“I am never sure of time or place upon a Railroad…Rattling along in this railway carriage in a state of luxurious confusion, I take it for granted I am coming from somewhere, and going somewhere else…”
– Charles Dickens
Morning in England. The rising sun slants across the grass verges of Heathrow Airport. Beyond the skirt of trees, heavy with August greenery, I can see the skyline of the city: not the spires and glass towers of inner London, just the rooftops and factories of its outer suburbs. But it is London nevertheless, and I am back in my favourite city in the world!
Emerging from the dim recesses of the airport, our train—a brand new Elizabeth Line Class 345 Aventra —whisks us into the morning light. The gleaming blue and silver carriage hums a low song of sophistication. The wheels click on the track joints beneath us.
The previous 36 hours have been a whirl: a transition across time and geography from the winter of the Southern Hemisphere to the verdant, fecund summer of the North. We have passed through the drenching humidity of Singapore and crossed the skies of India, Central Asia and Europe in the darkness. And now, with the light of a new day strobing in the trees beside the line, we glide towards Paddington and the beginning of a new adventure.
This will not be our first arrival in Paddington, fresh off the plane. My mind scrolls backwards across the thirty-four years that have elapsed since that bright May morning in 1989 when my girlfriend (now my wife of 30 years) Linda and I boarded our first English train.
We had landed a few hours earlier and been picked up at Heathrow by our Australian friends Bernie and Sue Farquhar. They had taken us to their flat in Slough — a desolate, industrial dormitory suburb freezing to death in the late winter shadow of the brooding Mars factory — to freshen up, then dropped us at the Slough railway station where we caught an early train into London.
The ride into the city on that cold, shimmering morning couldn’t have been more different to the Elizabeth Line train we would ride half a lifetime later. The shabby wooden carriage smelt of diesel fumes and stale cigarette smoke. The leather of the seats was cracked and abraded. Beneath the floorboards, a compressor shuddered and whirred as it filled the brake lines. The perspex windows were so scratched and vandalized that we could barely see through them.
Nevertheless, we were enthralled. We were in England, our dream destination. And the world was full of promised adventures that lay ahead. Over the next four years, we would travel in 13 African countries, explore the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan, shiver in drab and smoke-filled Chinese cities and lie on jewelled beaches washed by the warm oceans of Indonesia. We would also spend more than two years living in England, putting down roots and becoming British, if only for a little while.
As the train shuddered out of Slough station, a guard slid the unyielding door to our compartment open and asked to see our tickets. We handed them over and he took them with all the appearance of disgust and contempt.
“You are in the first-class accommodation, sir,” he intoned. “And you only have a second-class ticket.”
I looked around at the shabby interior, the opaque windows, the grimy leather, the tattered woodwork.
“This is FIRST class?” I said, incredulously.
Yes sir, it is,” he replied, “and you’ll have to move.” It was our first introduction to the arcane world of English regulations and the enmeshed class system that still held sway in Britain in the late eighties. However, we switched carriages and watched, enthralled, from our second-class seats (equally shabby and worn) as London rolled past outside.
The years since then flicker and blur, bringing me back to the present. As we glide through the outskirts of the city, the tapestry of London once again sweeps by in a series of incongruous vignettes. I am in a state of shocked wonder, unable to believe that we are here. I take out my phone and began writing notes about the well-remembered scenes I am seeing.
Linda tells me later that as I wrote each note, a commuter was reading them over my shoulder. I didn’t notice: I am captivated by the scenes outside.
A McDonald’s nestled within the timeworn beams of a Tudor house: a peculiar marriage of the ancient and the contemporary.
The platform signs, whispers of multiculturalism, speak in Punjabi and English, echoing the diverse chorus of the many tongues spoken in the city ahead.
A church spire, a lone sentinel, peering above a floating sea of oaks, its sanctity quietly challenged by a tower crane behind it.
Rooftops, a haphazard gallery of chimney pots and satellite dishes, narrate a tale of domestic life evolving with the times.
Jack-in-the-green vestiges of the natural world oversee abandoned platforms, silently overcoming a man-made world slipping away.
Amidst the greenery, the remnants of human disregard, clutters of fly-tipped rubbish strewn in unsightly scars on the landscape.
Overhead conduits, adorned with pigeon shit carry the railway’s electric pulse.
Rail lines intersect and diverge in a complex web of steel and cables, glittering in the nascent sun.
Goods wagons, daubed with raw expressions of graffiti, sit silently groaning beneath the weight of railway ballast.
It was London. It was a summer morning. And a month of adventures in England and Wales lay ahead of us.
The Elizabeth Line is the newest iteration of London’s transport network. Its sleek trains glide along a mixture of above-ground lines and high-tech tunnels deep beneath the city and above-ground lines. It is named after Queen Elizabeth II, who inaugurated the line on May 17th, 2022, during her Platinum Jubilee.
The high-frequency urban/suburban line interconnects various parts of London. In the city centre, it operates on dedicated infrastructure including deep tunnels and brand-new stations, such as the one at Battersea Power Station. Its suburban sections utilise existing lines extending along the Great Western Main Line from Paddington to Abbey Wood and from Whitechapel to Stratford on the Great Eastern Main Line.
English trains, with their rhythmic clatter and winding routes through the countryside, towns and cities, are like moving sonnets, linking the industrial heart of the nation with its pastoral soul. And then, the crescendo. Paddington Station, the masterpiece of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Its grandeur envelops us as the train slides gracefully into Platform 2: an ancient, cavernous temple to transportation. Its walls, steeped in the soot and whispers of bygone eras, drip with history. Its arched roof of cast iron and glass echoes with the ceaseless rhythm of arrivals and departures.
Our Elizabeth Line train, now at rest, seems to pause and take a breath. Our journey from Heathrow to Paddington has conveyed us from the viridian whispers of London’s periphery to the beating heart of its centre along a seamless conduit through time and space. And here in the Hall of the Railway King, our adventures begin.
TravelWriterLife 