Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain

As withering a critique of Britain's mismanagement of the railway system as you could wish for, best summed up by a junior civil servant as "its completely fucked. The biggest cock up of all time". Although, as Engel himself notes, someone writing a book about British energy policy might have another view. But this is not the book of a nostalgist for the whimsy of steam trains and uneconomic branch lines. Anything but. Engel is as scathing of, if amused by, the ineffeciencies of the 19th century as he is angered of those of today. Engel is a train fan yes, but he has little time for meandering routes kept alive by bye election fears.

A history to railways is interspersed with a gossipy travelogue of a 2 week trip through the UK, armed show more with a Rover ticket giving him an unlimited ticket to ride. This is often funny, if slightly pooterish. And elegiac of certain branch lines, stations and landscapes you and I are never likely to see.

Well worth reading show less

Pleasant ramble through the current state of Briitain's railways, which are both not anything like as bad as you thought they were, and, at one and the same time, f*cked-up beyond belief. Engel (a noted cricket writer) has a nice line in descriptive prose and understated humour, intelligently avoiding the easy gags, and it's nice to read something by a journo who has actually Done The Research.

What a great book! Even more amazingly, it was an automatic LT RECOMMENDATION that popped up into my listing one day. Even the cover was tempting – nostalgia from my own boyhood, it showed what could have been our local hub-station from the old British Railways of my youth. I ordered it immediately, and – despite having a great pile of To be Reads – read it immediately too.

It tells the story of British Rail, from its invention by Stephenson, on that strange gauge that was set by the width of the Roman chariot ruts, still to be seen in places like Pompeii and Colchester (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2538/was-standard-railroad-gauge-48-determined-by-roman-chariot-ruts), to its apparent current destruction down the most show more despicable and expensive-per-mile service in the world in current times, where a train has to be more than ten minutes late to be recorded as such. (Hence the title).. Shades of Amtrak!

Whilst visiting my native country recently we used the railway – London Docklands and Southern - quite unaware that they were now part of a denationalized service (”privatized’ in Politico-speak) into some 25 or 30 capitalistic concerns, no longer a nation-wide service but owned and operated, after a fashion, by previous bus companies or Virgin Airlines!

Engel is a train aficionado, as my wife and I are and we still use Amtrak, with enjoyment and even anticipation … not always realized of course, regretfully. The book tells a story that is familiar – a national treasure of an integrated transportation system that is slowly degraded by political manipulation into an embarrassment and disgrace.

The author notes that even the most celebrated success of recent railway-lore in Great Britain – the ‘channel tunnel express service from London to Paris was reluctantly funded, developed and completed 13 years later than the French connection – and some 205 years after it was first proposed. And then, only launched on a need for a political ‘sound bite’ for Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of privatization in her meeting with French President Mitterrand. He notes it was just as well nobody told ”HER” – a noted railways hater - that it could have been a road tunnel instead!

As an example of just how bad service to its customers can get he cites a conversation on a Virgin train with a bar-attendant called Umerji. After browsing the meager offerings of the on-board “shop” offered instead of a restaurant car (no Pullman Service or Harvey’s Houses now) he was startled to be told ” Have a bacon butty you ******, or you’ll be here all ******g day.” He wanted to warn the employee to be careful. “Instead of just a harmless bloke like me” he might have been talking to someone writing a book about how bad rail service was these day who might”have used his real name” to illustrate the sheer awfulness of the modern British rail service.

But, no worries really, the ridership continues to increase in Britain as they – like us hapless Americans – experience the sheer arrogance, and inconvenience of air-travel, and the theater of the TSA, driving us back to the roads and railroads. It has become the “Age of the Train” after all! show less

Entertaining and illuminating - not at all a straight travellogue

shelved at: 11 : Rail transport

shelved at: 11 : Rail transport