Postcard from Edinburgh – the Caledonian Express
The Caledonian Express is that rarest of railway birds; the sleeper. And an intentional one at that, having bunks and berths, stewards and a lounge car, instead of just knackered commuters dozing.
Sleeper trains essentially take the concept of the romance of rail and raise it to the power of crime and sex. Think sleeper train and you think Orient Express; where essentially posh people commit murder by perforating a chap while he sleeps. Knife crime is, as we know, a major issue in our inner cities and among the young, who would have thought it would also be such a problem among rich international travellers. And that’s just on a train. God alone knows what the murder rate is like on a cruise (for answer see ‘Death on the Nile’). And of course sex – the infamous ‘60mph club’, as made famous in ‘Don’t look now’ and ‘Belly of an archetect.
The reality is somewhat different. Trying to sleep on the Caledonian Express is not unlike trying to sleep in a tumble drier. Trains clank, and sway, and rumble and go over-the-points, over-the-points, over-the-points. They speed up and slow down and they are passed by other trains in the dead of night with a sort of swooshing roaring noise that has you reaching for your own genitals because hey, you’ve got to hang onto something in the event of a crash and that’s a good a thing as any.
But who cares about any of that, because charm triumphs over all. For any little boy who dreamed of being an astronaut, the Caledonian Express is as close as you are going to get to a space ship, or a submarine. The little cabin is perfect in every way, you even get a luxury toiletries kit. (Luxury being a relative term here. You may regard toothpaste and shaving as essential rather than luxury. Maybe it’s just there to impress the French). They should use these to offset complaints about prison overcrowding, give people a tiny cell but with a luxury toiletries kit and they’ll think they’re on holiday rather than starting a ten stretch for G.B.H.
I’ve always loved little toiletry kits. They are second only to those dining kits you get on aeroplanes, plastic cutlery and individual servings of condiments. I used to think that these were the height of sophistication because they came from airline meals. Of course the really sophisticated airline meals came with silver knives and forks and home-wrecker trolly dollies. Now, of course, you’re lucky to get a spork and if the security people had their way we’d be trying to eat soup with our fingers.
And who cares how small the cabin is when the countryside is rolling past in so stately a manner. Or, at least, I presume it to be. Even with the blind up the thing about a sleeper train is that it travels at night. I had a romantic notion that I would travel with the blind up and, looking out of the window, see the English countryside slip past, illuminated by moonlight with the occasional soft pinprick of light showing a distant farmhouse or crofter’s hut. Not quite. What trains do is travel, very quickly, through stations which at night are lit by sodium orange lights, the exact colour of sweets that they don’t make any more because of concerns about sugar and e numbers. This means that you have a fluorescent flashing light illuminating your cabin every few minutes and while that’s great if you’re off your tits on ketimin at some rave in Dorset, it’s no aid to restful sleep. Of course, having the blind up also opens you up to the very real risk – and this happened – of waking up the next morning to find yourself parked up in a station with a bloke in a high-vis jacket outside trying to pretend he’s not just seen you naked.
Where reality met fantasy was the lounge car. This was an eccentric mix of foreigners who did look like they had murder in mind if you pinched the last seat.
So while sleep may have eluded me as surely as it eluded MacBeth, the compactness of the cabin did impress. It was small the same way in which a cottage is small. It’s small because it’s just so, right and proper. It’s a cabin on a train and if one were to extend it, then interesting things would happen the first time the conservatory attachment went through a tunnel. The compact cabin means that everything is in reach while you’re lying in bed – genius! More, you get your breakfast and a paper delivered to you by your steward.
The compactness extends to the narrow-gauge corridor running the length of the sleeper carriages. To maximise cabin space the corridor is the width of a telephone box. Ironic that a train that serves a country with a love of fried food should have ‘you must be this thin to ride this train’ attitude. It’s OK for anorexics, corset enthusiasts and those that don’t have a problem wioth salad but what about Americans, Germans and fried-food fans? My bag was just about slim enough to squeeze down the corridor but getting it and me in to the cabin at the same time was something of a logistical feat. All those years of playing tetris finally paid off.
And you end up pitching up in Edinburgh in the early morning, a few minutes after the last reveller has gone to bed and the pavements are still wet with dew and the mixture and the weak solution of bleach they use to remove the signs of over indulgence. Make the most of it because this is the only time you will see the pavements empty of crowds and people trying to give you leaflets about their show.
Sleeper trains essentially take the concept of the romance of rail and raise it to the power of crime and sex. Think sleeper train and you think Orient Express; where essentially posh people commit murder by perforating a chap while he sleeps. Knife crime is, as we know, a major issue in our inner cities and among the young, who would have thought it would also be such a problem among rich international travellers. And that’s just on a train. God alone knows what the murder rate is like on a cruise (for answer see ‘Death on the Nile’). And of course sex – the infamous ‘60mph club’, as made famous in ‘Don’t look now’ and ‘Belly of an archetect.
The reality is somewhat different. Trying to sleep on the Caledonian Express is not unlike trying to sleep in a tumble drier. Trains clank, and sway, and rumble and go over-the-points, over-the-points, over-the-points. They speed up and slow down and they are passed by other trains in the dead of night with a sort of swooshing roaring noise that has you reaching for your own genitals because hey, you’ve got to hang onto something in the event of a crash and that’s a good a thing as any.
But who cares about any of that, because charm triumphs over all. For any little boy who dreamed of being an astronaut, the Caledonian Express is as close as you are going to get to a space ship, or a submarine. The little cabin is perfect in every way, you even get a luxury toiletries kit. (Luxury being a relative term here. You may regard toothpaste and shaving as essential rather than luxury. Maybe it’s just there to impress the French). They should use these to offset complaints about prison overcrowding, give people a tiny cell but with a luxury toiletries kit and they’ll think they’re on holiday rather than starting a ten stretch for G.B.H.
I’ve always loved little toiletry kits. They are second only to those dining kits you get on aeroplanes, plastic cutlery and individual servings of condiments. I used to think that these were the height of sophistication because they came from airline meals. Of course the really sophisticated airline meals came with silver knives and forks and home-wrecker trolly dollies. Now, of course, you’re lucky to get a spork and if the security people had their way we’d be trying to eat soup with our fingers.
And who cares how small the cabin is when the countryside is rolling past in so stately a manner. Or, at least, I presume it to be. Even with the blind up the thing about a sleeper train is that it travels at night. I had a romantic notion that I would travel with the blind up and, looking out of the window, see the English countryside slip past, illuminated by moonlight with the occasional soft pinprick of light showing a distant farmhouse or crofter’s hut. Not quite. What trains do is travel, very quickly, through stations which at night are lit by sodium orange lights, the exact colour of sweets that they don’t make any more because of concerns about sugar and e numbers. This means that you have a fluorescent flashing light illuminating your cabin every few minutes and while that’s great if you’re off your tits on ketimin at some rave in Dorset, it’s no aid to restful sleep. Of course, having the blind up also opens you up to the very real risk – and this happened – of waking up the next morning to find yourself parked up in a station with a bloke in a high-vis jacket outside trying to pretend he’s not just seen you naked.
Where reality met fantasy was the lounge car. This was an eccentric mix of foreigners who did look like they had murder in mind if you pinched the last seat.
So while sleep may have eluded me as surely as it eluded MacBeth, the compactness of the cabin did impress. It was small the same way in which a cottage is small. It’s small because it’s just so, right and proper. It’s a cabin on a train and if one were to extend it, then interesting things would happen the first time the conservatory attachment went through a tunnel. The compact cabin means that everything is in reach while you’re lying in bed – genius! More, you get your breakfast and a paper delivered to you by your steward.
The compactness extends to the narrow-gauge corridor running the length of the sleeper carriages. To maximise cabin space the corridor is the width of a telephone box. Ironic that a train that serves a country with a love of fried food should have ‘you must be this thin to ride this train’ attitude. It’s OK for anorexics, corset enthusiasts and those that don’t have a problem wioth salad but what about Americans, Germans and fried-food fans? My bag was just about slim enough to squeeze down the corridor but getting it and me in to the cabin at the same time was something of a logistical feat. All those years of playing tetris finally paid off.
And you end up pitching up in Edinburgh in the early morning, a few minutes after the last reveller has gone to bed and the pavements are still wet with dew and the mixture and the weak solution of bleach they use to remove the signs of over indulgence. Make the most of it because this is the only time you will see the pavements empty of crowds and people trying to give you leaflets about their show.
Labels: Caledonian Express, Edinburgh, Festival, Fringe, Scotland, trains, Travelling
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