Train Travel & Other Exciting Adventures

I love trains. I don't know why or where this love came from but I just love travelling by train. I'm not a train spotter or anything like that, I just would always prefer to travel by train where possible and would choose a train journey over a bus or car journey anyday.

When I was travelling, one of my identities was that I was the youngest ever female train driver for British Rail. This was a really good alias, until I spoke to an Aussie train geek who then asked me loads of technical questions to which I had absolutely no answer.

I rarely got the train when I was younger as my dad loves driving so much, and then squashing myself into the tiny 2 carriage Cardiff - Portsmouth Harbour train to get to and from uni was a nightmare...but train travel overseas, has been an entirely different and much more enjoyable experience.

I suppose actually, my first overseas train experience didn't start well. I was supposed to be catching the overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa in Kenya, as the roads are far too dangerous to travel on at night. After waiting in the train station in Nairobi for about 4 hours, we were told that there was a blockage on the line, and so we needed to get a bus to where the train was waiting, and we could get on it there. So at 11pm, which is definitely-not-a-safe-time-to-be-on-the-road-o'clock, we sent off on a 4 hour very crowded bus journey along a bumpy road to get to where the train was.

Except it wasn't. We arrived into pitch blackness in seemingly the middle of the African Bush, and were dumped in a small station office next to the train track. With no water or food and no information, people were getting very angry! Luckily, the train turned up about about 5am, and we managed to stumble along the track and find our very comfortable carriage, which we shared with 2 other girls. It turned out that the train had actually managed to make it into the station in Nairobi, after we had left, so then had sat around for a bit, and then come on its way to find us. Then, about an hour into its journey to meet us, the driver got a call from someone saying a group of school kids who had missed the train initially had arrived at the station and would he go back and get them. So he did.....which is why we ended up getting on our train in the middle of nowhere at about 5am...only 10 hours later than our original 7pm departure time.

I wonder what would happen if a train was 10 hours late in the UK?

In Thailand, my summer after the first year of uni, we spent one night in Bangkok, and it was so hot, that at 5am we headed off the the train station to get out of the city and go somewhere cooler! We ended up getting on a train to Pattaya with the intention of then getting the train straight to Ko Samet. As soon as we pulled out of Bangkok, we then had the panic that all of the train station signs were written entirely in Thai script, so we had absolutely no idea when we were getting off or how we would know when to get off! Luckily a man saw our panic and when we got to a stop we'd say 'Pattaya?' and he'd say 'No!' and then eventually 'Yes!' and so we made it!!