The day I stopped the trains

by Rick Johansen

Something happened yesterday that left me feeling slightly shocked, bewildered, upset and, conversely, happy and relieved that modern day Britain, which appeared to be on life support following 14 miserable years of Conservative government, is not quite as bad a place as I was imagining. Allow me to explain.

When I want to get away for a short while, to regroup mentally perhaps, I often drive to a small railway station just outside Bristol and watch the trains go by. I’ve always loved trains, ever since my dad bought me a train set that I haven’t looked at in maybe half a century but don’t have the heart to throw away or sell. As a child, my grandfather would occasionally take me to nearby Keynsham Park where I would watch expresses thunder by and later I would go alone to St Annes Station (RIP) in Brislington where I would do so from a far closer vantage point.

I cannot explain my love for watching trains. It’s not that I collect numbers. Just watching and listening to trains is enough for me. The peace in between passing trains is something I enjoy too. Yesterday, things went slightly differently.

Pilning Station is little used. Only two trains stop there every week, both on a Saturday, so I am unlikely to be disturbed by passengers. Yesterday, I parked my car and walked up the incline to the sole platform and waited for the action.

A few Hitachi expresses powered out of the Severn Tunnel and climbed up the bank towards Bristol, untroubled by the steep gradient, followed by a couple of rattlers on the local services. In between trains, I walked up and down the platform in order to add steps to my fitbit as part of my bid to become fitter and healthier. To the passing eye, it must have looked strange, a man all on his own walking up and down the long platform, all the while listening to something via his ear pods (Stuart Maconie’s BBC 6 Music Freak Zone as it happened), but I didn’t care.

Strangely, it seemed, no trains had come down the hill from Bristol Parkway until I caught the distant headlights of one from the Bristol direction. I waited for the train to pass by. And waited and waited. This was strange. The signals to Wales were all set to green. Did the train develop a technical fault? Then, from the west, another express came from the tunnel, but then it stopped. What was going on?

Finally, the rattler appeared and crawled along the platform, stopping on the opposite side of the platform to me. The driver wound down his window, I removed my earpods and he said that there had been reports of someone getting too near the platform edge and was I all right. I was shocked. Suddenly, I realised what was going on. Someone, whether a driver on a passing train or as a result, perhaps, of CCTV footage, had reported me, quite possibly, as a person who may have been about to commit suicide.

“I am SO sorry,” I said, hot with embarrassment. “I just come here to watch the trains go by.”

“So, you’re a trainspotter?”

“Er … sort of. I’m so sorry.”

I edged slowly along the platform, hoping for a hole in the ground to open up so I could get into it, looking straight ahead, wishing I was somewhere, anywhere, else. The rattler went on his way and I could hear the express on the move behind me. I waited out of sight from railway line until both trains were gone and walked briskly to my car in order to drive home. What had happened?

Well, actually, something nice. Someone, probably a train driver, had been concerned about someone’s well-being and locally the railway network ground to a halt in order to enable a train driver to see that all was well. I felt a complete idiot, but if I had been suicidal, the system and the people who operate it may have saved a life by way of a simple act. I have still not gotten over what happened and I shall be writing to the relevant authorities to explain and apologise for my actions and for any distress it may have caused any members of the railway staff. But it is important to say that I was never in danger and never intended to be in danger.

When there are no trains in sight, I did walk up and down the platform, sometimes near the edge of the platform. But I never go further than the stop signs and when a train is approaching I always go to a safe place, as far from the railway line as I can. This was not always the case when I was young and irresponsible, but for all of my adult life I have been aware that a collision with a moving train has only one outcome for a human being. I love to watch trains but I have no desire to be squashed by one. But some people do and that’s the real point.

I have been going to Pilning Station for around 30 years. It’s almost a special place where I know I will be on my own, undisturbed for as long as I want to be. Sometimes I take a little notebook to jot down ideas for writing, other times I go there knowing that something unusual is about to pass by, like a heritage diesel locomotive or even a steam engine. But after yesterday, should I go somewhere else? Do I really want to go through that again and more importantly put railway staff through that again? As things are, I feel more than a little guilt, even though there was no unhappy ending.

Is there someone else I can go in order to watch the trains going by? Pilning is special to me because the trains are moving at great speed and there is something I find awe-inspiring about a passing express so maybe there is somewhere else I can go without bringing the network to a complete standstill. Either way, Pilning is out for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure I can go through that again and I rather think the railway staff would prefer I didn’t, too.

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