Britain is BROKEN...Don't believe me? My train journey home was like a scene from World War II - Alex Story
Richard tice slams broken Britain
GB News
The train came to a standstill, a mile past Harrow Mill station on the West Anglia main line, 12 miles away from Stansted Airport, its supposed destination. The 24-mile journey up to that point had been ominously jerky.
The 11.30am November 24th departure barely made it out of Liverpool Street station before it stopped for a good ten minutes.
I had given myself way over two hours to make the advertised 48-minute trip to the airport, partly because of lengthy security controls and partly because travelling across the UK is becoming a sport for the brave.
When the train started again, it then crawled, walked and ran as if on an erratic treadmill as it made its tortuous way ever deeper into the Essex countryside.
Storm Bert, deep grey skies and the disconcerting sound of 75 miles per hour winds heralded trouble. I had time but was increasingly and nervously re-estimating my plans.
As the clock ticked ever louder, I saw myself having to rush out, jump over some people and run over others like some wild bowling ball.
Suddenly, a around 12.35, ten minutes after the train’s planned Stansted Airport arrival, the train driver spoke to the restless passengers.
We needed to stop, he said, due to some as of yet unknown reason. But he would get back to us, he promised. Things were going to be tight some voices could be heard saying, calculating how much time would be required to go through security at Stansted.
Others, calmer because their time margin was greater, thought that a one- or two-hour delay would not hurt them too much. The initial information was bitty. But few were surprised. It wasn’t just the weather; it was the deep sense of decay that increasingly whiffs out of our national institutions every pore.
Indeed, we spend twice as much on debt interest repayments - at £126bn the taxpayer’s fourth largest expenditure item - than on infrastructure.
It shows. Soon, the train went dark. The electricity went. A female computerised voice announced on the PA that the train was running low on energy and that we should therefore head to the nearest exit. Where are diesel trains when you need them!
The passengers intuitively understood that this would be no temporary stop. Strangely, the mood of passengers lightened rather than worsened. All went on phones and devices to re-organise their journey.
A little after the robotic PA broadcast, the driver gave us further information.
A tree had fallen on power cables ahead of us. The train would not be moving at all. We would all have to get off the train and walk back to Harrow Mill Station on the track, a mile away.Walk on the track back to a station? In the 21st century?
All the passengers looked around at each other in disbelief. Peter Skaer, a German octogenarian with a bad hip, a great sense of humour and a lot of luggage, thought it was perhaps more than he had bargained for.
Indeed, he had come to England to celebrate his 80th birthday with his children, two of whom lived in the UK, and one, Silke, who was with him, on their way back to Bremen, Germany.
Storm Bert, deep grey skies and the disconcerting sound of 75 miles per hour winds heralded trouble, writes Alex Story
Alex Story
It was, we joked, to make his birthday unforgettable. It was all planned for him. The driver intervened again to let us know that staff from Network Rail would come to our rescue.
An hour or so later, dressed in orange overalls and wearing white hard hats, the company’s staff walked through the train.
We would all have to walk to the back of the train and get off one by one, they said. After another hour of preparation, we were told to get up and make our way to the exit door.
Slowly, the 690 passengers, a mass of humanity, one by one, excruciatingly slowly, shuffled out. However, the mothers with their children, the geriatrics with their ailments, the hipsters with their attitude and the tourists with their cameras, all equalised by the process, were, in the end, heartwarmingly dignified.
While most thought the process unnecessarily cumbersome, it became evident that it was the sensible thing to do. The train door is a good three to four feet off the ground and the steps are invisible from the cockpit. Without direction from the Network Rail staff, many would have fallen and broken bones.
Essex police officers were there too. PC Wilson, Inspector Buck and Sergent Nott among others received the passengers on the rocky and very uneven tracks.
The officers helped carry the luggage of the less able and provided guidance and reassurance to the multitudes as they walked the unexpected mile back to Harrow Mill station.
The scene was that of a World War II film with refugees forced off a train, half expecting Spitfires to fly low over the horizon ready to strafe the tracks.
In an air of slight surrealism, Minna Wilson, Anna Rydell and Ellen Nilson, all from Sweden, walked, joked and laughed all the way. Some even heard ABBA being sung or was it just the gusts of winds mixing with their jollity?
They had come to Britain for a fun week in London. They were decidedly not going to let an act of God ruin their mood.
From Rabat, Morocco, Ghita Benessahraoui and Jamyl Mandi Panne had escaped to London for a “Weekend en amoureux”, as Ghita sweetly phrased it with a slight playful glint in her eye.
The charming couple, while a little inconvenienced by the events, were nonetheless in high spirits.
It would be a romantic weekend forever etched in their memories. They were looking forward to flying back to North Africa the next day to be reunited with their kin.
The entire event, while deeply inconvenient to all involved, including all who had hoped to travel out of Stansted airport later in the day, as all trains were subsequently cancelled, and extremely costly to the greater economy, nevertheless, showed a reassuring side to our humanity.
On the way out of a train, a red-headed, blue-eyed toddler started laughing and giggling with a joy that warmed everyone’s hearts. He won’t remember but we will.
Indeed, no one on the 11.30am to Stansted Airport will forget Harrow Mill Station, even if they never return.
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