There’s no greater feeling than when you reach the train station, late in the evening, ready to embark on the trip home, only to discover that the train’s not running the whole way, and you’re going to have to get off and change onto a bus.
Great.
You’re already tired and just want to get home to bed (or at least check your email when you get in), and now the trip’s going to take twice as long.
An average evening may go like this. You disembark mid-trip to change onto the bus service. When you exit the station, there are a couple of coaches waiting, but you’re directed to the bus-stop fifty yards away. These aren’t your buses it seems, despite the fact that there won’t be another train coming through for half an hour.
It’s cold, and you’re kicking your heels with a bunch of other people who’d missed the sign that was carefully posted on the back of a door somewhere in the station.
A fellow passenger is nearby, harranguing a replacement bus service employee who can do nothing about the engineering work that is scheduled to take place overnight.
Finally, they relent, and decide that one of the comfortable and warm looking coaches can come over and let everyone get on to take them onwards.
As we alight, a fellow passenger, while moaning about the “two grand” he pays a year for his season ticket, tells the coach driver that he’s a “fucking muppet”. For some unknown reason the coach driver takes exception to this and gets off, announcing that he won’t be going anywhere with that passenger on board.
The passenger doesn’t get off the coach.
I notice an open Billy Elliot DVD case on the seat in front and wistfully hope that we might be getting in coach entertainment on the way home, even if it is Billy Elliot.
Another bus turns up. This should have been our bus, and another employee comes on the coach to tell us to disembark.
Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about any Mexican stand-offs between our work-to-rule coach driver and a pissed-off passenger.
It turns out that the coach with the Billy Elliot DVD is actually a Rail Replacement Replacement coach. It’s only function is to come and rescue us if the Rail Replacement bus should breakdown. But now the bus has reached us, the driver can sit back contentedly. He no longer needs to drive to Hertford, unless our bus breaks down. A quick glance at said bus leads me to suspect that this isn’t as uncommon an occurrence as one might hope.
We get on the other bus, and look at each other praying that the passenger doesn’t call this driver a “muppet” too. He’s taking a while to reach this bus, and there is a movement on the bus to get the driver going now before he can cause anymore trouble.
But eventually we’re all on and the bus sets off.
This time, it is a bus. If you’ve ever wondered what happens to buses when they can no longer be used to cary fare-paying passengers on regularly scheduled services, you should know that they’re used for Rail Replacement Services. The tell-tale clues are the noxious diesel fumes that seem to pass through some kind of exhaust pipe that’s pointed inside the bus rather than out on the road.
The driver takes off apace, following a meandering route that takes in every stop along the way irrespective of whether anyone actually wants to get off.
I’m relieved that I don’t need to get out and help the bus complete a seven-point turn around a corner on a particularly narrow street as I once had to.
Eventually, bus-sick and nauseous, we reach my stop, and I jump out.