About Trains

I’m beginning to think that trains don’t like me so much.

After arriving in London I spent a day or so getting used to the metro system before it hit me: I should be in Edinburgh.  So I booked a return ticket on the train (not cheap but not bad) and headed towards Scotland from London. 

Travelling from London to Edinburgh is rather straightforward.  There’s a train every half hour or so, and the trip itself is around four-six hours (not sure why they vary so much – probably something to do with avoiding ghosts or EU regulations).  I arrived at Kings Cross with plenty of time to spare before my train departed, only to find that my ticket didn’t come with an assigned seat, and that I’d have to find one on my own that wasn’t already reserved. 

Every seat was reserved.

Still, I didn’t let this deter me.  I walked up and down the carriages hoping to find an errant seat (noticing that other passengers were doing the same thing), but to no avail.  Suddenly I had images of me standing on the train for four hours watching as people relaxed and ate those little bags of peanuts and enjoyed the fact that, although they probably paid a fraction of the price as me, that they had the inside knowledge that you had to reserve a seat as a separate exercise to buying a ticket. 

So I did the only thing I could think of: I sat down in a reserved seat.

Every time somebody approached I was prepared for them to say, likely in a very loud and accusatory tone: “Oi, get out of my seat!!”, or something equally embarrassing.  I felt like a social outcast – the tourist who didn’t know better than just buying a train ticket which (according to the train conductor): “only guarantees you passage, not a seat”.  I don’t know about you, but if I’m paying over a hundred pounds for a train ticket, I expect to have somewhere to sit.  So I sat, and I waited.  I crossed my fingers that nobody would remove me from my seat.  It wasn’t until 30 minutes after the train left the station that I could relax and confirm that the person who had reserved the seat I was in was not going to show up.  I uncrossed my fingers, sat back, and enjoyed the ride to Scotland.