My friend asked me, “What are you reading currently?”
I said, “The train timetable.”
“Ah. What do you think of it?”
“Well, I am not able to decide which category it falls in - fiction or mythology.”
“If you ask me, it is just false propaganda.”
Really, why do the trains behave like they have a different agenda altogether? It is with great reluctance that they carry us to our desired destinations. Every now and then I hear the disjointed computer announcements saying with an air of supreme indifference (Understandable. After all, even computers are entitled to some apathy), “The 8:23 service to Gordon is delayed by approximately 45 minutes” (Hooray! I’ll not be more than an hour late to work today!) or, “The 7:18 service to Mcarthur has been cancelled” (That means I will have to miss tonight’s dinner party. I will spend the rest of the day trying to find the bright side of this.)
A few Sundays back I was waiting at one of the smaller train stations for a train to town. It was too small to be blessed with regular arrival announcements or indicators. There was only an extremely complicated timetable with a system of colour coding and numbering, which, if you knew advanced calculus, told you which train came on what platform at what time. After about 15 minutes of figuring out the timetable, I concluded that my train was due at 10 minutes past the hour. Well alright, I was exaggerating. Maybe not 15 minutes. 13 at the outside.
A train had passed by already while I was calculating, but I tried to believe that it was not mine.
I waited. And waited. The 10 past was long past. A goods train rumbled by. An express train zipped past. Well, not zipped, exactly. Sydney trains go at a majestic pace. Bloody waste of precious time, but bloody majestic.
Every two minutes, the station master would play the message: “Please stand behind the yellow lines. Please mind the gap when boarding or alighting from a train.” Fine, but where is the train to board or alight from? Perhaps that express train was actually a regular train and the driver just forgot to stop. It has happened once, I swear.
I was in a western line train when I noticed that some passengers at the door got a bit flustered and then came the announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, the driver forgot to stop at Auburn station. We regret the mistake. But he WILL be stopping at Lidcombe station.” Thank God for small mercies. Everyone was too aghast to say anything.
Anyway, the train did come eventually. Perhaps the timetable is fiction loosely based on actual fact.
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