Irish Railway to Nowhere
Dear Ireland Unhinged,
On 13 December I hopped on a train from Dublin to Cork with my friend G. Khan, express intercity with advertised journey time 2:50. Cost: an incredible 66 euros, which was nothing to Genghis, who is an asylum seeker, but a lot to me. Anyway, we had a long stop at Kildare because the train busted a gasket. It was an hour and 45 minutes. The intercom was busted too and kept playing the Carpenters “Close to Me.” The only conductor was a nice Polish fellow who offered no advice in person because the only English words he spoke were “tea” and “ticket,” which he sometimes confused.
Eventually, some other nice Polish fellows came along with a new engine and we motored on for twenty minutes with the Carpenters still singing. G. Khan, who looked a lot like Borat, was humming like a freakin moron. Around Port Arlington, we had another little stop — for 70 minutes. The new engine was no good either. It was very dark, there seemed to be bogs all around. The conductor was smoking beside one, saying “tea, tea, tea.” He came back on board and offered everyone “free tea.”
Out of nowhere, a new train engine appeared and bumped into the front of ours. Now we had three engines and one Carpenter song to take us to Cork. The queue for the tea was geting very long and babies were crying.
We were near Limerick Junction now when the train stopped again as another approached from the other direction. The fellows in that one climbed out and came into ours, the fellows from our engines went into theirs easy like, as if they did this all the time.
Anyway, we got going and made it to Cork in six and half hours. A nice genuine Irish man was waiting with big smiles and apologies and handing out vouchers you just had to send in, he said, and you would get some recompense. I huffed and I puffed and I waited and I finally got mine today, March 19 — three 20s, one fiver and a one, each personally signed by P. Daly. The nice man wrote in serial numbers by hand for each one. But there were about 700 of us on that train to nowhere and there were about 60 similar train breakdowns that month. That would mean that P. Daly had to personally sign 210,00 vouchers and I am wondering if some Thirld World country might donate a computer and a new choo-choo to Irish Rail.
Confused about Ireland,
R. Lloyd
reminds me of the 24 hours it took to get from Istanbul to Athens via train. wonder if Mr. Khan was on that one too….