Terry's Guide to Train Travel

I’ve been travelling by train a fair bit lately, mostly over to Gloucestershire for work, and in this comparatively short space of time I’ve picked up a few train-based tips that I feel duty bound to share with you.

1.       When you’re at Birmingham New Street station don’t assume you know which part of the platform the train is going to stop at. Every time I’ve caught the train from there to Peterborough it stops right at the far end of platform 10a. Everyone knows it. All the regulars stand at the far end and I feel I’ve infiltrated their knowing group, to the point that a few of us have even started to nod an acknowledgement to each other. Maybe it’s just me and they’re humouring me because they think I have a facial tic, who knows? Anyway we all thought we had the platform position sussed…….until last Thursday when the train went sailing past us and stopped in the no mans land of platforms 10a and 10b. So I then became part of a disgruntled group of hacked off commuters chasing a slow moving train and moaning to each other about this unwelcome change to their routine.

2.       Don’t offer your seat to a pensioner as they won’t thank you for it. When I fought my way on to the train there were no seats left, except one. I spotted the little fold down seat near the door and decided to go for it. After a minute or so an old chap, slightly unsteady on his feet, boarded the train. All the other passengers, especially those with a seat, pretended he wasn’t there. I, in a moment of British good manners, leapt to my feet and offered him my seat. “That’s alright boy, I’m fine”, said the old chap and moved his way through the crowds. Feeling a little snubbed I looked around and spotted an old lady on her way home from the shops with her daughter and granddaughter. I offered the seat to her. She looked at me as if I’d just offered her a dog turd in a shoebox. Coming to the conclusion that this was obviously the seat of shame I decided that I would stand as well and propped myself by the door, next to a girl in a long winters coat, a strange clothing choice on a blazing hot day in the middle of summer. I guessed that she must be a time traveller who’d pitched up in the wrong season. There was no other possible explanation for it.

3.       When you do get a seat don’t pick the one near the toilet. Not only do you get the pleasure of having commuters appear through a sliding wall as if, as Frankie Boyle once said, they were being revealed as prizes on a game show, you also have the delight of a smell that can only have come from the very bowels of Satan himself. I fail to understand how, in 2011, when we were all supposed to have hover cars and be commuting to the moon, train toilets have not advanced beyond installing pointless sliding doors. Is an air freshener too much to ask???

I shall be embarking on my travels again tomorrow and if I pick up any more useful tips I’ll be sure to let you know, and if you have any please feel free to share them.