Memorable/Terrifying Train Journeys

 

Maybe my most interesting and terrifying train journey was that taken with my old Beaumont friend John Farr (may he RIP) in about 1970 from London to Istanbul via Munich. Munich itself was still being excavated for constructing a subway but we were able safely to board the train with reserved seats bound for Turkey.

The guards used to  check the wheels' soundness  by hitting the train wheels from time to time with sledge hammers.   After one such check in Greece after a minor earthquake,  the train  was deemed dangerous so  we had to disembark.  Another train was found but without reserved seats. At Bulgaria the engine was switched to a steam train which then headed slowly to Istanbul, About a mile from the terminus people who were living on the tracks had to rise to make way for the train but finally it arrived at our destination.

The next  difficult  journey a few months later was  on a train from Cairo to Luxor. The train was full of prisoners in chains which was unnerving. Going to the WC was difficult as the WCs were taken up with prisoners in chains. On one occasion solders agreed to stand guard whils I pee'd through a gap between carriages. That was hard enough but the experience was made more memorable by the soldiers firing their machine guns through the train roof.

Another memorable journey was what started as a routine commute from London Vauxhall to Wimbledon. I blogged about this at the time: Memorable commuter train journey

A far happier memorable train journey was one which mrs maytrees and I took from London to Aberdeen on the overnight sleeper. This was in many ways matched by our journey years before on the unmodernised sleeper from London to Inverness. See both

Train to Inverness and Train to Aberdeen

The whisky on the Aberdeen journey and  the Haggis enroute to Inverness were both of course also memorable.

Then comes our summer holiday train to St Ives Cornwall where again we had reserved seats. On the return journey to London there were terrific thunder storms in England and the lightening brought most trains to a halt. However the train from Plymouth from which we were bound to London, was not directly affected. Indirectly though, being the sole London bound  train, it soon became packed to overflowing.

All of the HCPT overnight  pilgrim trains  from Bolougne sur mer to Lourdes were  exciting and one or two were terrifying.

The most terrifying was when one night at a remote French railway station where for some reason the train had halted, three men fleeing from the station bar  tried to board. The gendarmerie fired tear gas at the men who were caught. The tear gas cannisters missed the rogues but hit the open window of one of our compartments in which three HCPT Group 35 asthmatics were sleeping. They woke up and  were sick. I protested to the gendarmes but the row  was defused by the train driver who came over and said: moi asthmatic aussi. 

Another exciting HCPT train journey took place during a national French railway strike when a lady HCPT helper  who had been in the resistance during WWII persuaded a union leader who had also been in the French resistance, to drive the train personally to Lourdes.

Overall train travel now seems likely to increase partly as a result of the war in the Middle East.