The soft blur of countryside passes the windows, houses lose their strong corners and resemble something closer to a well-decorated cake. There is a gentleness that is afforded by long-distance train travel. A gentleness that lends itself inherently to romance.
A romance for place as well as for people. The inside of a train carriage is a place where movement is both ever-present and pleasantly distant. Unlike airplanes, trains are configured for conversation, seats face each other. For even if you do not exchange conversation, a smile might slip through the steely front. Trains take you through the environment rather than past, or over it. Their routes are quite literally the dotted lines on the map.
A rhythmic chug and bump reverberates through your body as you sidle on through the landscape. The tempo reminds you that you are travelling. There is somewhere you are going and somewhere you have come from. This time in-between holds a grace and stillness. It is time that if you were driving you would not have. A time for contemplation, creation, reflection or romance.
Who have you left behind?
Who is waiting for you at the platform as you arrive?
A lover, a friend, a solitary gust of wind?
I turn my nose up at the notion that travelling via train should be optimised for productivity. The train should be utilised as vehicular meditation. Drink in the beauty of the human condition as you bundle along. Scraps of conversation waft by you at the same rate as the trees outside. The aimlessness frees up room in the mind for inspiration and recollection to enter.
Embrace the lack of control that train travel affords. There is no ability to hurry the driver. No way of stamping on the pedals underneath your feet, ignoring what the speed limit dictates. The train will arrive, that much is known. Everything else is a pleasant surprise.
The terminus or station at which your journey departs, is a place of wonder. People moving every which way, some running, others stood stationary. Where until you step onto your particular train, you could really just turn across the platform and jump on one going in the opposite direction. This whimsy is not afforded in the hermetically sealed environment of an airport, or on a bus/tram route where there is only one option that departs once on the hour.
As well as the lack of lengthy pre-journey rigamarole, trains have plane’s number again with the absence of physical constraint. While travelling along the tracks, you are free to move around. Not hindered by the belt strapping you to the seat. There is choice in train travel, there is romance.
This winter, perhaps jumping on a train and travelling toward the undiscovered idylls of rural Victoria could scratch that romantic itch. Whether it be inland to Castlemaine, coastal to Gippsland or daring to cross state borders further afield. Don’t go round the corner for lunch, take the slow option… three hours away. Dress up in your Sunday best and gaze longingly out of the window. Write poems on the back of receipts as your hand fights with the jostling tracks beneath. Exchange charmed smiles with a stranger. Travel to the end of the line. Mail yourself a postcard from that destination and race it back home.
