Trains in the Americas

In the early 1990s I did guest research at the University of Washington in Seattle. As it happened, I had friends in Vancouver, BC, not that far away, so a visit was indicated. Therefore I looked up Amtrak in the phone book and called them to ask about tickets. (The first web browser would be made public later that year, and of course it would be much longer before Amtrak had a web presence.) I could hear through the phone how the person at the other end eyed me suspiciously, of course there was no such thing as a train connection between Seattle and Vancouver. I for my part was equally taken aback, how did people then travel? Somehow I found out that if you didn’t have a car (in itself a weird idea) you would go by Greyhound Bus, which of course was an important part of America.

The Greyhound bus station turned out to be indeed populated by people who couldn’t afford a car. Drugs, possibly, but not cars. In the event, there were more travellers than fit on the bus, so we, the OBS, OBCM, and I, had to wait for quite some time for a second bus and a driver to be procured from somewhere before we were on our way. We travelled northwards and eventually stopped at a bus stop in the middle of pretty much nowhere. Apparently our bus had had a mechanical breakdown and we had to wait for yet another bus and driver to be located and ferried up from Seattle. There was a coin phone so I could call our Canadian friends and tell them we would be late. (This was long before mobile phones were common, and in the Americas they didn’t exist at all, as far as I knew.) A new bus did arrive, we boarded and continued our journey. Finally we got to the Canadian border, where we passengers by all means were very rapidly cleared by customs, but our bus turned out not to have a traffic permit in Canada, so now we had to wait for a bus and driver to be ferried down from Vancouver. Eight hours late we finally pulled in at the bus terminal in Vancouver and could call for our friends to come pick us up.

“Oh, good that you are safe, we thought you might have been shot at.”
“What!?”
“Didn’t you know? The Greyhound bus drivers are striking and they’re shooting at the strike breakers.”

Oh. Clearly very many things were different abroad. After our visit we did get safely back to Seattle, but in the future we used one of the competing (Canadian) bus companies.

Now it seems that Amtrak actually has gotten their act together and introduced a train connection between Seattle and Vancouver (and beyond). Interestingly enough the trains are described as ”European style”, whatever that means, say I who have travelled on European trains from Wales to Romania, but admittedly I have not travelled by train in the USA, maybe their trains have some peculiar features that are not present on European trains.

This recollection was triggered by the news that one of these new high-speed trains had derailed outside Tacoma, south of Seattle.

Late to work

What with various appointments, my flex-time bank has been shrinking a lot lately, so time to put in some long workdays. However, on the way to work the train stopped between stations. A very soft-spoken driver announced to straining ears that the overhead line had been pulled down; technical staff were on their way, but in the meantime we were under no circumstances to try to exit the train. Well-tried commuters didn’t bother getting upset, but just picked up their phones and laptops and started informing their various appointments that they would be late. The network was so saturated it took me four tries to get my own text message transmitted. And then we waited. Luckily I had a thick book with me. Occasionally we would have to shush loud telephone speakers as we got new quiet assurances that help was on its way and admonishments not to try to get out of the train.

About an hour after the stop we saw guards in day-glo vests outside the train and soon two doughty fellows entered the car and broke out the escape ladders. Evacuation proceeded smoothly, but I noticed as we got out that our car was the only one being emptied—apparently they were still worried about masses of people running around without control, so they let only one car-ful of passengers out at a time. The next thing I noticed was that we were in fact only a hundred meters or so from Norrviken station where a fresh train just arrived, so a few quick steps got me on that and to a rather late arrival in the office.

Quickie holiday

I felt a bit guilty about leaving the office in the middle of the afternoon, but I had a train to catch. Luftwaffenmuseum Gatow were hosting an exhibition by IPMS Deutschland and that was a reason as good as any for a weekend holiday for Honeybuns and me, so we eagerly tagged along our friend Ulf.

We had some time in Malmö before boarding the sleeper train to Berlin, so raided the local Pressbyrån for food. Lots of pasta salads of various kinds, the only edible thing I found was rather dry sushi in a plastic box. Well, it sufficed to keep body and soul together.

We had berths in a couchette. Now, while SJ complains that the X 2000 trains are getting long in the tooth, the rest of the rolling stock are completely ignored: The car was clearly older than I was, even still festooned with the classic admonishing Ströyer cartoons and the toilet paper had a distinct East state character. We shared the compartment with a talky young couple and a non-talky buff woman with major tattoos. We soon arrived in Trelleborg where we after quite a bit of shunting were rolled into a ferry bound for Sassnitz. The rest went up to have a look-see of the ferry, but I tried to make myself comfortable in bed, and the rest soon returned, having found nothing interesting. As often, I slept fitfully and definitely awoke as the German border police loudly inspected the passports of the travellers in the next compartment. They did however not seem care about us, possibly the people next doors were not intra-EU travellers, of some suspicious skin colour, or whatever other juridical complication.

A sight for sore eyes.

Finally we rolled in at Berlin Hauptbahnhof (tief) at 06:01, rather bleary and worse for wear. No shower for cheap couchette travellers. We stumbled out in the steel-and-glass building, like something out of a Tati movie. While we wouldn’t be able to check in at our hotel until after 15:00, maybe we could at least dump our bags there, so we set out to find Motel One Berlin-Hauptbahnhof. No problem, it was visible as soon as we exited the station. We got to the checkin desk and declared that we had bookings and within minutes we found ourselves clutching keycards to our rooms. Yet another two minutes later we were having glorious showers!

Berlin at dawn.

The healing and restoring magic of hot water from above soon had us bright and bushy-tailed again and we set out to find breakfast. Admittedly there was a breakfast buffet downstairs, but the vegetarians did not find the carefully aligned rows upon rows of sausage, ham, sausage, ham, sausage, and sausage to be that appetizing, so we went out on the city to see what food we could find. Nothing on a Saturday morning at 06:30, it turned out. But, surely there must be something at the station? We returned there and found a little shop offering salads, smoothies, fruit juices and other delicacies. I peered at a good-looking salad. It looked pasta-free, but you can never be sure, so I asked the lady behind the counter. Some minutes of confusion ensued until she realised that I really was asking whether there was any pasta in the salad. Of course not, who’s ever heard of a salad with pasta!?

Now, both washed and fed we located the tourist office, got maps, postcards and stuff and then tried to figure out how to get to Gatow. The guy at the travel information had no idea at first, but looked up something and printed us an itinerary that looked rather complicated. We decided to go for a taxi instead.

A long line of Soviet air power.

The taxi drove away for quite some distance, but finally ended up at the General Steinhoff-Kaserne. Well, the general idea was correct, so to speak, but it didn’t look very museumy. The taxi driver inquired at the gate, got further instructions and we drove on for a few more minutes until we got to the museum gate. Ooooh! Lots of aircraft out, but first things first: We located the hangar where the exhibition was being set up, in the space between exhibited aircraft.

Now, it has to be admitted that many of the models weren’t exactly Spitzenqualität with regards to the quality of finish, but the underlying ideas were often excellent. As this was an exhibition, rather than a competition, there were many themed exhibits, such as “Captured German aircraft in Soviet markings”, “All versions of the Fw 190”, “Pioneer aircraft up to 1914”, “Early jets”, “RAF aircraft stationed in West Germany”, and so on. (There were of course also exhibits of surface-bound vehicles, but I’m just not as interested in/knowledgeable about such.) The spirit was one of ”models are for building”, and I heartily agree with that.

My favourite, a burned-out Wellington, very impressive.	I wasn’t even aware it had been issued as a model: The EWR VJ101.
A quite unusual subject, an Etrich Taube. The original could be seen two hangars over.	A gaggle of figure builders were also present, happily painting away.

However, after a while the hangar felt quite chilly in the still early morning, and while Ulf exercised his German with the exhibitors, Honeybuns and I struck out to see what we could find. Now was when I realised the camera battery was running flat, so I had to switch to using my mobile. The picture quality dropped, but it managed some 200+ pictures before its battery went empty the next day. (Later on, more experienced hands have recommended carrying multiple batteries and changing as needed. Seems there’s going to be a lot of follow-up purchases to this camera…)

Airfields are big and there were lots of hangars located along the perimeter. Walking around a copse of trees we came upon a pair of hangars and started investigating the one furthest away. Боже мой! It was full of…stuff. A staff-looking person was sitting outside having a smoko, I looked at him and he nodded imperceptibly, apparently it was OK to go in. This was apparently the museum storage hangar, we found shelf upon shelf of rocket launchers, jet engines, stacks of rusty bombs (disarmed, we hoped), landing gear legs, a balloon gondola, and … cash registers, shop scales, tabulating machines, cutlery, and other non-aviatic items. At one end was a basically complete Heinkel He 111 in the company of other bits and pieces of aircraft in bad shape.

I think this probably is a Siebel Si 204 fuselage. The one at Arlanda is not in quite as bad shape, but it’s just a question of time.	It looks like a Bf 109 wing, but missing a bit at the root.
I think this is a Goblin, but I have no idea why it’s radioactive.	Presumably even the air force needs to sew things every now and then.

The next hangar was much more orderly, a very fresh and clean exhibition of the West German air force within NATO. Side rooms exhibited the different generations of fighter aircraft and the training courses German pilots had been to in the US and the UK.

As we returned we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a bicycle race circling around the airport. With time we realised that today was also Tag der Reservisten, with lots of other activities apart from model exhibitions. We walked along long lines of Soviet-manufactured aircraft, most of East German provenance. Many were in rather sad shape as a consequence of being stored outdoors.

A Su-22M-4.	A MiG-23UB.
A Lightning F.2A.	It took me a while before I realised what I was looking at: A HFB-320. Cool!

We continued with museum exhibits. Yet another hangar with aircraft. This was probably the original start of the museum, not quite as carefully laid out as the NATO hall, but interesting stuff nonetheless. We meditated a bit on how few German aircraft from the world wars remain in Germany itself, what was not destroyed having been shipped away by the Allies to their museums.

Eventually we decided we needed food. There were food tents aplenty, but to the dismay of the vegetarians they served wurst, wurst, wurst, wurst, and steak. And beer. I got me a steak and a Fanta, Honeybuns choked on a glass of Sekt. Eventually Ulf and she found some strawberry cake to fill their stomachs with.

The control tower building had a chronological display of the development of German air power from the beginning of the 20th Century onwards, the postwar period being indicated with a blue and red stripe on the floor separating West from East, with corresponding exhibits facing each other. The story of how two opposing air forces were merged into one must be a truly fascinating one.

Finally we were satisfied with museum watching and even skipped the exhibition on RAF Station Gatow and walked off to find a bus stop. We suspected that the travel directions we got at the Hauptbahnhof probably were not the most efficient ones and indeed we were recommended to take the bus to Spandau and the S-bahn from there into the city centre. The S-bahn was a strange experience—it would go a couple of stops, then stop to drop off all passengers and return, while a new train would turn up from ahead and take us a couple of more stops. I’m sure there is a reason for the ratchet drive.

After a detour to the hotel we went in search of Alexanderplatz. Well, it’s not much of a search—the Fernsehturm is easily visible everywhere since Berlin is very flat. („Es gibt keine Birge in Berlin“, Ulf proclaimed.) There may be some connection to the weird pipes that rise above many street corners. On a previous visit it was explained to me that they were there to pump away ground water that otherwise would waterlog the city. There are also major plot holes, given over to grass and weeds. I couldn’t tell if they were remnants of the war, of the Berlin wall, or just areas for redevelopment that had stalled. Honeybuns directed us to Bio Company, where we marvelled at an entire shop full of ecologically grown food and picked up some nice items. Then dinner at Thai inside—though we ate outside in the still warm evening air. Then the few steps to Alexanderplatz, where we browsed the sale at a bookstore. The waiting time to get up into the Fernsehturm was however prohibitive and we simply walked back to our hotel through a now dark Berlin, where brightly lit ships glid on the Spree.

The next morning Honeybuns and I got up early, bought breakfast at the Hauptbahnhof and boarded the train to Hamburg, leaving Ulf to his studies. Berlin to Hamburg is just a two-hour journey by day—night trains being a completely different story. The plan in Hamburg was to visit Miniatur Wunderland. I had tried to purchase advance tickets on their website, but for some reason failed, so we’d have to buy them on site. As we got to the ticket counter we found that the first available times for entry were several hours later and I realised the reason I hadn’t been able to buy online tickets was that they’d been sold out for weeks… Anyway, we weren’t going to let go now that we’d travelled all the way to Hamburg (well, actually we had to go that way anyway on the way home, which was what gave rise to the idea of a visit in the first place) so we bought tickets and then went out into the Speicherstadt to see what to spend our time on. Crossing a bridge we ran into Cap’n Jack Tar, who was selling tickets for boat tours of the harbour. Well, why not? We bought two tickets and looked around in the Binnenhafen while waiting for the boat to leave. Eventually the boat filled up with tourists and a colleague of the ticket-seller turned up to actually steer the boat. He cast off and started talking on the PA and didn’t even stop to draw a breath until we returned an hour later. He had a very distinct way of phrasing, which caused frequent smiles for the listeners. In general everything we passed was „größter in der Welt“ and/or „wunderschööön“. The Speicherstadt used to be the Docklands of Hamburg, but now the tall houses seem to be turned over to oriental carpet sellers (I dare not imagine the amount of carpets they can hold) and trendy marketing companies. Some of them had indeed been turned into blocks of flats, which must be very interesting places. But soon we steered out of the canals and into the harbour, where we passed next to huge container ships. At one point we went through a lock, but we never passed one on the way back, so I’m still not sure what the deal was there.

„Die wunderschöne Speicherstaaaadt!“	In the middle of the harbour is a golden calf on a pylon. I have no explanation.
M/S Lorraine. When she is fully loaded the red area is submerged.	Blohm & Voss are still in business, I didn’t know.

As we arrived back in the Binnenhafen, we jogged off to Miniatur Wunderland and got in. Jehosaphat, but it was crowded! Honeybuns mostly just saw the backs of people, but managed to peek between enough people that she had some idea of the glory of the place.

Archaeology in the North Sea.	The new “Switzerland” segment requiring two floors.
A Swiss station from above.	The new airport segment.

We decided to spend at least a week in Germany next time. Then we rushed back to the station and boarded the train to Copenhagen. We had a perfectly nice dinner on the Puttgarden-Rødby ferry. At København H we had to rush a bit back and forth while they kept changing the track of the Malmö train, but did get there. Finally we could board our sleeper train in Malmö, a proper sleeper compartment this time, a three-berth one, as is the SJ tradition, but I had booked the entire compartment for ourselves. By now we were completely knackered and slept all through Sweden and woke up as we rolled in to Stockholm at 06:04. We eschewed the shower on the train, instead making use of the one in Honeybuns’ nearby office, from which I continued straight on to my own, for a change being the first one in.

Taram, taram, taram…

Back when I was an undergrad, the Maths department’s interface with the students was a little man universally known as “The Lightning”. (The Only-Begotten Children’s Mother reported how shocked she was when she many years later found out he actually had a perfectly normal name as well.) The reason for this sobriquet was soon made amply clear. Picture a queue of perhaps 300 students snaking down the stairwell outside the student office of the Maths dept, all out to buy the necessary textbook for the Analysis course starting that day. Eventually you get to the front desk and The Lightning curiously asks what you want. You declare that you wish to buy Funktioner av en variabel, textbook and exercises. “Oh!” quethes The Lightning and shuffles off to the book shelf at the back of the room, picks up the two books, returns to the desk, takes your money, counts out change and carefully makes an annotation in his cash ledger that he has sold Funktioner av en variabel, copies: 1, and exercises, copies: 1, @ 180 SEK. Then he raises his head, looks at the next person in the queue and inquires what he might be there for. Repeat for all students, repeat for all courses.

The Lightning eventually shuffled off this mortal coil, but I must now have run into his nephew: Honeybuns and I are preparing for a train trip again, and with the help of Die Bahn I had prepared an itinerary with all stops and connections and just needed to make the bookings. Unfortunately international travel cannot be booked on the Web, and I’ve found it impractical to do over the phone, so down I went to the Central Station to handle it in person. When I got to the ticket counter, I laid out my papers and explained the route. The gentleman behind the desk then had to look up each leg and make seat reservations and it went something like this:
Me: “…and from there we continue to Avignon, with the 18:14 connection…”
“Which day was this?”
“The same day.”
Clicks and then searches the keyboard.
Me, being helpful: “That’s A V I G N O&hellip”
“Wait, wait. A?”
Me, timing the letters with his hesitant single-finger typing: “A…V…I…G…N…O…N…”
“And this was when?”
“18:14…”
“Right, there it is. OK, wait a bit.” He clicks and then pads off to the other side of the office to the printer, retrieves a paper and puts it on the counter. “OK, now I have the train number, I’ll see if I can make a reservation…” More hunting and pecking. “Yes! It went OK.”
“Right. In Avignon we change to the 19:59 service to Aix-en-Provence…”
“Wait, wait.” Refocusses on the screen. “Which day was this?”
“Still the same day…”
“The tenth?”
“The tenth.”
“And where to?”
“Aix-en-Provence, that’s A…I…X&hellip” Etc, etc, with an unhurried excursion to the printer for each step of the way.
An hour and a half later I finally had the thick sheaf of tickets and had also missed the modelling meeting I had planned to attend. I don’t think it should be necessary for RyanAir to go into train travel to make it more efficient than that.

Steaming about

This morning Honeybuns and I got on a train pulled by good old B 1136, travelling towards Nynäshamn. The heavy weather pushed down the coal smoke and often made it hard to see the landscape, but I eagerly peered at the surroundings, that in spite of being close to Stockholm, were unfamiliar to me. (So, we'd gone there by car quite often when I was a kid to see relatives, but that hadn't really left any impression.)

The railway station in Nynäshamn is in the harbour, where the boats for Gotland leave. At the time there was a Polferries boat in, the Gotland boat only coming later in the evening. It seems like the tracks used to go all the way to the harbour, allowing cargo to be transferred between ship and rail, but these days only commuter trains and the occasional museum train comes here.

There is a fairly large marina as well, catered to by tourist traps in little houses. These had been supplemented by stands for the Christmas market. We had lunch, which was decent, but rather expensive, confirming the tourist trap nature of the place. The market contained nothing remarkable, but I got myself a smoked trout and a jar of cloudberry glögg concentrate.

We made an excursion to the town centre, where there were also a couple of stands huddling in the drizzle—the children's merry-go-round did not feel at home in the winter weather. However, the local book store and haberdashery, respectively, yielded useful supplies.

As we returned to the harbour, the rain intensified, and we jumped on board S/S Blidösund. On board the ship was also a jazz orchestra and we ended up sitting right next to it. When we had left the harbour, we had a bit of rough sea until we returned into the shelter of islands and as soon as the deck was stable enough to stand on, the orchestra started to play. I can enjoy listening to trad jazz, but I have to admit all songs sound the same to me. I wonder if this is due to the orchestra actually improvising, and thus not really following any particular tune. Sort of a wall of sound, more than melody.

We had dinner on the boat. The two French ladies who were placed next to us, and who I tried to translate the menu for (well, what does “Blidösund hot dish” contain? We had to ask the waitress) took the opportunity to transfer to an empty table, leaving us to our « romantique dinneur ».

The ship trip took considerable longer than the train ride, but eventually we ended up at Skeppsbron and walked to the central station for the ordinary boring public transport home.

Drama!

Our last day in Britain. The morning we would spend going through book stores on and off Charing Cross Street. As it is one of the first, we started with Motorbooks. We found it only due to me looking in the right direction at the right time—it has moved from S:t Martin's Court to Cecil Court, the next street over. In fact all the nice niche bookstores on S:t Martin's Court have moved or disappeared and the streetlet now consists of an unbroken length of pubs. One of the bookstores on Charing Cross Road proper had a lament in its window, explaining how rising costs forced bookstores out of business, and indeed, several of my old favourites had disappeared, replaced by shops for traditional Chinese medicine and the ilk. I was much saddened. Still, Motorbooks was in good shape, even though the fantastic basement stairwell covered with graffiti, stickers, and business cards from every air line, military aircraft unit and private plane owner that had ever passed Motorbooks, was gone. I bought some books I thought I'd manage to carry and looked longingly at some others, which I'll simply have to order later on.

Then we continued to Foyles. They were still in good shape and some more books were added to the collection. Then it was time to head back and pick up our bags. Pull the cart with our bags to Victoria, carry it down into the underground. Honeybuns is getting a bit jittery about our time schedule, I'm more like: “No worries, we should make it with minutes to spare.” She does not look calmed.
When we arrive at King's Cross the PA system blares: “This is an emergency, proceed to the exits immediately!” Oops, well, we were in a hurry anyway. The station pours out hundreds of people onto the street. We push ourselves towards the entrance to S:t Pancras, just as we see it being closed up as well. Is it more than just the underground station being closed? I accost one of the guards by the gate: “Pardon me, is the rail station closed as well?” “Yes, yes, don't you see, all the electricity is gone, nothing is running, everything is closed. Please move out of the way.” Clearly not all of the electricity is gone, as the escalators had been running and other signs of electrical activity are obvious, but of course you would have to have backup systems for those. Now what are we going to do? We'll miss our train and all connections, who should be approached to sort this out?

People milling around.

After milling around a bit we sit on the steps outside the station and consider our plight. After a while it strikes me that there doesn't seem to be all that many other forlorn people milling around, maybe Londoners know what to do under these circumstances, but where do all the other tourists that should be on our train go?
Honeybuns peers curiously at some people that go up the steps, is there a pub up there, maybe we could at least have lunch? We lug our cart and ourselves up the steps and Blimey! there's another entrance to S:t Pancras and the station is obviously in full operation! We rush in, carry the cart down the stairs and come running into the Eurostar terminal as we hear: “Final call for the 14:34 to Brussels, proceed to checkin immediately!” I bang our tickets on the desk and we are checked in. We even have time to pick up some sandwiches and drink on the way to the train, which pulls away soon after we've sat down.
I love the active and curious mind of Honeybuns more than ever, as my breathing calms down. I also check some news sites with the web browser in my mobile, but there seems to be nothing about the emergency, maybe it's a fairly common occurence and nothing to write home about.
Our connection in Brussels is smooth and then we get to Cologne, where we have a couple of hours' wait. Time for dinner. We find a sushi bar, operated by some Vietnamese, and get some quite good sushi (yes, vegetarian too). They do however not accept credit cards. A Colognial sitting on the stool next to us offers to pay the difference for us, but Honeybuns runs away to a cash machine and gets some Euros.

Finally our train arrives and we pile into our sleeper. It is Czech too, but of a subtly different design than the one on the way down. We sleep the sleep of the exhausted, and enjoy breakfast next morning while travelling through Denmark. Again we have a layover in Copenhagen, which I spend writing a few postcards, and then we suddenly run into an old colleague of mine, who's also going back to Stockholm. No direct connection this time, we have get to Malmö first where we change to X2000. I make a point of travelling forwards and not reading on the way up. I avoid motion sickness this time.

Then, just a short tube-trip home. As I walk through the park on the way home, I see that the new playground has been opened and is full of children with their parents, playing in the early summer evening.

Goodbye, hello!

Leisurely packing of things in the morning, take our farewells of our host with promises to return one day and then catch the bus into town, pick up a Lincolnshire Echo and then wait for the train to Peterborough. A railway employee kindly and politely directs us to the right platform.

East Midlands Trains Class 153. Note that curiously the serial number on the side is 52319, but the number on the front 53319.

That special whine-growl of the diesel engine of the accelerating Sprinter, and we roll through the countryside. I do the cross-word puzzles—the Quick Clues is no problem, the Cryptic Clues is more of an effort, perhaps not more so than Geijerkorsordet in Dagens Nyheter, but it still nags at my language confidence.

We get delayed (a hallmark for this journey, it seems) and miss our connection in Peterborough, but it turns out trains to London run about every ten minutes, so we don't have to suffer the pouring rain for long. It feels very luxurious to just wave our Interrail tickets at the conductor.

Eventually we are at King's Cross again. I stand in an interminable queue to buy three-day travelcards for the London Underground, which for some reason can not be bought in the ticket machines, even though one-day travelcards can be. Ah, the Tube, the accumulated heat of more than a hundred years of trains and surely a milliard people. The Victoria Line, we find, has exactly two Accessible stations, none of which we will pass, so we have to carry our luggage down and up stairs. I check my map to locate the best way to continue from Victoria. We're soon by the quiet park of Vincent Square and I'm having déja vu feelings. We check in at the Grange Wellington Hotel but it's only when I visit the bathroom in the corridor that the memory clicks: This is the former Wellington Hall of King's College London, where I stayed a weekend twelve years ago. In the meantime the premises have gone from cheap to shabby. Still, they're reasonably adequate. (Googling around, I later find that King's College London started selling off their student housing in 2001, in an effort to improve their finances. This was not appreciated by the students..)

Having installed ourselves, we go out to introduce London to Honeybuns. Late lunch at an Italian diner, good food but snotty service. No tip.

Regent Street of course, where we hurry through the rain to Hamleys. We're both childishly interested in toys and spend a couple of hours going through the entire shop. They still have model kits, though set up in an interesting fashion: at one end of the floor they have the Revell kits, at the opposite end they have the Airfix kits, together with all other brands owned by Hornby, i e mostly model railway stuff. No Tamigawa kits anywhere. Hm.

We saunter down to Piccadilly Circus and meet up with an old friend of mine, find a cafe and bring each other up to date on our lives. Honeybuns patiently abides us talking shop.

My friend finally has to return to his family and we stroll past Trafalgar Square, where there is some kind of performance going on on the Fourth Plinth. We continue down to the Thames and take lots of touristy pictures of the Houses of Parliament and such. We return to our hotel room, which seems quite uninfested by cockroaches or any other kind of invertebrate life, and while the bed makes interesting squeaky noises it is more comfortable than it seems and we soon fall asleep.

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Update. Of course Wikipedia has all answers. Class 153 units are originally two-car units, with a separate number for the individual car and the unit. Thus, the pictured unit is car 52319, but unit 153319.

Running late

X2000, the vomit express.

We found somewhere to house the cats and went for a longer trip, to England where my heart lies. The usual trip with the 12:21 from Stockholm to Copenhagen and then the night train to Cologne, from whence on to Brussels. Well, not so fast!
We were late into Copenhagen, but as SJ in their wisdom had insisted on purveying us with tickets with generous margins between trains, this was not a problem. However, the motion sickness which I had accrued on the X2000, was.
Eventually we boarded our sleeper, which was a Czech single-decker this time, and rolled through Denmark into the night. I didn't sleep very well (Honeybuns bravely slept in the upper berth, risking being tossed to the floor whenever the train lurched) and when I headed for the shower in the morning, not feeling particularly well at all, the conductor informed me that we were already running two hours late, so they were going to dump us in Dortmund, from where we could catch a faster train to Cologne.
We gathered our belongings and then scrambled to this other train, some platforms away.
Well on the train, I withdrew to the lavatory to yell at Ralph, after which I felt slightly better and then dozed a bit.

They are still remembered!

Our wide margins saved us again, so we had no problems catching our connection in Cologne. While we waited, Honeybuns explored the just-opened food stalls and eventually found me an unfilled croissant (you can't imagine the stuff the Colognials put in their croissants!) which I gingerly nibbled at, but my oculo-vestibulo-gastrointestinal system had calmed down by now.
Instead of the usual Thalys, we travelled with an ICE train. It seemed to me they must have straightened the tracks, because the journey was half an hour shorter and I didn't quite recognise the landscape we passed through, even though the stations were the same. This meant I missed my favourite sights on this leg.
In Brussels we spent a long time going in circles, trying to locate the Eurostar terminal. Finally we found the mysteriously elusive entrance and ended up in long queues for checkin, exit passport control, security control, and entry passport control (Britain not being a part of the Schengen area). Eurostar has a serious case of flight envy, but doesn't quite manage to pull it off: All luggage has to be tagged and “Dangerous items such as knives” are prohibited, so I slipped my Victorinox in my suitcase, expecting it to be placed in a locked hold after being X-rayed, but no, the suitcase was just given back to me, so there I got on the train, equipped with a deadly weapon—not only did I have a knife, but I could…err…use the screwdriver to take the train apart while rolling, yeah!

Eurostar at S:t Pancras.

The train accelerated through Flanders, briefly stopping in Lille and then, with no further ceremonies, dove into the Chunnel and just as fanfare-lessly popped up somewhere near Folkestone a short while after. After a surprisingly short trip we found ourselves at S:t Pancras.
We had a while before our next train so had a spot of food and then wandered around S:t Pancras and King's Cross, looking for ice cream until I found a Möwenpick freezer in a shop in the former station. Another item worthy of notice: The public lavatories at King's Cross will cost you 60p, but the ones at S:t Pancras across the street are free.

Two National Express-operated Driving Van Trailer Mk 4 at King's Cross.

Then we got on the next train, for Newark, and this is when the real travel started. While high-speed trains take you from A to B very efficiently, they tend to travel in trenches for noise-protection reasons. This means you don't actually see much of the landscape you travel through. Now we finally travelled on a normal train on an embankment and could enjoy the view of East Anglia, spotting churches, looking for cows and gazing at the horizon. At Newark North Gate we arrived a bit late, but still managed to get on our connecting railbus to Lincoln.

At around 16:00 we were in Lincoln, some 28 hours after leaving Stockholm.

Pulling our bags on a cart we stuck out like sore thumbs and we had hardly exited the station before the locals descended upon us, eager to tell us how to best get to the tourist information centre. On the other hand, the town was already closing down. We had time to get ourselves sandwiches and juice at the Coop, but by the time we had finished them all shops and restaurants had closed. (Later on British colleagues extolled the wild nightlife of Lincoln, to which we can just say “What!?”) We wandered around a bit, but decided we needed rest, so returned to the rail station and took a taxi to our bed & breakfast, which turned out to be just as friendly and comfortable as we had hoped for. Soon we slept.

Taking the B train

Nynäshamns järnvägsmuseum and Stockholms ånglokssällskap arrange various steam train excursions from time to time. This Easter Sunday they offered a tour of Lake Mälaren, with a stopover in Eskilstuna, it not only being a nice little town, but having several industry museums presumably of interest to people interested in steam engines.

Honeybuns and I managed to get tickets before they were sold out and so joined a huge throng of people at Stockholm Central all admiring the B class locomotive puffing steam and smoke in the bright morning sunshine. A woman with a big camera was taking detail pictures of rods and pistons. Lots of children had been brought along by their parents to get the experience of a real train ride such as we all imagine it to be, with a chugging choo choo and small cars with wooden benches. Some child was heard to comment that the locomotive was smelly and not very nice. Presumably she would ask “Are we there yet?” within minutes of getting on the train.

We got on board and found seats and soon the station pulled away from us to be replaced by a springy Mälar valley. In spite of the warm weather there were still thin ice sheets in many inlets and in places clumps of ice still clung to the walls of rock cuts. Trainspotters, who'd realised you wouldn't get any good pictures from inside the train, dotted the landscape, with their cameras at the ready.

A short break in Västerås to lubricate the locomotive and then the lake continued past us, Eskilstuna soon arriving. The trainfull of people created a considerable crowd on the streets of the Sunday-lazy little town, presumably boosting the local economy some infinitesimal amount as they spread out for their various goals.

Honeybuns and I skipped the museums this time and instead opted for an Asian buffet and a stroll around the old town, peeking into backyards, navigating narrow alleys, passing by all the many cafés, their patrons basking in the sun.



Eventually we were back at the station, where people already waited for the depot to return the train, which had been serviced and polished in our absence. Unmoving pillars of smoke rose from the depot for the longest time, but finally the platform pulled up to the train and we got on. Sun-heated and well-fed, we dozed while I eavesdropped on two gentlemen who'd run into each other for the first time after their studies at Lund University in the late 1960s. I picked up some interesting information on telephony standards development that filled out my more contemporary experiences.

Eventually Södertälje Hamn, the old Södertälje Södra station, hove into view and I noted with delight that it still had not been modified from its original design with wooden shelters and narrow stairs. (Otherwise most commuter train stations were remade in the 1980s into a standard mold of tiles, glass and metal; while in most cases a necessary improvement, still somewhat reminiscent of public lavatories in the general design.)

Finally Stockholm C arrived and we had closed the loop.

“Oh, it's an exhibition of elderly men!”

The Museum of Science and Technology currently hosts Mälarmodulmöte, model railroaders connecting landscape modules to each other, thus being able to run their trains much longer than any individual can do. MMM are doing their modules in H0, i e 1:87 scale, so they're relatively large.

Honeybuns and I went there to look at the trains. Clearly model railways, like plastic modelling, is a hobby for gentlemen, I probably was at the younger end of the audience and participants. Railway modellers have differing approaches to the landscape, so it was not surprising that there were clear differences in the interest in making a realistic landscape between different modules, but that there often were large quality differences between different features within a single module—a module could have carefully sculpted rock sides (probably created with Woodland Scenics moulds), while having just a featureless slab for a road section, trees and greenery could be flawlessly executed with plastic-looking houses just plopped down somewhere. Very strange. Still, the main joy is of course in the running of the trains, and we were shown lovingly detailed cargo cards, attached to car cards, assembled in bunches to form trains and run according to time tables for all the stations on the huge railway.

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Update
An old school mate shows remarkable forbearance with a stupid TV reporter.

Belgium, man, Belgium!

Stockholm C, Monday morning 08:20. Sleet. Cold outside, cold in my head, cold in my heart. I crave solitude but the X2000 to Malmö is all but full.

Östergötland and Småland have a snow cover. Listlessly I try to read documents in preparation for my meeting.

Malmö C, 12:50. The sun shines over the chilly city. I grab a Whopper Meal (sorry, we're out of orange juice) and try to make phone calls. No reply.

København H, 14:40. The main hall feels even colder than outside. I wander around aimlessly rather than freeze on a bench. The benches are anyway taken over by addicts, some joyously high, most silently sunken in on themselves. Finally, the IC3 train to Hamburg. A happy baby gurgling and giggling somewhere behind me, a pair of German girls in front of me, reading thrillers and eating fruit they've brought with them in sensible plastic containers. The sun has set and Zeeland is dark. I have electricity but no Internet, so I can't reach the file server. I return the laptop to my backpack.

Ferry from Rødby to Puttgarden. I refrain from going up on deck, curl up and read about homogeneous transform matrices, erratic bits staying in my mind.

Hamburg Hbf, 20:30. Cold and dark, I have two and a half hours to spend. I am disoriented at first but find the food court after a bit of spinning around. Three slices pan pizza later I am less hungry and cold, but still tired. The book store beckons. Motorbuch Verlag offers thick volumes in German, but I don't want to lug any more luggage and anyway I already have enough reading material.

Fretting, I loaf around the station, watching various shops clean up and close down. The train arrives. Classic sleeper car, no need to fold out the beds. For a couple of seconds I think I will have the compartment to myself, but I am soon joined by a polite elderly gentleman. His accent gives him away as a Swede. The train judders away into the night, I sleep fitfully and when the wake-up alarm by my head goes off I am grateful for the official end of the night.

On my return from the shower a very upset man harangues the car attendant, who tries to pass me my breakfast. I cannot follow all the rapid German, but gather that somebody has attempted to enter the man's compartment pretending to be a train employee. While I gulp my morning tea and croissant, two burly men in DB uniforms come through the corridor. The train stands outside Brussels for a long time, but I do not know how the story ends.

Bruxelles Midi, 06:30. Rain, cold. Not fancying a walk through the city I find my way into the Métro system. The PA system plays pop classics, but the sound quality is awful, the music fading in and out as from a bad AM station.

At the hotel I have plenty of time before my meeting. I try to write postcards, struggling to find the right non-committal but vaguely cheerful phrases.

In meeting, I try to make incisive points and intelligent comments but I notice myself nodding off every time I blink.

When the meeting is over, I still have seven hours before my train back home leaves. I take over a sofa in the hotel lobby and sit and read.

Bruxelles Midi, 23:10. When ennui gives way to annoyance. It's easy to find my train on the info board, it burns in bright red with the comment supprimé/afgeschaft. What? The station is mostly empty, so it is easy to find the queue of upset travellers besieging the lone Belgian railways employee to find out what has happened and how to continue on their respective journeys. The SNCB person has his opinion clear, this is all our own fault, since the railway strike in France has been publicly announced. (That I just arrived in the country the same morning and don't expect strikes in France to affect a train from Belgium to Germany doesn't matter.) However, out of the goodness of his heart he writes out and stamps a form that in essence amounts to a Note from Mum: “This person has missed a train due to circumstances outside his control, please let him have a seat on your train.” and adds an itinerary to Stockholm for me for the next morning. Right, and where am I supposed to sleep tonight? Not his problem, but out of the kindness of the heart of the Eurostar management we are allowed to sleep on the lobby floor of the Eurostar hotel. Sheesh, I'm too old for this kind of shit! A likewise annoyed Brit and I strike out along Rue de l'Angleterre to find a hotel with free rooms.

Hotel Continental, 00:10. I have stayed in seedier places, but not by a wide margin and not for the price of 150 EUR a night. On the other hand, by virtue of having gotten the last room in the hotel my dominion for the night is a giant room-and-a-half with no less than seven beds to choose from. They are all uncomfortable. The room is rather cold, which turns out to be due to the French windows not closing properly. On the other hand it means that the room is well aired out. And then there is the railway right outside. I prop a chair in front of the rickety door and then I fall asleep.

Bruxelles Midi, 08:00. Brilliant sunshine over chilly Brussels. I try to argue a bit more with the SNCB staff to at least get reservations for the trains I have to take—in particular I'd like a sleeping car reservation for the night train from Malmö—but their computer system does not see bookings and, anyway, it's not their problem.

Bruxelles Midi, 08:30. The electronic information boards stop working.

Bruxelles Midi, 10:22. Against all expectation the THALYS train to Cologne leaves on time. To my surprise the Note from Mum is accepted without comment by the conductor. The Ardennes are as beautiful as ever.

Köln Hbf, 13:20. The train to Hamburg is late. I am anxious, I don't have much time for train change in Hamburg.

Hamburg Hbf, 17:26. The train driver has managed to regain lost time and I dash to the next platform to catch the Copenhagen train. I end up across a young Finnish couple (young enough that I have to keep myself from asking them why they aren't in school) who have been Interrailing around Germany and the Netherlands for the last month and now finally are on their way home to Tampere. We play cards and chat for the rest of the journey.

København H, 22:23. They must be practicing to turn the station into a skating rink. I catch the train to Malmö.

Malmö C, 23:08. Out of the goodness of his heart the conductor allows me aboard the train, but no sleeping place for tramps. I find that they do not dim the lights in the cars just because it is night and everybody would like to sleep. I must have slept though, because I wake up around Linköping.

Stockholm C, 05:45. Fuzzily, muzzily I stumble home, soak myself in the tub and then in bed.

Cat's eyes