friday 15 February 2019

The train of thoughts

Trains these days where I live are very modern indeed. The compartments are open-plan, very large and well lit; warm, clean and bright; they have overhead monitors everywhere displaying all sorts of information like the next destination, location of restaurants and toilets on the train, safety information and so on. The windows are very large and clean and every seat has an electric connection for you to plug in your laptop or cell phone to charge the battery; and there's free wifi throughout your journey.

Yet, there are some touristy places which still run the old fashioned steam trains with their old fashioned compartments well preserved as they were in real life some 60 or more years ago.

These are full sized trains which were in service another lifetime away. They are kept in operation and well maintained by teams of volunteers running various organisations for the preservation of railway history on a charitable basis. The trains normally run a short route of some 10 or 20 miles through the countryside and tourists ride on them just to go there and back again.

I settled comfortably into one of these old style compartments.

Let me describe it to you. Unlike the modern open-plan compartments; these old style trains have a number of separate small compartments inside each carriage, with a narrow corridor running along-side the whole length of the carriage. Each small compartment is about 4 metres in lengths and about 2 metres wide. The compartments contain two large settee type seats accommodating four people sitting side-by-side facing another four people sitting opposite them. Depending on where you are sitting you would either travel in the direction the train is going; or would be travelling backwards, as it were. Only two people sit on the far side of the compartment, facing each other, near the small windows. The others are either squashed in the middle of the "settee" or are at the other end of the compartment, near the sliding door; leading to the corridor running alongside the length of the carriage. So basically, each compartment can contain four people sitting facing another four people - eight in all.

Anyway, as I was saying before I engaged into this elaborate description of the compartment, I sat comfortably by the window facing the direction the train was going to travel - that is facing forwards.

Pretty soon four people entered the compartment and sat opposite me; that is travelling backwards as it were. They were an elderly man with a Tom Selleck moustache who sat next to the window, opposite me. Let me explain ... the man with the moustache sat opposite me, not the moustache by itself! Then next to him sat a priest wearing a hat. Then a rotund lady in her fifties who sat next to the priest. And an elderly lady who sat next to her.

Minutes later a woman and her daughter came in. The woman asked me politely if it is OK for her daughter to sit next to the window. The obvious answer, me being polite and a gentleman, would be, "No ... go and sit elsewhere in another compartment!" But there was a priest there, so I smiled and got up.

The girl sat by the window with her mother beside her. I sat next to the mother and soon enough a large man came in and sat beside me. He sat with his legs wide open. Why do some men do that?

This meant that I was squashed in the middle of the seat with the fat man on my right and the mother on my left. I tried desperately not to get too close to the woman in case she got the wrong idea that I was being somewhat too friendly. But the fat man on my right kept pushing me against her making himself more comfortable in more than his allotted space on the seat.

I realise that the settee style seat did not have demarcation lines, like a frontier between nations, outlining the space allotted to each passenger. But if there were such lines it was obvious that the fat man's backside well and truly invaded my space across the frontier between us. In nation states this would amount to a declaration of war. But in a train compartment, and with my naturally cowardly characteristics, I was left there retreating slowly sideways towards the woman on my left frontier; yet exerting enough pressure with my backside on the seat to ensure that I did not retreat sideways so much that I would invade her territory and risk declaration of war from her side.

Every now and then the train would rock so much to my left that my backside would loose all friction with the seat and I would fall sideways towards the woman. I'd then immediately apologise and move back to my right trying in vain to regain my lost territory from the fat man sitting there with his legs wide open.

This slow journey to hell, which was meant to be a touristy pleasure trip, lasted for what must have seemed an eternity.

The train moved slowly on the rails singing its monotonous song ... clackety clack ... clackety clack ... clackety clack ... as it danced rocking left and right on the rails. Every now and then it would perform one of its faux-pas and swing violently left hurling me towards the woman like a floppy rag doll.

For some reason, the train never swung to the right towards the man. It was explained to me later that this had something to do with the swerve of the journey. A bit like when athletes run round the track and always seem to run left round the bends because they are always running anti-clockwise.

Anyway, as I sat on that train of Purgatory it entered a tunnel through a mountain. Suddenly from bright sunlight coming through the windows we were in total darkness. Although the train had electric lights, for some reason they did not come on. It was so pitch black in that compartment. So dark that you could not see anything. You could not even see the darkness that was there.

This lasted for about 30 seconds or so.

When the train eventually got out of the tunnel, and our eyes adjusted to the light and we could see each other again, I discovered I was no longer there.

The elderly man with the Tom Selleck moustache was there. So was the priest with the hat. The rotund lady and the elderly one too ... all sitting at their usual place. The woman and her daughter to my left were there also; and so was the wide-legged fat man on my right.

But I was no longer there.

And being absent ... I did not know how to finish this story.

16 comments:

  1. Were you dreaming again Victor?
    Maybe you had an "out-of-body" experience. I know that I would have tried to have one if the rotund "gentleman" had sat next to me.
    You poor soul. You must try and stay away from buses and trains and old people :)

    God's Blessings~

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    1. You know Jan, in years to come scholars and literary critics will be praising this piece as a masterpiece of modern time. It contains many symbolisms. It mentions hell, Purgatory and eternity. It mentions demarcation lines, frontiers and invasion of personal space. It mentions bright sunlight and the total darkness of the tunnel. It mentions an old steam train and modern train compartments. Academics will wonder what I had in mind when I wrote all this and will come up with many theories.

      Truth be known, I don't even know why I wrote it. Like that fellow who painted the Moaner Lisa ... little did he know that people will be talking about her smile all those years later. By the way ... she was smiling because whilst he was painting her the front of his trousers was undone!

      God bless.

      Delete
  2. Try not to snack after 6:00 p.m. or have anything stronger than water to drink and your dreams might not be so very, very strange!! This had to be a dream to end that way!

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    1. To dream the impossible dream (stuck on a train)
      To fight the unbeatable foe (the fat man on my right)
      To bear with unbearable sorrow (being stuck in the middle)
      To run where the brave dare not go (where could I go?)

      This is my quest, (to get out of there)
      No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ... (oh what's the use?)

      God bless you, Terri.

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  3. If I were to take a tour with steam engines, it would be short. Don't misunderstand me. There is charm to leap back to the past, but only in Agatha Christie movies.

    We visit our daughter in Switzerland every year. those trains and buses are awesome. even on time.

    Sorry about the rotund man. I have sat in the middle of my husband (also rotund) and another rotund man. Hell. Pure hell.

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    1. Agatha Christie was there, Susan. The old lady opposite in the corner. Also, the man with the Tom Selleck moustache was Hercule Poirot being incognito (an Italian).

      God bless.

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  4. It sounds like a very uncomfortable train journey being hemmed in by people on either side of you. I wasn't expecting this ending so I hope you can find it along with yourself. Could be just a nightmare that you are experiencing and it to will pass. :)

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    1. I'll be very honest with you, Bill. I did not expect this ending to the story either. There I was writing it when it suddenly ended. Pity this never happened to Shakespeare. It would have saved me all those hours of useless studying at school.

      God bless you my friend.

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  5. Sounds more like a nightmare to me, Victor. I know I would detest being stuck so tightly between two people I neither knew nor wanted to know. And because you were "no longer there" after the sprint through the tunnel, it seems this story has a happy ending after all!
    Blessings!

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    1. You are right, Martha. It does have a happy ending. Even though I could not at the time of writing think of one. That's the beauty of collective writing; the readers can make up their own endings. As long as no one suggests that a tiger came into the compartment as we got out of the tunnel ...

      God bless you.

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  6. Not a very pleasant ride. A good thing it was a dream!
    I think I'll stick to watching Ken's trains go around the track. : )

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    1. I really like Ken's train set, Happyone.

      God bless.

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  7. This sounds like an old episode from Rod Serling's Twilight Zone! I used to love train travel, but can't recall these type of compartments.

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    1. These compartment carriages (in the UK) date back to the 1960s. These old trains are still maintained by enthusiasts and run on short distance (private) lines as tourist attractions. Mostly charitable organisations run by volunteers. The trains don't really go anywhere ... just there and back for the fun of it. Normally a distance of a few miles.

      Here's a short video showing the corridor running the whole length of the carriage and individual compartments seating 8 people; 4 facing 4).

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP7hcQfwtQo

      God bless.

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  8. I commuted to work by train for 40 years, thanks for stirring up some of those crappy old memories.

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    1. I know, JoeH. We have that in common too ... I commuted to work by train every day for years. Often the train was so crowded it was standing-room only all the way to London. Also, when there, I had to take another underground (London Tube) train to my place of work. I agree ... crappy memories indeed.

      God bless you.

      Delete

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