Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

A late-night journey home

You've been out for the evening around Euston and it's time to go home. Threading your curry-filled way through Euston station and into the Underground, you get to the platform and there's a train in two minutes. Ah - now it's flashing 'CORRECTION' and the next train is now in eight minutes. Okay, no problem, but you wish you'd been for a pee before leaving the pub. So you loaf around for a few minutes and get on the tube, which is more or less as it usually is. Warren Street, Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square (where it fills up with revellers as it always does at this time of night), Charing Cross (where the last set of doors will not open), Embankment.

Waterloo! Off the train, look up to see exactly where the exit is. Turn right, left, left, up the stairs, left, right, up the escalator, smacking your Oyster card down to stride imperiously through the barrier while marvelling at the pair who've somehow managed to faff around with their tickets enough that neither of them can get out, up another escalator and onto Waterloo station. Straight across to AMT and buy a late-night latte to keep you awake for the journey home, then remember what you wished you'd done before leaving the pub and invest 20p to take care of that. Emerge feeling a lot better, look up at the monitors and head for platform 7 to catch the 0009 to Guildford via Woking (terminating tonight at Woking due to engineering work with a bus forward to Worplesdon and Guildford). The concourse is full of railway-orange hi vis vests as the night shift are starting work, seeking sustenance at Delice de France and Upper Crust.

Onto platform 7. The train's a slammer, eight carriages. An 8VEP, your inner trainspotter helpfully supplies, easily recognisable due to most of the bodyside consisting of doors. There's still eight minutes to go so you head for the front of the train, the quiet end, and lean on a railing underneath a banner repeater showing a horizontal bar (which means the signal it refers to is at danger) for some fresh air. You notice someone stuffing their face with junk food in First Class, and bet they don't have a first class ticket. Further down the train a door opens slightly and a shaky hand drops a bunch of fast food wrappings carefully down onto the track. Not onto the platform, oh no. That would make them far too easy to clear up.

At 0007 the platform starter signal W13 clears to a green as the route indicator next to it lights up to display 'MS', meaning you'll be on the Down Main Slow line out of Waterloo. The banner repeater switches simultaneously to displaying a bar angled at 45 degrees and you hop on the train, sitting by yourself at the front of the first carriage. Whistles blow, the guard dings the bell twice ("ready to start") and you're off, passing a couple of freshly-vandalised class 455 units in the carriage sidings waiting for the night shift to come and clean off the graffiti. Everything's pretty quiet at this time of night and the driver has a nice spirited run under greens all the way to the first stop just a mile or so down the line at Vauxhall. Once again doors slam, ding ding, and the driver pulls away. Ding, goes the bell. One ding - "stop". The driver hits the brakes again - someone must have run up onto the platform at the last moment and seized a door handle. Once that's sorted out it's ding-ding again. This time you get away without further incident.

Passing the new Covent Garden market (which is only just getting going for the night) and a brightly-lit night bus on the road it's another short run down the line to Clapham Junction, still brightly lit and active as trains come in for overnight stabling in the sidings. Various late-night people - party animals, late workers, the just plain lost, whatever - pile on and for the first time you have company in the front carriage. Then it's off towards Wimbledon at full line speed, the cool night air blowing on your face through the open window as you sip your rapidly cooling coffee. The driver pa-pahs the horn a few times on the way down - at other trains, at lineside workers, when approaching stations - then it's the bright lights of Wimbledon depot on the right before the hiss of air tells you the brakes are on for the approach to Wimbledon station.

Wimbledon is fairly quiet, and although you can't see it you hear the doors slamming and know the platform dispatcher's looking anxiously to see if any latecomers are piling down the stairs looking for the last train home. Once it's clear that everyone's on board he looks up and down for doors which aren't closed properly and checks the signal's clear before swinging his Bardic up to show the guard a white light - "platform duties complete". The guard acknowledges this with a ding-ding on the bell and you're off to Surbiton, with the long run giving the driver a chance to pile on the power for a nice speedy run on the clear down line. A couple of guys walk up to the front of the carriage and peer at the network map in some confusion before giving up and asking you if the train's going to Surbiton.

You speed through Raynes Park and New Malden before the first hint of braking and a whiff of sewage through the window tell you you're just passing Berrylands station, that strange place which manages to be in the middle of nowhere despite being in the middle of suburban London. Less than a minute later you feel the leading bogie under your feet clattering over the crossovers outside Surbiton station before platform 3 appears on your left. You drain your coffee, then stand up and lean on the window frame (performing the minor infraction of sticking your head out of the train window in the breeze) as the train draws in and squeals to a stop before you open the door and hop down onto the platform.

As you walk down the platform towards the exit, you hear a chorus of doors slamming with that characteristically satisfying ker-lunk which train doors produce. You reflect on the fact that in a few months that slam, which has been a part of train travel almost since it began, will disappear from Surbiton station forever as the last of the slammers are replaced by shiny new trains with power doors before being hauled off to Immingham to await the cutter's torch after nearly 40 years of service. Sure, the Desiros are safer, they're easier to operate and they're more comfortable for passengers, but well - they just won't have the same personality, you know?

As you reach the stairs you find yourself thinking - to your surprise, you'd never have said this five years ago - that although it's grimy and dirty and huge and impersonal and smelly and covered in graffiti, there could be worse places to live than London.

Posted by mpk at July 6, 2004 1:43 AM | TrackBack