SLOW-PLATFORMING
Travelling from Dundee to London should require making a simple switch at Edinburgh. Fat chance, says Simon Calder
British Rail, it used to be said, was devoted to preventing trains from operating. But because it was so disorganised, some services ran anyway.
In contrast, the purpose of the fragmented rail industry of the 21st century sometimes seems to be to deter people from making swift and straightforward journeys. A prime example is the “Dundee dash”, an event that actually takes place in Edinburgh. I discovered this on Wednesday, when heading from Dundee to London.
Dundee is on everyone’s map from this weekend with the opening of the V&A Museum beside the River Tay; the dramatic cultural hub. So making smooth journeys to and from the “V&Tay” is going to be important for lots of people, even London’s “metropolitan elite”.
Which means than that they will need to travel between the Thames and the Tay, and back again. Preferably by train. Almost as soon as the southbound rail trip begins, the train swings past My Lord’s
Bank (an estuarial feature, not a heavenly financial institution) to cross the broad expanse of the Tay – with the forlorn foundations of the original rail bridge testifying to the loss of 75 people in the disaster of 1879.
What, in other countries, would constitute an excellent cross-platform transfer, is regarded as an ‘illegal’ connection and made as difficult as possible in Britain
You cross the Kingdom of Fife, and then the engineering marvel of the Forth Bridge. The line carves through the heart of Edinburgh beside Princes Street Gardens and the Castle, then along the broad shoulder of East Lothian, before turning south, crossing the Tweed at Berwick and tracing the dramatic Northumberland coast.
The bridges of the Tyne, the cathedral and castle of Durham, Starbucks on platform 4 of Doncaster station … the treats continue to King’s Cross Station in London.
That is the magnificent East Coast mainline in widescreen. But when you study the detail of how to travel along it, the view becomes less pleasing.
Just three direct trains a day cover the ground between Dundee and London, with the fastest taking 5 hours 43 minutes.
For a wider choice of departures, and perhaps a faster journey, you need to connect at Edinburgh. Which is where your problems begin.
I found an ideal pair of trains: a Scotrail one from Dundee to platform 18 of Waverley Station in the Scottish capital, with an onward LNER service to London two minutes later from platform 19. Since it is a cross-platform connection – no stairs or subways involved – it is exactly the sort of change-of-trains that you find on the Continent; train A arrives, passengers walk serenely across to train B, which then departs.
But what, in other countries, would constitute an excellent cross-platform transfer, is regarded as an “illegal” connection and made as difficult as possible in Britain.
The ScotRail service arrived at Edinburgh on time, and stopped adjacent to the LNER departure. But the doors to allow people to stroll across to the waiting train did not open. Instead, everyone was instructed to walk several hundred metres to the ticket gates, before turning round to head for the London train.
The £100 penalty
I had, as they say, “skin in the game”. I had bought two separate advance tickets – one for each leg of the journey. You cannot buy a ticket for both legs because the assumption is that the passenger will fail to make the 400-metre sprint via the ticket gates that is needed to make the connection. Then the penalty would be more than simply arriving in London nearly an hour later: I would have to pay over £100 for a new ticket.
Fortunately, on board the 1.28pm arrival were some even more desperate men.
(Earlier in the day a helicopter had touched down at Aberdeen from an oil rig 150 miles offshore. After two or three weeks on board a floating platform in the North Sea, a group of Geordie oil workers were extremely keen to see their families.)
They turned out to be well versed in the two-minute Dundee dash before the 1.30pm to Newcastle and beyond.
As we raced down platform 18, one of them found an unlocked gate to platform 19 that cut at least a minute
from the sprint. The oil men and me all made it, though the party of golfers from St Andrews with improbably bulky baggage were left behind in our wake.
(Ironically, the previous evening I had tried reach Edinburgh Waverley to scout out the terrain, but my train from Glasgow was running so late that I had to abandon the journey.)
Perhaps in a cultural hub such as Edinburgh, the daily spectacle is regarded as performance art? Of course connections sometimes fail, whether they are two minutes or 20. But I wait to see if the train operators can offer any other excuse for failing to do what’s right for passengers: in this case inviting them calmly to perform the Waverley walk across the platform to the waiting train, which will speed them to Newcastle, York and London.
Any business which claims to have the interests of customers at its heart needs to prove it, day after day. And by perpetuating the Dundee dash, the railway industry is failing.