The Circumvesuviana

To the Sorrento coast for a week’s poking about the wonderful Greek and Roman remains around Vesuvius. But you don’t want to hear about that, you want to know how the Naples commuter railway system, (the “Circumvesuviana”), compares with ours. This is a hard one. For a start the system is almost entirely overground  and there are few of the branches and junctions that cause so much congestion on the Tube. We only used it on two days, from our base in the little town of Vico Equense to Pompeii on one day and to Sorrento the next. The service from Naples to Sorrento runs half-hourly, and the trains did come in bang on time. It’s a narrow gauge track and more reminiscent of a British Rail branch line, or perhaps the Docklands Light Railway, than the London Underground. The rolling stock is somewhat battered and graffiti-covered but there is plenty of room and a reasonable information service. Top marks for making announcements about incoming trains in English as well as Italian. And the fares? A dozen stops costs one euro.

So it’s cheap and cheerful, seems pretty efficient but perhaps does not deliver the frequency of service that commuters require. But a charming line for holiday-makers as it winds around the many towns that cluster on the lower slopes of Europe’s deadliest volcano. Everyone makes jokes on the theme of “So long it doesn’t blow before we head back to the airport, then that’s ok”. But it’s not that funny really. If ever it does blow up, then they say that there will be 3 days notice. The roads are jammed in Naples and the other town centres on an ordinary day. If two million people try to drive out of town at the same time, or even over this notional 3 day period of grace, then the resulting jams will be ghastly. From the look of it the railway would be of some help but only a little since there is a lot of single track and consequent reliance on trains meeting each other at the right point to pass. And once a train had got out into the safer countryside, what brave soul is going to drive it back into the potential path of a pyroclastic flow?

Finally, it seems that there was a heatwave in London last week. Shucks. It was a most acceptable 24c in Vico most of the week and the evenings were quite chilly as we sat on our hotel terrace and gazed out over the bay. It’s all in the timing, you know.

Farewell to the builders

You may, in an idle moment, have clicked on the Photos link and gazed with a wild surmise at the pictures of the rebuild of Ruislip Manor Station. The epoch that they depict is gradually becoming history. The colony of Portakabins, clustered about like the besieging tents of the Assyrians before Jerusalem, has dwindled away as the builders wind down and steal into the night. The yellow diggers and tractors delight us no more as they grind up and down the man-made slopes of mud. The roofs are on the platform shelters, the exposed cabling is tucked away and passengers arriving at the station entrance are now greeted by a large CCTV screen showing them what the back of their heads look like.

Work continues around the fringes of the site but it no longer makes any impact on those of us who use the station. I have given up expecting the electronic information signs to give us any useful information. All in all things are back to roughly where they were before all this started, in January 2005.

There is one general trend that is slowly becoming apparent. This is the increasing lack of contact between passengers and station staff. I no longer go to the ticket window to renew my season ticket. I go to the automated machine and put cash onto my Oyster card. Departing the station, I no longer flash my ticket to the collector but touch the Oyster card to the exit gate. It used to be unusual for there to be no station staff about. Now it is normal, especially at night when the ticket office is closed and the exit gates are often left open. In the place of a friendly face or two, we have a battery of cameras. All part of the sad progression that turns us from “passengers” to “customers”.

Drought and Dennis

As the water companies start applying for drought orders, our thoughts turn inevitably to that long hot summer of ’76. I always think of it as the lager summer because we drank so much of it (the bitter wasn’t up to much in those days, in the average London pub). The Labour government responded to the endless blistering weeks of heat and the rapidly drying reservoirs by appointing dear old Dennis Howell, previously Minister for Sport (that shows just how important he was) as Grand Vizier for the Drought, or some such. And blow me, no sooner was he installed and told us all about heaving half a brick into the loo cistern, than the clouds gathered, the temperature fell and it rained for forty days and nights. Any more and he would have become Commissar for Floods as well.

Alas, he died a few years ago and is no longer available in our hour of need. Perhaps a few prayers lobbed in his direction might help us now. At least it has begun to rain again ( a few drops are pattering e’en as I pen these few words); maybe we will not need him to intercede for us, or perhaps he has already done so and is leaning back on his cloud, looking down with that famous grin and the knowledge of a job well done.

Shock, horror

Headline in of the tabloid newspapers this morning (the Daily Bilge or similar) – “Macca to separate”. Gosh. I didn’t know that the gentleman in question is really an amoeba.

How do they get away with it?

We’ve got brand new information displays at my home station (Ruislip Manor). They are supposed to tell us what trains are due in. On Tuesday there were no Metropolitan trains for a period of at least half an hour. The information displays remained blank. The only announcement was by a driver in a Piccadilly train who informed passengers on the platform to come aboard rather than continue to wait. He made this announcement at Eastcote, the next station, naturally, rather than at Ruislip Manor.

Plus ca change, c’est la meme chose, as we say in Ruislip