The fastest way to get from London to Coventry is by catching the express train from London Euston. However, these days I tend to take the bus to Leamington Spa and catch the slower service to London Marylebone. This is partly because, at £11.20, the Leamington Spa service is much cheaper. However I am influenced to a far greater extent by my hatred of Richard Branson and all he stands for.
Now I know that this is the second blog in a row where I have prattled on about trains. Tough. I am a mechanical engineer - open up my chest and you would find Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design writ in (very) small text on my heart (look here, obviously you wouldn't, even engineers know that you'd find a bunch of slightly sloppy internal organs gasping their last - actually, now that I mention it, please don't open up my chest, I need that for breathing) - and so you must simply cope with my love of rail and all things that click, whirr and spin with well greased precision.
Despite this love, or perhaps because of it, I hate the people who designed the Virgin Trains rolling stock. I can see them in the design meeting now. "Hm... Virgin Trains - They're done by the same people as Virgin Atlantic, aren't they? Planes look cool, why don't we try and incorporate that into the design somehow?". I wonder if they sat up in bed and hugged themselves with delight when they came up with that one? At any rate, they have given the trains a dynamic paint job, tiny windows, dimly lit interiors and relied heavily on the use of plastic as an aesthetic material.
Perhaps, aware of their target audience - commuters from Birmingham and London, high powered executives trying to get from A to B as quickly as possible in as high powered a style as they can - Virgin have done their very best to make sure the passenger on their trains feels as though they are on one of Virgin Atlantic's flights to New York, San Fransisco, Boston, Tororonto, Washington DC (as opposed to an overpriced train to Solihull or Fulham). They have captured with exquisite simplicity all that is most horrific about being sealed inside a soulless tin can with a bunch of complete strangers and their germs. The windows, even in the doorwells, will not open even slightly. The driver sits entombed in their cab, unmoved by your plight as you trek down the platform, past the three (three!) empty first class carriages to the 'standard' carriages (I can only assume someone objected to the use of the term 'cattletruck' to describe these, probably cattle themselves) and board, past lights that remind me unfavourably of the Cybermen.
Tiny windows successfully filter out most of the natural light, leaving illumination to the dull beams of tiny lights set into the sunken ceiling, which itself is inexplicably drilled full of holes. The constant drone of air conditioning does nothing to belay the impression that we are being supplied with oxygen on sufferance - the bare minimum to prevent the stuffy atmosphere becoming unbreathable.
The overhead luggage racks (such as they are) are completely useless for holding anything heftier than perhaps two or three sheets of A4 paper or the very slimmest of laptop computers - not that you would put a laptop up there, since it is impossibly to shake the feeling that you're about to get jacked (the sad fact is that you already have been - the fares are extortionate).
I got off the train after being stuck just east of Canley for twenty minutes. As much as I complain about it, I have never been so glad to see Coventry in my life.
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