It's the 22nd of December or if you have been watching South-East today as I have, the 5th day of chaos. Yeah, take that advent, you haven't got a patch on BBC local weather news. On the fifth day of chaos South-Eastern Trains gave to me, 5 hour longer journey, 4 revised service routes, 3 stations closed, 2 press statements, and a rail service unable to cope when things get icy. I don't care about this of course, as I'm safe and sound back home with no real need for an efficient public transport system, in fact the most of my worries is how poorly my 5 days of chaos poem scanned. But this would be a whole different matter if I was in West Kent, then I'd have a much bigger problem. This problem would be angry commuters, second only to Londoners in their perceived right to have a huge moan about things beyond our control. Lines of them queueing up on station platforms looking cold, bedraggled and bewildered, unable to function without a double shot latte, stood around confusedly staring at screens pondering the implications of the delay to the 7:36 service to Charing X.
I'm unaware of how many of these commuters understand the finer workings of a rail network, but I'm guessing it's not all too many, and I'm guessing the ones who do possess such knowledge are probably rather cleverly keeping their mouths shut. You see, I am among the majority, in that I know very little about the rail network and the inner workings of a modern day train. But humour me for a minute if you will and let me outline what I do know about such things, and then in turn the reason why I would not have been queueing up to tell the news cameras how “ridiculous” this whole thing is. Firstly I know that rails are made of metal, metal which has a low latent heat and therefore in winter weather is likely to get rather cold. Secondly I know that in cold and wet conditions, it is possible that snow will fall, I know snow too is cold. I know that in consistently cold weather this snow can often turn to ice, particularly on surfaces which don't lend themselves to absorbing things, e.g. metal (stop me if you see where I'm going with this). Thirdly, I've seen videos as a school child urging me not to run across train tracks not only because of the potential zillions of vaults which could fry me in an instant but also because because trains are big and heavy and can be travelling at high speeds. This whole size thing is brilliant for transporting large quantities of people and the speed thing helps the train achieve this quickly. However, as with many things in life, this poses a problem, that is braking, slowing hundreds of tons of train down, with only a relatively small surface area on metal rails. However this feat is achievable, hence the birth of the train, Hooray!
When you throw ice into the mix though, things get a little more tricky, I've had the joy of being chauffeured around in a few cars in this recent spate of snow, and it's been tricky for cars to maintain control on icy roads. It's all a great deal of fun when you're young and on holiday. The potential for a car to become stuck in a snow drift and for you to have to push it out sounds more of a exciting challenge than a nasty threat, like one of those adventure holidays and I didn't spend a penny. But this is genuinely a problem for many people with cars, cars and snow on the whole do not mix. Now, trains are much much bigger that cars, and they have a much harder task when it comes to braking on rails, I can only imagine this job would be made much harder by ice on the rails (ice is slippery, I know that too). Trains much like cars have to share the same rails as other trains, those trains could be going slower than them, faster than them or even in a different direction to them. This is why trains have timetables, so that they don't accidentally bump into each other somewhere along the way. As a reminder, and a fail-safe mechanism, there are also a series of signals, much like traffic lights. Trains are required to stop at these when they are red (or double orange), which is fine. Providing they are travelling at the correct speed (pre-agreed on for that service on that route) they should be able to stop in plenty of time at these lights and avoid crashing. Unless of course there's something which hinders the brakes performance, for arguments sake, let's call this “ice”.
This “ice” means that trains must travel more slowly in order to brake for the lights, which makes train's journey times longer and also means they arrive less regularly at stations. This in turn makes commuters begin to speculate about the state of the nation, something they are only too good at, as any eves dropper on train journeys will tell you. The problem with their speculative efforts to improve things is, they are unwilling to ever arrive at the conclusion “This is nobody's fault, it's just one of those things that happens, There's nothing we can do and some people seem to be enjoying it so maybe I should just give it a rest”. This is much the same way as I feel about Big Brother or The Daily Mail. OK, so maybe I do think there are things that can be done about those two things, but they are at least under human control, the weather however, most certainly isn't.
So really, there's no scape goat for this problem of snow I'm afraid, you can try linking it the government, the rail services or join a wacky cult and pin it all on full body waxes and homosexuals, but it's not gonna make the blindest bit of difference. So this chaos, wait no, this mild problem that comes around maybe once every year for about a week, is something we largely just have to bloody well grow up and live with. I am aware that in countries like Germany, France, Austria etc... the public transport continues to run through tough weather conditions, but this is something that they experience every year, for months on end, and something which costs millions and millions of euros to deal with. It's going to be cheaper and easier in the long run for us to just wait the week out with a smile on our faces and try to remember that some people at least enjoy the snow. Whether it's a senile grandparent confusing song lyrics with what winter's were generally like all those years ago, or a school boy excited by the potential of missing double maths to smother snow in the face of his unknowing and now unhappy crush. There is an upside to snow isn't there? And listening to Christmas songs on your iPod at a chilly station a few days a year has to be better than standing around moaning to television cameras about someone or something that may or may not be linked to the snow, isn't it? Maybe I'm wrong, and moaning is just one of those guilty British pleasures, like queuing or... ah... well... moaning at the weather.
Seems I've been wrong all along then, as you were. But if it really is such a pleasure, could I ask that you crack a little smile or wink at the camera from now on please, just so we all know, it'd make the whole thing a lot more bearable.
Thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment