Dallas – Austin – San Antonio
Glen Wilson

“Must be nearly fifty years since I’ve been on a train”
“I aint never rode the train”
So goes the conversation between the driver of the hotel’s taxi shuttle and the Greyhound bus driver we’ve just picked up en route to downtown Dallas. Americans don’t catch the train anymore. Going on the reaction I have gotten in this taxi and beyond you would think I had declared I was travelling by stilts. My friend Charlotte grew up in this part of Texas yet was not even aware Dallas had a station; so unconvinced was she that when I told her I had bought tickets online she urged me to check I hadn’t been scammed. All this despite the fact that Dallas Union Station is located just a couple of hundred yards from the point of JFK’s assassination.

 
Dallas is one of the ten largest cities in the US yet the station building is quiet enough to allow me to have a lengthy discussion with the sole ticket office clerk, during which I convince her to avoid London and head to the north if ever she visits England. My Yorkshire ambassador status intact, and after an hour and a half delay, I board the train. Once inside it’s hard to understand why America shuns this form of transport; air conditioned and spacious two tier carriages giving a comfortable view of America as it slides rather slowly past the window.

 
Modern America may be located at the roadside, all convenience and neon, but from this seat I can see much more of this country. Through the backyards and works yards of Dallas and Fortworth to the more communal trackside towns such as Clifton, McGregor and the fantastically named Moody where every shop front sign on the main street parallel to the tracks opens up a new comedic avenue. Moody Furniture for all your stubborn sofa needs, Moody Store and the Moody Christian Church of God where people go to worship, why? BECAUSE HE SAID SO! DAMMIT!

 
Approaching Temple the conductor runs through the famous claims of nearby Waco; home of Dr Pepper and the 2005 women’s collegiate basketball champions. Having just come from Dallas and its unsettlingly keen embrace of JFK’s demise, it’s surprising that Waco’s most notable claim to global infamy is omitted. Temple is also where I get my answer to the question ‘why don’t Americans travel by train?’ We’re running an hour and twenty five minutes late. An announcement that would have created a mutiny on GNER is instead met with quiet nods of acceptence.

 
Geographically and physically the train is approaching Austin, but time-wise its getting further and further away. On the tannoy the conductor is clearly as frustrated as the passengers as he explains how the delay is due to Union Pacific giving priority to freight trains, and then helpfully gives out telephone numbers for both the State and National Senate so you can complain about the system direct. He then returns to his tourist spiel.

 
“…the train passes over the Colorado River; this is viewable from both sides of the carriage”
“Course it is,” exclaims the old guy in front of me, “otherwise it’d be the Colorado Lake”.
Arriving in Austin three hours late I make an executive decision to stay on the train to San Antonio rather than experience this two days straight. Overhearing my discussion with the conductor the couple opposite wish me good luck when they disembark; the guy exclaiming “Well… they sure took the train ride out of me” as he wanders down the carriage.

 
Finally in San Antonio, what was originally a six hour journey has become twelve. Its 2:15am. People who know their way round better than I do have claimed all the cabs so I set off walking in the vague direction of a neon Holiday Inn sign I saw from the train. They have no rooms but the hotel down the street does; just one… at $85. I take it. Its bigger than the entire upstairs of my parents’ house. I literally climb into bed, and sleep… until awoken by the horn of a passing train a few moments later… then sleep… until reawoken by a passing train… then sleep… until; well you get the idea.

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page.
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Portland – San Francisco
Glen Wilson

The train ride from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco was supposed to be eighteen hours long. A mammoth undertaking on schedule, and as I’d learnt in the USA, train schedules are effectively ‘minimum journey times’. Incredibly though, at Portland, the train arrived on time and already reasonably busy. The train guard allots me a seat next to Sam from Brooklyn who is heading to LA and introduces himself by saying there’s bound to be a decent stop where he can get off and smoke weed. Each to their own.

 
I pass an hour talking to Sam about various things, from where we’ve been to baseball and beyond. “…you were in Texas and you didn’t fire a gun?! You have to fire a gun in Texas; don’t be so close minded about it.” The train winds up into the Oregon mountains and darkness begins to creep in amongst the fir trees. Sam disappears off to the lounge car and I attempt to get some sleep. An attempt is all it is as thanks to a persistent humming noise which appears to be coming from beneath my seat, but eventually turns out to be the woman behind me. A combination of her and the snoring from the odd middle-aged man across the aisle clad entirely in Oregon University clothing ensures that in trying to nod off I’m fighting a losing battle.

 
By 3am I’ve given up on getting any sleep and instead gaze out the window at what I first think is a particularly bright full moon and then I realise the train isn’t moving, and I am actually transfixed by a trackside lamp. The only other night-time entertainment comes from a drunk who stumbled onto the train somewhere after dark fell trying to hide his condition with all the subtlety of a clown’s clothing and throughout the night constantly heads downstairs for equally unsubtle cigarettes.

 
Just after 6am I head to the lounge car for breakfast and over my rice krispies get chatting to a woman who used to live in San Francisco and she lets me in on some sights to see. A large old guy down the car, with the appearance of a cross between Colonel Sanders and Foghorn Leghorn, calls a hotline for up to date information about our journey… we’re five hours late. We’re heading through the mountains and lakes of southern Oregon and the old guy moves to the seat next to me to enjoy the view… only for the train to stop in a ravine and leave us staring at a rock face. “Well…” says the old guy “good ride for a Geologist.”

Six hours later and twenty two hours into the eighteen hour journey I’m downstairs in the lounge car when Amber Rose asks if she can sit with me. She’s heading to Martinez and then on by bus. We talk about differences in British and American culture and the journey. Amber says she wasn’t all that hungry but came to the lounge car to escape the guy sat behind her. It’s an old guy with a really gravelly voice who kept taking constantly about anything and nothing well into the night and beyond. She had turned round at one point to see who he was talking to and found that she was the only person anywhere near him.

 
After nearly twenty five hours the train finally reaches Emeryville from where it is a bus ride across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Here I meet Alexa and Sarah, two students from Nottingham who have been on a placement in New York for six months and are now travelling the country. I can’t help feel I did the wrong degree. As we take our seats on the bus an old guy sitting behind the girls begins talking away in a gravelly voice “I tell you I never went skiing, I don’t tolerate the snow, but then way back in 68 I think it was…” It could be an equally long bus journey.

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page.
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Doncaster – Worcester Foregate Street – Doncaster
Glen Wilson

• 8 at Doncaster, 9A at Birmingham New Street, 12A at Birmingham New Street, 2 at Worcester Foregate Street, 7A at Birmingham New Street, 4 at Doncaster
- train platforms stood on
• Jelly beans, dummy, ham part of a ham roll, Time Out bar, Frazzles, roll part of a ham roll, fingers, a bit of a Twix, Jaffa Cake, toy car, brother’s fingers
- things put in the mouth of the toddler sat opposite me on the train to Birmingham
• Belle Vue Doncaster, Millmoor Rotherham, Don Valley Stadium Sheffield, Pride Park Derby, St Andrews Birmingham, Aggborough Kidderminster
- current and past football league grounds seen from the train
• Having “no fivers”, taking their time getting off the train, “your wait”, “upstairs is closed now”, “flash flooding in the Chesterfield area”, “the late running of this service”, having “no more information than that”
- things people have apologised to me for
• Woman on the phone complaining to o2 that she “obviously needs” the latest iPhone, Nick Griffin, Shelter charity canvasser who tried to guilt trip me about not stopping to talk to him, private letting agent who wouldn’t answer his phone, Screaming baby between Birmingham and Derby, Arguing couple in Doncaster Bus Station, Andy Townsend
- people I have wanted to throw things at

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page.
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Birmingham New Street – Derby
Glen Wilson

I’m on the train north and I’m getting freaked out by the bilingual family sat across from me. Well, perhaps on reflection freaked out is the wrong term, a little too xenophobic perhaps, but it is a little surreal. Its the way in which the whole trio, father, mother and young daughter flick at will between the two languages; English and what appears to be a central European Slavic native tongue. Its like being in the room as someone else watching television flicks between Channel 4 and S4C.

This whole episode is making me feel, well, a bit stupid and a bit old if I’m honest. And to compound this matter further I’ve just worked out that the girl previously referred to by me as the ‘young daughter’ is actually of College leaving age as she is talking about A-Level grades and University courses. That was the old bit cemented, and she sealed the ‘stupidity’ deal by saying “and he only got an A and two B’s”. I only got three Cs and I only speak one language fluently. In this train carriage right now, I am a failure.

 
It wasn’t always this bad you know, I got an A in GCSE French and I kind of know the Welsh national anthem sometimes. And once when I was travelling round Europe I understood a platform alteration in Dutch. Although now I think back that brief triumph was taken from me as I encountered a bilingual beggar on the train in Rotterdam. In short it irritates me greatly that I only speak one language, and it irritates me even more that this one language is English, as it makes me seem somehow more ignorant. If my only language were Hungarian then I would instead be considered worldly, or, if I were being reported in the Daily Mail, ‘lazy’, and if you piss off the Daily Mail you’re probably onto a good thing.

Anyway, to try and round off whatever point I was trying to make the ‘young daughter’/fully grown adult woman did tell her family quite a good joke reportedly said to someone complaining of the immigrant work-force. “If they do take all the jobs because they come over here unskilled, with no money, no qualifications and can’t even speak the language… then you’re shit.” It sounds even better in a central European accent too.

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page.
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Birmingham New Street – Watford Junction
Glen Wilson

I come from Yorkshire, and up there the only time the words ‘first class’ come together in the local vernacular is when folk are talking of Geoffrey Boycott’s batting averages. Those carriages with the ‘1’ on the side aren’t for the likes of us and so my entire train travel history has been spent as ‘standard’. I once made it into the short lived ‘Standard Plus’ section of a TransPenine Express but only lasted a few minutes before the words “No sir, this a standard ticket, you’ve just drawn a plus sign on it,” abruptly ended my fun. Until now. This summer I popped my 1st class cherry. I have not Derren Brown-ed the Lottery, nor have I crossed the social divide. I was just lucky enough to book my ticket during a Virgin Trains pricing loophole which meant a first class ticket was cheaper than a normal one. I may be a working class man at heart, but as a Yorkshireman I know when to seize a bargain.

And so at Birmingham New Street as the PA system announced that ‘passengers with first class tickets should wait on platform 7a and other ticket holders should make their way to 7b’ I was not forced to haul my bag to my shoulder and traipse down the platform with the rest of the proletariat. No, I could stand my ground. Cheerio standard travellers, I’ve made it. I’m staying here. As the train pulled up I was hoping to be greeted by a carriage decked with gold framed pictures and an attentive butler in a red velour waistcoat, something like the ‘1st class toilet’ scene in the Father Ted ‘airplane’ episode. The truth was a bit more sedate.

There were notable differences. My seat had its own table, and its own plug socket, and even better I actually fitted in it without having to dislocate a knee to aid comfort. And then there was complimentary tea and biscuits too, so complimentary were they that one of my Hobnobs suggested my stubble gave me the air of a young Hugh Jackman. But as with most aspects of life, it seems the thrill was very much in the chase, because my first class experience held a touch of disappointment. For a start I had the carriage to myself, so I was unable to observe how the other half lived at close quarters, or partake in some light political banter or discussions about the finer points of the British judicial system with my travelling companions. Instead I was dealt a type of travelling karma as a combination of my tilting Pendolino train and complimentary cuppa combined to leave me staggering off the train at Watford Junction feeling a little bit queezy. Still, you only live once.

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page.
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Sheffield – Birmingham New Street
Glen Wilson

I have had to travel amidst the commuters a couple of times of late. Many things on rush hour trains irritate me and amuse me, but one in particular is the conversations. The best ones are always held with people who are not even in the carriage, on Monday my coach became the venue for some kind of unofficial UK Business Talk Bollocks Championship, as three people seemingly tried to out business each other. Here’s the best of the action…

So here we have contestant number one, early thirties, female, taking the early initiative by standing from her chair just to make this call. Lets see how she fairs. Here we go;
“Jonathan, hi. Just to let you know I’ve left Doncaster on time so shall be able to meet as we arranged… OK… bye”

Oh its a great start, a completely pointless phone call. Nothing has happened, nothing as changed, but you still feel the need to call Jonathan to tell him. What’s next? Hi Jonathan just calling to let you know that this train is five carriages long so I should be able to alight onto the platform as previously expected, ok.

Up next its contestant two, an older gentleman, pretty well dressed, he too has got a head start on the competition by reading a copy of the Financial Times a item as hard to come by in South Yorkshire as healthy lung… he’s dialled the number; “Hi Sarah, just checking in, what am I doing tomorrow?”

Simple but effective, he’s taken the lead with that call. You don’t know what you’re doing tomorrow, how on earth did you manage to dress yourself and catch this train without inexplicably finding yourself climbing a country stile dressed in a ten-year old Austin Powers fancy dress outfit?

Last into the arena is contestant three, a man in his early 40s with unecessarily trendy designer glasses and a collection of matching luggage. He’s already begun, but we can catch up with him now; “Yes, I’m on my way to the Conference now, can you wire me those documents and I’ll give them the once over en route”

Step back. We have a winner. Wire me?! wire me?! What is this 1940s mid-town Chicago? Jeez, what a scoop. Send out a wire. Wait til the boys in Atlantic City geta hold of this. I’ve made it ma. Gee, this is gonna be big I tell you, big.
Done. See you all in the quiet coach yeah?

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page.
To contribute to Union Versity check out the ABOUT US page to find out more.

Doncaster – Birmingham New Street
Glen Wilson

On train announcement:
“…and we apologise for the busy nature of today’s service, this is in part due to today’s Tube Strike.”

How big is Zone 6? I ask as this announcement came on my morning train to Birmingham… from Doncaster. I always assumed that Zone 6 ended at the edge of the maps, but this announcement suggests I was very much mistaken. Zone 6 it seems is in fact endless extending from the Underground network to encompass the whole of the UK. All us non-London folk are actually mere capitol city suburbanites… I could have saved a fortune today with an Oyster card.

Two long-held personal irritations have been been re-awoken upon hearing this announcement. The first is the heightened national coverage of issues which affect or relate to only those in London. OK, the Underground are striking, but you’ve still got legs and buses right? Boris Johnson fell over in a river. And? Why should I care? The buffoon doesn’t run my town. A strike on Northern Rail would affect as many folk in more cities, but would get nowhere near as more coverage.

The second is the more dangerous and more pathetic subsidiary of ‘blame culture’, something I’ve termed ‘tenuous-onus’; excusing one event by connecting it by the flimsiest of threads to a barely related more significant event. The train is pretty full compared to yesterday, Undergound trains are emptier than normal today, yeah, that’ll be why. ‘Can’t come out tonight I’m broke, credit crunch innit.’ Not every financial disappointment is connected with recession, some people are just shit with money.

And besides, if I was in actual fact on the Undergound today it will at least explain why the guards on these trains often have an industrial torch strapped to their waist band.

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page.
To contribute to Union Versity check out the ABOUT US page to find out more.

Worcester Shrub Hill – Reading
Glen Wilson 

In all my extensive years as a slave to the rails I can safely say I have never been on a more Middle Class train than this. I’m travelling from Worcester to Reading on the Cotswold and Malverns Line or as it may as well be renamed, The Pimms and Picnic Line. 
On most of the trains I travel on pulling out a copy of The Guardian just increases your chances of being given a wedgey or having an empty Stella can bounce off your head as you roll through Rotherham Central. On this train I instead look like someone who has made a desperate attempt to join in and be accepted, like a child on the outskirts of Baghdad waving a hastily fashion Stars and Stripes at a passing US convoy. From my seat I can see four other people reading a copy, and from my seat I can only really see four other people.

 
As the train heads on towards Oxford it’s passengers become increasingly middle class with each station.  As the doors open at each station you here a very educated “Goodbye, and thanks for everything” before the same inevitable couple announce their presence with a loud discussion down the aisle; a large ruddy-faced man with an inexplicably attractive wife or girlfriend. The ultimate Middle Class box-ticker alighted at Moreton-in Marsh, his only luggage a tuxedo in a protective hanger and a hemp wine carrier with several bottles of red wine. When I booked this train ticket I had no idea I would be spending my Saturday morning trapped in a Richard Curtis film.

 
Although its matchday there is not a single replica football shirt to be seen, instead its rugger jerseys all the way and most of them the non-team-specific unnecessarily expensive variety. At Charlbury a couple with a baby get on and take the seat behind me and not only does the wife decide to read a story for their child, but her husband then interjects to offer very well spoken voices for the characters in the story. Quite frankly I was one more bout of “All aboard for Pentwhistle”  “cried the driver and away they went” away from being placed on an NSPCC register. Even the train announcements have an air of stiff upper lip, tally-ho, what what, about them; “We apologise for the delay, this was due to a reported problem with the train, but we are pushing on now”. If I ever travel on this line again I will be requesting to travel in steerage. I was delighted to be able to get off at Reading, it had all been frankly too Chino-heavy an experience for my Northern sensibilities.

For more of Platform One and Glen Wilson, see the WORDS page. 

To contribute to Union Versity check out the ABOUT US page to find out more.

Sheffield – Birmingham New Street
Glen Wilson 

 
In case you were in any doubt British people love moaning. Seriously they do. Right now as I write these very notes I am being moaned at for being “in the wrong changing room” and being told to “put it away”. Some people! Anyway, yeah, people love a good moan, but we know this. However, just knowing is never really enough in our sceptical generation, people need proof, Wikipedia claims need citations, Sky News need confirmation. Actually that last example is a bad one, but you get what I am saying here.

 
So, if people ever doubt that British people love a good moan you need only take them to one place, the place in which I am currently sitting; the Quiet Coach. By its very nature, the quiet coach should be a tranquil place where people go to enjoy the serene nature of observing the world as it blurs past the window. It should be like riding on a lilo. But it isn’t, and the reason it isn’t is because people do not go there for the quiet, they go there to be incensed by anything that is not quiet. True, there are some folk in there who are sufficiently at peace with themselves, but for each one of these there are at least two sour faced, high nosed, would be 1960s private school librarians waiting to put all their energies and face muscles into an expression so scornful it could make Margret Thatcher apologetic.

 
These people leer round the carriage looking for anything that may make the slightest sound and then fixate on it until it eventually does make the inevitable sound that a paper bag will, allowing them to progress through their pre-rehearsed repertoire of sighing, tutting, moaning, looking round the carriage for supportive looks of derision and scorn, before their whole subverted rage is allowed to pour forward in one great surge of “Er, excuse me, do you mind?”. I think for the benefit of all of us the Quiet Carriage should be renamed the ‘Hoity Carriage’ and have done with it, that way no-one is in any doubt.

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Doncaster – Derby
Glen Wilson

I don’t do commuting. I am not a commuter. Ich bien not ein commuter. In fact I have done everything I can over my employment years to actively avoid having to participate in any kind of commuting ritual. Arduous, unsociable, tedious, soulless and relentlessly repetitively mind numbing; those are just some of the descriptions that can be given to the jobs I have worked in order to avoid becoming a commuter.

Despite my career-hampering avoidance of concentrated early morning travel I am on occasion forced to venture out into what is termed, with that worrying lack of irony, ‘rush hour’. So, as I boarded the 7:52 train today I was reminded of the absurdity of the commute, and most concerning the acceptance of these conditions by those undertaking it. Perhaps it is no co-incidence that commute and commune are just a letter apart. Stony faced, unemotional and silent acquiescence of the surrounding environment, it could be a monastery, albeit one with free wi-fi and over-priced coffee.

Crammed in the concertinaed vestibule, one foot in Coach C, the other in Coach D effectively surfing along the South Yorkshire Transport Network to my destination. And yet I am the only person who appears flustered. The dozen people crammed either side of me in this mobile airing cupboard just resolutely carry on, safe so long as they have enough room to read a copy of the Metro, and that they can breathe… always established in that order.

Beyond the person spending their journey being buffeted on alternate ears by the automatic sliding doors there’s a woman riding to work wedged on the luggage rack. Despite the fact that she’s paid a peak time fare to ride in a position more precarious than the suitcases and bags beneath her she has a folder wedged open with an elbow and is leafing through papers. She pauses only to apologise to a suit who wants to put his briefcase up there. Why? Why is she saying sorry? Her answer should of course be “Fuck you! You unchivalrous bastard. I’m sitting on a freaking luggage rack here! I can suggest an alternate place for your briefcase and I’ll be happy to help you lodge it there!”

Two stops down the line and I’ve managed to adapt to my ruthless surroundings and beat a middle-aged man to a seat. It wasn’t easy, but by charging into the carriage as if I was making an early morning drugs raid and then pushing the automatic door closed and nudging stray luggage behind me into his path like an escaping felon in a warehouse based chase scene tossing boxes and barrels in the way of pursuing officers, I have made the leap from commuter scorned to commuter envied. That’s right, I have a tray table now. I can multitask without having to wedge my coffee cup against the train wall with my ear.

However, on the table across the aisle I am being heroically outdone. At that table one woman is typing up emails on her laptop with one hand, toying with a Blackberry with the other, and all the time whilst talking into a Bluetooth headset. And she’s not even at work yet! Not even in the office yet and she’s surrounded herself with more keyboards and electronica than a Rick Wakeman gig. Presumable when she gets to the office she’ll continue these activities whilst holding a video conference and orchestrating a power point display as she goes about her day as the Director of Multiple Operations at the ACME Plate Spinning and Simultaneous Unicycling Corporation.

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