It’s 10 o’clock on a Friday evening in early December. My crowded northbound train departed King’s Cross two hours late and has lost two more between Newark and Retford. Overhead line trouble, we’re told; engineers on the line. I’ve read this week’s Spectator from cover to cover. I’ve exchanged emails with friends in Los Angeles, whom I picture in sunshine with pre-lunch glasses of crisp white wine. And in boredom I’ve re-read all my own Christmas columns for the past decade in search of inspiration for this one.
Some years, I see, I did short stories from the boardroom; sometimes tongue-in-cheek awards for City headline-makers or real accolades for best restaurants and books; or tributes to the recent dead. And this year? A full-length rant about the state of the UK rail network – its fractured franchise system, hellbent unions and total absence of leadership or internal co-operation – would hardly be festive. Despite all, I still like trains; so, I gather, do many of you.
And, as this one finally moves off again, a ghostly voice comes through the frozen fog outside. It’s I.K. Gricer, my predecessor Christopher Fildes’s long-retired railway correspondent. Write about great train journeys, he whispers, and what they taught you about the world. So here goes.
Partying in Mongolia
A more convivial late-night halt happened to me at Erenhot, the border-point of China and Outer Mongolia, on a train from Beijing that would reach Moscow five days later. The extended stop was for the wheel bogies to be changed to the wider gauge of Mongolian and Russian tracks – a precaution against invasion which let’s hope never becomes redundant, because no one wants Russia and China to be military friends.
In the lively station bar, I found myself going drink-for-drink with Earl Jellicoe, the former Tory minister who was en route to Ulan Bator as a salesman for British power-station turbines.
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