10 Things To Do On a Train (Railways in general)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Railways in general
Date:	27/09/01 (112 review reads)
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Did you know that it takes almost the same length of time to travel from Manchester to London as it does to get from Vienna to Salzburg? You didn’t? Well you do now. The Austrian trip Lou and I took back in July also cost less and was more fun than the one I took on Wednesday.

I do not like trains, as a rule. They are noisy and smelly and full of very odd people (or at least the First North Western ones are), so I was pleasantly surprised with the trip down to Euston. I had to go into the East of London for a conference planning meeting (woohoo – one of the “executive” decisions we made was that free chocolate and cake for all staff members was a necessary) and to get there on time meant getting the 8.23 from Piccadilly. This was the trip (as mentioned in my “thrifty tips” op) where they wanted to charge me £127 or thereabouts….. Still, at that time of the morning I expected it to be pretty busy. In a way, I was right as nearly 90% of the seats had been reserved, but the train itself was pretty empty with only about a third of these being taken. So there I was sitting back in seat 21 A looking out of the window. The scenery was, well, uninspiring to say the least. I needed something to do, but what? Well think up an op, of course, and on what better subject than "10 things to do on a train" ?

1. The obvious thing for me is read. This is not something you can do when driving and so is a bonus point for trains – since you aren’t the one behind the wheel you don’t have to be concentrating hard. I finished my latest book (Diamond’s most bon work on Cancer), read the complimentary copy of the Times with an everso useful article about how to improve your grades by sleeping with your tutor, flicked through last Sunday’s Times Style and went through Cosmo pulling out the free samples and letting my eyes wander over the naked millionaires they were using as centrefolds.
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2. Do homework – only for students I know, but useful nonetheless. Having a table or drop-down tray means it’s easy to get your head down. I wrote a Prolog program, flicked through an applications booklet, read over my NLP notes, did some Binary maths and drew a few tree diagrams – you know, for fun.


3. Network – I’m quite into networking at the moment having bought a book on the subject during my last week at home. You never know who you might find yourself sitting next to on a train and if it’s someone who could help you further your career, then who are we to stop you saying hello. Unfortunately purple shirted guy across from me was most moody and spent most of the time sleeping, so I’ve no idea if he could have helped me bound a little higher on the career ladder.


4. Practice your French. A long long time ago we were going to London and boarded the train at Preston only to find some weird French types in our reserved seats causing us to launch into a most indignant “mais nous avons réservé ces sièges”.


5. And / or your maths. Also yesterday when George E, the train manager came round, mental arithmetic skills came in handy as purple shirted guy quickly calculated the benefits of

ticket X (£z but only returning every second Tuesday and arriving at Oxford Road not Piccadilly and possibly, although possibly not, requiring a special supplement of half your age multiplied by your house number if you had brown hair, and multiplied by your house number and dog’s age if you were blond )

over ticket Y (£z + p / 24 * 10 with an open return but only on days with a full moon and immediately invalidated if Man United have lost an away game in the past 11 days…..)

Calculators were, of course, not allowed. Wow, it was almost as bad as some of the things Ginn set us back in class 6.


6. Conduct business meetings as a cer
tain loud journalist was doing 3 rows behind. Conversations went something along the lines of

“Hi Tina, it’s Sue, how’s Melbourne? What time is it where you are?”

“Hi Sue, it’s Sue, was just talking to Tina in Melbourne. The photographer wants to know which of the unknown athletes we want to use.”

“Hi Tina it’s Sue again, other Sue says….”

You get the picture.


7. Eat – on “long haul” trips there’s usually a buffet car serving hot and cold drinks and snacks, cakes and sandwiches. Ever since a rather memorable blustery day in 1989 I have never been able to travel on a train without at least one of their microwaved croissants. Soggy and soft and flaky and buttery. Yum :-)


8. Improve your balance and exercise at the same time by walking up and down the aisle without holding on (trying all the time not to fall over). Much harder than it looks, especially when in shoes 3” higher than you are used to. Getting funny looks and “has she been drinking?” murmurs is always a bonus, but beware of falling over onto tables as it hurts like anything.


9. Catch up on your sleep – on both trips there and back there was a special “quiet zone” in one carriage, from which personal stereos and mobiles were banned so you could relax in peace.


10. I was a little stuck with this last one, so emailed my big sister for suggestions about things to do on a train. She came back with “Including things springing from a dirty mind?!” So there you have it – my sister thinks (occasionally) dirtier thoughts than me. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to what she means exactly by this…

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