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The next train to depart from Platform 2...
This is the (epic?) tale of my visit home to England last week. I wont go into detail of why I went or what I did in the process, but I did have a number of amusing incidents on the way. I will say that it was at relatively short notice, which did affect my choice of transport.
Now, I was going to stay in a medium-sized town in the North-East of England, which conveniently has it's own railway station. The sensible option would be to fly into a relatively northern airport, such as Manchester, and then take the train from there. But due to airline pricing policies, Manchester proved to be an impossible (well, ridiculously expensive) goal, and the same went for the lesser airports up there. So I had to fly in via Gatwick and out via Stansted.
The first part of the journey went off quite nicely. Public transport in Helsinki is downright excellent, so I was at the airport just after the checkin desks opened without any trouble. The flight departed late, but the Captain explained that this was due to a headwind slowing them down on their outward leg, and it would be a tailwind for our flight, and in fact we landed almost exactly on time. No fuss at passport control, either. So far so good.
The only annoyance so far was airport security. I tend to go everywhere "prepared", in the Scout sense. The only thing I usually carry which can't go in the cabin is a Leatherman, which I had already shoved in my suitcase, but I still had to put *both* laptops in separate trays, take off my belt (with phones and torch holster) and boots, completely empty my pockets, and put everything back together again afterwards. But that's the main reason for arriving early.
I'd booked trains ahead, so after collecting my tickets from the machine, I got to dive into the utter mess that is the modern British railway system. Gatwick is directly south of London, so the computers were telling me to change at London Bridge for the Tube in order to reach King's Cross. But after identifying my train (by time, since the itinerary doesn't give the destination) and peering at a map, I realised it was going to Bedford - which is north of London - and stopping at St. Pancras on the way, which is within stone's throw of King's Cross. Great, one less change and no messing about with long escalators, thank you, but why don't the computers realise that?
Eventually the train - not the first one, since I'd allowed time to get through the airport - pulled in to Platform 2. The guard came through after we set off, I had my ticket ready to show him, and was going to ask whether, despite the booking being only to London Bridge, I could stay on to St. Pancras. But, just before he got to me... he encountered an SC.
A fare dodger.
Cue roughly 10 minutes of explaining that there was a £20 penalty to pay and how would you like to arrange that, and the alternative is a court appearance where they'll fine you a heck of a lot more than that.
Just to put this in perspective, it is a very rare train in Britain which doesn't have a guard on it, roughly half of whose job is to inspect tickets. On really crowded trains they might not bother, simply because pushing through the huddled masses isn't feasible, but this wasn't one of them. So I really have no idea how this genius thought he would get away with it, unless of course he'd only just arrived in the country and wasn't aware of How Things Are Done Here (which, given his ethnicity and the fact he'd got on at the airport station, is entirely possible).
Finally the guard sees my ticket and answers my question in the affirmative, just in time to come across a second fare dodger in the row just behind me.
You'd think he'd at least have tried to move further up the train, to give him a chance to get off before the inspection reached him, while the guard was busy with the previous guy. There was a corridor connection to the next three carriages right beside him.
Sigh.
Finnish trains do have ticket inspectors, but in the commuter area they are not on anywhere near every train, and are accompanied at a discreet distance by a pair of bouncers. They do often find dodgers, but not generally more than one per train. They're usually smart enough to duck out of the door when they see the inspectors arriving - though the inspectors themselves have a habit of showing up just as the doors are closing.
So, I marvel at the very existence of above-surface railway lines through the middle of London, and presently arrive at St. Pancras, from where I wend my way through the enormous building site that is King's Cross at the moment. I attempt to obtain cash from a machine, unsuccessfully - the machine doesn't like my type of debit card.
Meanwhile, it's 17:15 and my train, the 17:30, hasn't been assigned a platform yet - despite being cheerfully advertised as "On Time", and most of the platforms being clearly full of the right kind of train for the job. Ditto for the 17:33.
As a result, there are at least two full trainloads of passengers crowded into what remains of the main concourse, as that's the only place where the departure boards are visible. Oh joy. Perhaps it's a good thing the ATM didn't work, I don't want to have my pocket picked in this lot.
At 17:20, an announcement states that the 17:33 would be delayed by a few minutes, due to the incoming train having arrived late. No suggestion of why this is true, or what platform passengers could assemble on in readiness. "What about the 17:30?" I ask the general vicinity, rhetorically. The answer came shortly afterwards: "The next train to depart from Platform 2 will be the 17:30 to Edinburgh..."
...at which point there was a general mad scramble, as almost exactly half the population of the concourse fought their way past the other half on their way to Platform 2. This didn't stop at the end of the concourse, either, as guess which platform the 17:33 had pulled into? Platform 3, which was now full of passengers disembarking from it and fighting their way off the platform.
And I had to reach my seat at the far end of the furthest carriage. With a suitcase.
Hooray for organisation.
Still, at least once I was in my seat, I could relax.
Until the buffet car opened for business, ten minutes later. The buffet car in British express trains marks the boundary between Standard and First Class - and is therefore rather near the tail end of the train when leaving London. So I got to fight my way down a narrow aisle in a swaying and jolting train, with the usual assortment of obstacles in the form of luggage, legs, small children, and people standing in the vestibules on their phones, then stand in line for ages while the agonisingly slow process of ordering a meal was carried out, then fight my way back again while additionally trying not to spill food and coffee all over the place.
I'd have waited for the trolley to come by (oh yeah, that was another obstacle), but unlike on most airlines, it doesn't serve hot food, and by the time it got to my end of the train it'd have run out of almost everything else as well.
But I eventually got to my destination, on time, and without even starving.
But is this the end of the story? Oh no. Of course not.
When I reached the B&B which was to be my temporary home for the next several nights, the landlady took one look at me, and said "Oh no. Not you. Sorry. We're fully booked."
Now, this is a place I had been to before, and I had reserved a room in advance, and I didn't remember being an SC on my previous visit... so all I could say was "Um, may I ask why?" 
It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Apparently there was some homeless man who looked vaguely like me - especially since I had been caught in some drizzle on my way from the station which made my hair look decidedly messy - and who had been known to stay at the B&Bs in the town and then leave without paying.
Just my luck to be mistaken for an SC.
But some explanations and apologies later, I paid in advance (having found a working ATM elsewhere), and went up to dry off.
The return journey was rather more fraught. All was well until I reached Tampere, except for one of the train legs where the seat reservations had been cancelled ("nobody available to put them on"), and I had to sit next to some student who claimed, on the phone, to be "recovering from Fresher's Flu", while coughing madly all the while. Oh, and airport security again. At least Stansted wasn't nearly as much of a clusterfark as I remembered it being the previous time, by which I mean that I actually got through security in time to catch my flight.
No, where things really went wrong was when I got off the shuttle bus at Tampere railway station, and suddenly realised that the last train to Helsinki had already left. The alternatives were now the 01:45 express bus and the 04:08 sleeper train. So I headed for the bus station.
It was only when I got on the bus that I realised that my debit card, as well as not working in some British ATMs, was going to be absolutely useless for buying a bus ticket.
And now there was the immensely sticky problem that I now needed to catch the 4am train, but the ticket office at the station would not open until 5am, and the online ticket sales until 6am (don't get me started on the logic of closing a completely automated online store in the small hours). And I couldn't find an accessible ATM or automatic ticket machine anywhere.
In the end, I just got on the train, and convinced the guard to let me show him an electronic ticket just before we arrived - there was just enough of a window after 6am to let me use the online store, before we would pull into the station I needed to change at. No, he couldn't take my debit card in his portable machine either. Thank goodness for mobile internet and a charged battery...
Now, I was going to stay in a medium-sized town in the North-East of England, which conveniently has it's own railway station. The sensible option would be to fly into a relatively northern airport, such as Manchester, and then take the train from there. But due to airline pricing policies, Manchester proved to be an impossible (well, ridiculously expensive) goal, and the same went for the lesser airports up there. So I had to fly in via Gatwick and out via Stansted.
The first part of the journey went off quite nicely. Public transport in Helsinki is downright excellent, so I was at the airport just after the checkin desks opened without any trouble. The flight departed late, but the Captain explained that this was due to a headwind slowing them down on their outward leg, and it would be a tailwind for our flight, and in fact we landed almost exactly on time. No fuss at passport control, either. So far so good.
The only annoyance so far was airport security. I tend to go everywhere "prepared", in the Scout sense. The only thing I usually carry which can't go in the cabin is a Leatherman, which I had already shoved in my suitcase, but I still had to put *both* laptops in separate trays, take off my belt (with phones and torch holster) and boots, completely empty my pockets, and put everything back together again afterwards. But that's the main reason for arriving early.
I'd booked trains ahead, so after collecting my tickets from the machine, I got to dive into the utter mess that is the modern British railway system. Gatwick is directly south of London, so the computers were telling me to change at London Bridge for the Tube in order to reach King's Cross. But after identifying my train (by time, since the itinerary doesn't give the destination) and peering at a map, I realised it was going to Bedford - which is north of London - and stopping at St. Pancras on the way, which is within stone's throw of King's Cross. Great, one less change and no messing about with long escalators, thank you, but why don't the computers realise that?
Eventually the train - not the first one, since I'd allowed time to get through the airport - pulled in to Platform 2. The guard came through after we set off, I had my ticket ready to show him, and was going to ask whether, despite the booking being only to London Bridge, I could stay on to St. Pancras. But, just before he got to me... he encountered an SC.
A fare dodger.
Cue roughly 10 minutes of explaining that there was a £20 penalty to pay and how would you like to arrange that, and the alternative is a court appearance where they'll fine you a heck of a lot more than that.
Just to put this in perspective, it is a very rare train in Britain which doesn't have a guard on it, roughly half of whose job is to inspect tickets. On really crowded trains they might not bother, simply because pushing through the huddled masses isn't feasible, but this wasn't one of them. So I really have no idea how this genius thought he would get away with it, unless of course he'd only just arrived in the country and wasn't aware of How Things Are Done Here (which, given his ethnicity and the fact he'd got on at the airport station, is entirely possible).
Finally the guard sees my ticket and answers my question in the affirmative, just in time to come across a second fare dodger in the row just behind me.
You'd think he'd at least have tried to move further up the train, to give him a chance to get off before the inspection reached him, while the guard was busy with the previous guy. There was a corridor connection to the next three carriages right beside him.
Sigh.
Finnish trains do have ticket inspectors, but in the commuter area they are not on anywhere near every train, and are accompanied at a discreet distance by a pair of bouncers. They do often find dodgers, but not generally more than one per train. They're usually smart enough to duck out of the door when they see the inspectors arriving - though the inspectors themselves have a habit of showing up just as the doors are closing.
So, I marvel at the very existence of above-surface railway lines through the middle of London, and presently arrive at St. Pancras, from where I wend my way through the enormous building site that is King's Cross at the moment. I attempt to obtain cash from a machine, unsuccessfully - the machine doesn't like my type of debit card.
Meanwhile, it's 17:15 and my train, the 17:30, hasn't been assigned a platform yet - despite being cheerfully advertised as "On Time", and most of the platforms being clearly full of the right kind of train for the job. Ditto for the 17:33.
As a result, there are at least two full trainloads of passengers crowded into what remains of the main concourse, as that's the only place where the departure boards are visible. Oh joy. Perhaps it's a good thing the ATM didn't work, I don't want to have my pocket picked in this lot.
At 17:20, an announcement states that the 17:33 would be delayed by a few minutes, due to the incoming train having arrived late. No suggestion of why this is true, or what platform passengers could assemble on in readiness. "What about the 17:30?" I ask the general vicinity, rhetorically. The answer came shortly afterwards: "The next train to depart from Platform 2 will be the 17:30 to Edinburgh..."
...at which point there was a general mad scramble, as almost exactly half the population of the concourse fought their way past the other half on their way to Platform 2. This didn't stop at the end of the concourse, either, as guess which platform the 17:33 had pulled into? Platform 3, which was now full of passengers disembarking from it and fighting their way off the platform.
And I had to reach my seat at the far end of the furthest carriage. With a suitcase.
Hooray for organisation.Still, at least once I was in my seat, I could relax.
Until the buffet car opened for business, ten minutes later. The buffet car in British express trains marks the boundary between Standard and First Class - and is therefore rather near the tail end of the train when leaving London. So I got to fight my way down a narrow aisle in a swaying and jolting train, with the usual assortment of obstacles in the form of luggage, legs, small children, and people standing in the vestibules on their phones, then stand in line for ages while the agonisingly slow process of ordering a meal was carried out, then fight my way back again while additionally trying not to spill food and coffee all over the place.
I'd have waited for the trolley to come by (oh yeah, that was another obstacle), but unlike on most airlines, it doesn't serve hot food, and by the time it got to my end of the train it'd have run out of almost everything else as well.
But I eventually got to my destination, on time, and without even starving.
But is this the end of the story? Oh no. Of course not.
When I reached the B&B which was to be my temporary home for the next several nights, the landlady took one look at me, and said "Oh no. Not you. Sorry. We're fully booked."
Now, this is a place I had been to before, and I had reserved a room in advance, and I didn't remember being an SC on my previous visit... so all I could say was "Um, may I ask why?" It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Apparently there was some homeless man who looked vaguely like me - especially since I had been caught in some drizzle on my way from the station which made my hair look decidedly messy - and who had been known to stay at the B&Bs in the town and then leave without paying.
Just my luck to be mistaken for an SC.
But some explanations and apologies later, I paid in advance (having found a working ATM elsewhere), and went up to dry off.The return journey was rather more fraught. All was well until I reached Tampere, except for one of the train legs where the seat reservations had been cancelled ("nobody available to put them on"), and I had to sit next to some student who claimed, on the phone, to be "recovering from Fresher's Flu", while coughing madly all the while. Oh, and airport security again. At least Stansted wasn't nearly as much of a clusterfark as I remembered it being the previous time, by which I mean that I actually got through security in time to catch my flight.
No, where things really went wrong was when I got off the shuttle bus at Tampere railway station, and suddenly realised that the last train to Helsinki had already left. The alternatives were now the 01:45 express bus and the 04:08 sleeper train. So I headed for the bus station.
It was only when I got on the bus that I realised that my debit card, as well as not working in some British ATMs, was going to be absolutely useless for buying a bus ticket.
And now there was the immensely sticky problem that I now needed to catch the 4am train, but the ticket office at the station would not open until 5am, and the online ticket sales until 6am (don't get me started on the logic of closing a completely automated online store in the small hours). And I couldn't find an accessible ATM or automatic ticket machine anywhere.
In the end, I just got on the train, and convinced the guard to let me show him an electronic ticket just before we arrived - there was just enough of a window after 6am to let me use the online store, before we would pull into the station I needed to change at. No, he couldn't take my debit card in his portable machine either. Thank goodness for mobile internet and a charged battery...
- Angelspit, '100%'
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