Tales from The Fast Trains by Tom Chesshyre

Author:Tom Chesshyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857653307
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2011-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

MARSEILLES: ‘ON THE SNOW TRAIN TO THE MED’

Forget erratic ticket machines and queues at Caffé Nero. There’s snow on the high-speed lines, and there is nothing short of mayhem at St Pancras.

Amid Christmas trees shaped out of bottles of champagne and promotions advertising shopping discounts, groups of travellers are gathering near the security gates, looking like crowds denied entry to a football stadium. A member of staff informs us that it’s ‘first come, first served’ on journeys today due to cancellations caused by freezing weather; weather forecasters in the papers this morning say we are embarking on the coldest winter since 1927.

We’re about to find out whether it’s a very good or a very mad time to be going on a weekend break to the French Riviera.

With yellow stickers on our tickets reallocating our seats, we enter the departure lounge to find our fellow high-speed passengers draped over seats and chairs and bags, and whatever is to hand. A board says that our train to Paris will leave an hour and a half late. We find a corner. I fetch coffees. Time moves slowly. E mutters: ‘What’s the big deal? It’s snowed. Snow happens in the winter.’ We board our train. We roll slowly past warehouses covered in icicles into a white-out landscape. An announcement says: ‘Because of snow speed restrictions, expect delays of up to ninety minutes.’ That will make us three hours late in total. We’re going to miss our connection to Marseilles, but assume – rightly or wrongly – that we’ll be OK to travel on from Gare de Lyon.

We’ll just have to jump that hurdle when we get to it. On the plus side, we soon realise, this is a spectacular ride. A bright sun looms above; a great white orb glowing through the snow clouds. Kent is frozen, turned into a fairy-tale landscape with even the electricity pylons looking picturesque. There are occasional flurries as we look out of our packed carriage, listening to a group of Americans seated in front.

‘We don’t have high-speed trains back home,’ says one, talking to a British neighbour. He’s wearing polished cowboy boots with a suit, and has a deep Texan drawl. ‘I live in Dallas and it would be amazin’ to have ‘em there, man: go by train to San Antonio, truly amazin’. New York to Chicago, man, we could do with that, too. Man, I spend so much goddamn time at goddamn airports.’

‘Why aren’t there any high-speed trains?’ asks the Brit.

‘The car lobby,’ he replies. ‘In the 1950s and the 1960s, it was them that blocked it. The railroads never recovered, man. The infrastructure is there: it was just those damn lobbyists from those goddamn car companies.’

He returns to checking share prices on his laptop. We go through the tunnel and come out in an even whiter landscape; in places we can’t even see across the tracks through a thick soupy mist. Through the gap in the seat, E looks with fascination at the jewellery belonging to the American’s wife.

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