| |
 |
Eleven Minutes Late, Matthew Engel (2009)
Macmillan 9780330512374 paperback 335pp £8.99
An amusing and perceptive journalistic survey of Britain's railway
network and its history
 
|
How to explain the affinity that exists between a great many cyclists,
and the railways? In lots of respect they could not be more different
as means of transport. One is collective, the other individual. One absolves
travellers of responsibility, the other invests them with responsibility.
One is high-tech, the other low. Both are Victorian inventions, but they
bookend a very long reign.
Bicycles and trains do complement each other as means of transport,
of course. And, in the days when nearly all trains would carry bicycles
for free, it seemed as though there was official sanction for this natural
synergy.
But the characteristic that makes cyclists feel most at home on the
trains, I suspect, is an odd sense of standing together against the majority
culture - represented, in this case, by the private car. Most of us ride
bikes because it is fun - but in the back of our minds is a notion that
our logistical preferences are somehow more rational. The self-righteousness
that can occasionally be heard from both bicyclists and railway enthusiasts
comes from believing that we have considered all transport choices from
first principles and drawn a different, smarter, conclusion to the herd.
Matthew Engel's enjoyable exploration of the history of Britain's railways
and their current state is sufficient to cause even the most committed
railwayphile question whether there is any context in which the term 'smarter'
can be applied to our rail network. His main argument is that at no time
since George Stephenson unveiled his steam-powered miracle has anyone
in charge ever really decided what was the main purpose of Britain's railway
system?
As a result, Engel argues, the rail network spread its tentacles about
the country with no clear sense of what it would carry, nor why. Since
then the network has been hacked back and then ossified with no better
idea of its mission. Although clearly the author loves train travel, he
finds very little to actually cheer about in this book. At heart, he seems
to think that Britain bumps along, never really getting its act together
because of something intrinsic to our national character.
Doing this, he misses out plenty of heroics - the High Speed Train of
the 1970s (the train that saved British Rail, as some have called it)
merits hardly a mention, for example. Nonetheless, by the end of the book
he had persuaded me that Britain's failure to ever draw up and execute
a national rail plan is actually evidence of our essential humanity. If
nothing else it distinguishes us from the obviously vile Germans, who
devised their railways with military ends in mind.
Engel hangs his tale hangs around an account of his circumnavigation
of the rail network, which provides an amusing, if generally depressing
leavening to this history. He didn't take a bicycle with him - which is
probably just as well. The difficulties of getting a bike onto most trains
these days are such, that even a writer in search of vexatious railway
experiences might have given up the ghost before he had enough material
for a book.
Tim Dawson Feb 10
|
Bookmark this on Delicious
|
