Escape

Every journey has a beginning, and regrettably in Glasgow that usually involves an overpriced bus. Allowing for some traveller’s artistic license, I could happily remember a journey to the Isle of Skye beginning here, at the tranquil Helensburgh Upper railway station. Maybe twenty miles from Glasgow, Helensburgh has two stations, one with a regular service on the electric line into Glasgow and the other a modest single platform in a cutting on the northern fringe of the town. Having skirted along the shores of the Clyde for half an hour or so, the West Highland Line begins here. We have left behind the grey tower blocks, littered streets and urbanised horizons of the city, and suddenly find ourselves rattling through rolling rural landscapes.

I have taken this train many times before, although not since moving to Glasgow last year. This line is no longer a component of a much longer journey from England to the remote west coast of Scotland, but a practical escape hatch from the city to the countryside. A couple of times a day an unassuming train of railcars departs Queen Street station for Fort William and Mallaig, normally with a portion to Oban detaching en route. After winding up steep hills past suspicious looking military bases, the train approaches Loch Lomond and begins a sharper and more screeching series of curves. Above us, only mountain. Below us, only trees, glimpses of a road and water. At Ardlui we’re held up for a short while, waiting for a southbound train to leave the single track ahead.

Being so remote, the West Highland Line has no traditional railway signals to control access to its portions of single track. A team of doubtless charming British Rail boffins developed a system in the nineteen-eighties that could satisfactorily replace the traditional tokens. Until then (and to this day on other remote British railway lines) an actual physical token, normally a large coin or loop that could easily be scooped from a signalman by the driver of a passing train, must be held by a driver before he or she can lead a train onto a section of single track. With only one token, it’s a relatively failsafe system to ensure that only one train enters a section of track at any one time.

The solution of the dynamic and pre-portable computer nineteen-eighties is a radio-controlled system. The token is virtual, transmitted by radio to an ungainly metal box in the cab of the train. On clearing a section of single track (normally at a station with a passing loop) the driver releases the token for the previous section of track and then awaits reception of the new token.

Don’t ask me how it works, but it does. And it permits an archaic but astonishingly beautiful railway to continue to exist, with daily passenger service and popular summertime tourist trains winding through the mountains of the West Highlands, perfectly framing any escape from the city with a rolling landscape of beautiful scenery and wildlife.

Dirty (un)sexy Glasgow

Terribly urgent business involving a punt and a smoke machine dragged me (kicking and screaming, of course) away from Glasgow over the weekend. I returned on Monday afternoon after a tolerable train journey, largely spent considering the three fallacies in the phrase “Try our mouthwatering meal deals!” that adorned adverts for the train’s buffet. Down south the weather had been changeable but largely pleasant, and with a conservatory tacked onto the house I was staying in, breakfast felt more like petit déjuner in the south of France.

Scotland, however, remains a bit parky, and there was still on snow on the ground south of Glasgow. The chill in the air welcomed me back to Scotland, and the mountains of domestic waste that had been dumped on the pavements of Govanhill welcomed me back to Glasgow.

These scenes might not seem unusual to a born and bred Glaswegian. But they are to me. They’re nothing short of shameful, in fact. While I accept that my neighbourhood (Govanhill) might not be the most attractive or affluent parts of the city, in general Glasgow is a monstrously filthy city.

I mean, downright sickeningly dirty. I have lost count of the number of people I have seen (of all races, ages and appearance, before any Daily Mail readers get hold of this rant) who openly hack and spit onto the pavement. Littering seems to be a Scottish art as well: carefree hands offer elegant flourishes as empty bottles, cigarette packs, wrappers and even (I kid you not) entire newspapers are thrown from the windows of moving or stationary vehicles.

But what gets my relatively tolerant back up the most is the city’s casual tolerance of street dumping. It’s quite acceptable for residents to haul outsize waste to their own kerbside for free collection. Almost any bulk domestic refuse – including furniture and white goods – can be left on the pavement for collection once a week. Everything gets picked up by a team of city cleaners and thrown into a refuse truck that crushes it in preparation for landfill. A few weeks ago a largely undamaged three seater sofa was dumped on the pavement across the street from my apartment. It was unceremoniously lifted in a rubbish truck and crushed for burial outside the city.

As far as I’m aware, no other city in Britain tolerates or encourages residents to dump on their own pavements. And while it’s true that no self respecting Glasgow hipster does not own (for example) a perfect 1950s telephone table that they happened to find while out walking, most of the stuff that’s dumped is just waste, often with no regard for the conditions for collection (nothing over four feet in length, nothing dumped loose on the pavement).

And because the city willingly cleans this up, residents continue to haul junk out without consideration to the cost or implications of its disposal. While I can see the logic in defending a system that allows other citizens to save bits of furniture before they get collected, this act is technically illegal, since household waste left for kerbside collection is technically the property of the council once it hits the pavement.

But here’s the irony. It’s legal for residents to expect uplift of ‘bulky items of domestic waste’. But it’s illegal to ‘fly tip’ … i.e. dump domestic or commercial waste, normally from a vehicle, in a public place.

I’m confused. So it’s legal for someone to dump their own waste on the pavement outside their apartment, but illegal for someone else to come and dump it there?

Snapshot: Christmas Eve, Glasgow Central Station

Actually, I tell a lie. It was the evening of the 23rd when I took this photograph, the evening before I left Glasgow to travel home for Christmas. Holiday travel this winter has been mercifully painless; I hope everyone I saw rushing home made it as smoothly as I did.

The circular strike

The Cathcart Circle railway line that snakes through our little corner of Govanhill and Queen’s Park is our handy link to the centre of Glasgow. It takes just six minutes and £1.35 to get from our stop into Central Station, which is both quicker and cheaper than the cynically expensive bus. The lines (and most every other one in Scotland) however, are much quieter today, as the RMT calls the first of two twenty-four hour strikes this week (from 12h00 midday today and 12h00 midday on Thursday). As with all labour disputes, there are of course two sides (link and link – thanks Monkey for the URLs) to every story.

A bed in the capital (and elsewhere)

How does £36 sound to you for a bed in London? The capital is an expensive place to spend the night, but last week I found a comfortable single bed with clean linen, soft pillows, a good reading light and a sink with plentiful hot and cold water. There are some downsides to this cosy bed, though. Namely that the room this single bed is in is quite small, with only a narrow standing space beside the bed.

And that when you wake up in the morning, your bed will have moved by as much as 800 miles from London.

£36 is the cost of a standard berth reservation on board the ScotRail Caledonian Sleeper between London and Glasgow. For £51 you can have a first class reservation, which guarantees the same size of cabin but without having to share it. You’ll need a ticket for travel in addition to those upgrades, although all inclusive “bargain berths” are available online from £19 when booked in advance.

It can still come as a surprise to some British people to discover that our little country still supports full service sleeper trains. There are five routes still in operation: London to Penzance (the Night Riviera); London to Edinburgh and Glasgow (the ScotRail Lowland Sleeper) and London to Aberdeen, Inverness and Fort Wiliam (the ScotRail Highland Sleeper), all operating six nights a week. There are about sixty additional intermediate stations, although the services between London and Scotland’s two biggest cities are relatively uninterrupted. If you find yourself booked in the last compartment of the last carriage (as I did a southbound journey last week) you may feel a jolt as different train portions are shunted together at Carstairs or Edinburgh. But aside from that, the sleepers offer a smooth and extremely comfortable way to cover the miles. I find the gentle lateral rocking of the train particularly comforting, and bonded rails mean there is much less of the disturbing clickety-clack than you might think.

This photograph just about shows you everything you need to know. The sleeper carriages are specially constructed variants on the basic design of the Intercity 125 carriage, normally with twelve compartments. They’re smooth riding, solidly built and well heated and ventilated, although opening windows aren’t included in the cabin. The cabin is simple and compact, with two bunks (limited British railway clearances mean that we don’t have enough height for European-style couchettes or, for that matter, the double deck sleeper trains you’ll find in Germany and Switzerland) in standard class or a single lower bunk in first class. There’s a small sink under the lid by the window, and space for suitcases and bags under the lower bed or above the window. The panel between the door and the beds has switches for the main light and the reading lights, and a call bell for the attendant. Behind the door (on the left of this picture) is another door allowing two compartments to be conjoined for a family.

My train left Glasgow Central just after half past eleven on Thursday night and arrived in London almost an hour early at six the next morning, although if you would like to slumber a little longer, passengers aren’t disturbed until nearer seven when the attendant brings a hot drink and snack breakfast box. I snubbed the offer of the breakfast box, preferring instead a cab over to Smithfield Market for a greasy breakfast and mug of builder’s tea.

At the end of the day’s business in London, I adjourned with trusted friends and colleagues to a pub off Oxford Street. We discussed work and studies over pints of independently brewed Yorkshire lager and I watched the bright afternoon sunlight fall on the rooftops of Margaret Street. At about half past six though, one of our small circle had to leave. He was watching the clock for his journey home, which would consist of a tube over to Liverpool Street station, followed by a train to Stansted Airport. Then check-in, security, a long walk to the Stansted satellite terminal, boarding, taxi, take-off and then a short flight to Newcastle Airport. Then two buses to get home.

I, however, stayed for another pint. Then I took a bus over to Clerkenwell for another couple of pints and dinner. It wasn’t until nearer ten that I began my journey home. A bus to Euston and then… I slept my way home. I know how I want to travel between Scotland and London from now onwards.