Is mise an tiomanai traenach, Toot, toot, toot. Is mise an tiomanai traenach, Toot, toot, toot. Is mise an tiomanai traenach, Na bi thusa deanach.
Is mise an tiomanai traenach, Toot, toot, toot.
Ah, the romance of railways is so strong that we sing about them - though we will choose to ignore the bitter mockery of a song which has the driver urging the passengers not to be late.
Say "train" and we almost automatically think of the locomotive train rolling along its track, its distinctive plume of steam trailing behind and that unique sound of hissing and metal on metal beating a tattoo. My grandfather McDonald used to drive for the Great Northern Railway in the days when railways were railways. Indeed, during the war (sorry, the Emergency) he indulged in a little entrepreneurial enterprise of his own - bringing back certain goods from fat, collaborating Dublin to beleaguered, battling Belfast. Family legend has it that he'd slow the train down as he passed by the house in Belfast and deliver his contraband to waiting offspring.
Ah, happy days of yore. What is it about the train that inspires so much misty-eyed devotion? It is, after all, simply a means of mass transport, a way of getting a large number of people and/or goods from one place to another. But no. The train has a grip on the imagination which is practically inexplicable. Remember Casey Jones, a-steaming and a-rolling? A decent, hard-working train driver working in the Wild West, a knight of the rails.
Romance of steam
And it is the qualities of decency which we most associate with rail travel. A decent way to travel, a decent way to save the environment from the nasty, selfish, egotistical car. Still, the sound of steam is a thing of the past and so is the romance. Railways are a business in modern Ireland - or so we're led to believe. But having seen RTE's recent expose of the State's railway "network", I have only one thing to say: thank God for European money.
Without being too smug about it, I am a regular commuter on the Belfast-Dublin line which, thanks to EU megabucks, must rank as the Concorde of railway travel in Ireland. The lucky commuters of Dundalk and Drogheda also get to share in the space-age travel that is the modern Enterprise. Nice clean seats, warm carriages, a regular trolley service and, best of all, no smoking for anyone on the train. Slap it up the smokers, that's what I say. Make them breath fresh air for two hours. (Not of course that they're aren't some who try to sneak a quick fag when the train stops at scheduled stops, but make any rule in Ireland and someone is always going to break it.)
Frank Sinatra
Mind you, it wasn't always so. Once upon a time in a time far, far away, the carriages were like something out of the film Von Ryan's Express, a story of daring Allied escapers from a Nazi prison camp, led by Frank Sinatra, the eponymous von Ryan. The carriages on the Belfast-Dublin line were cold, dirty, ill-lit and prone to rolling enough to give one sea-sickness.
Of course, it has to be said that the IRA were a lot better at disrupting the rail service than Sinatra's pursuers in Von Ryan's Express ever were. The Luftwaffe simply do not have that certain je ne sais quoi with which the Republican resistance used to leave suspicious devices on the line. If only someone had told them that instead of sending ME 109s after Frank and the boys all they had to do was leave a box with some wires on the track and the bold escapers would have been stopped quicker than you could have said tiocfaidh ar lollipop.
I'm sorry to see that Iarnrod Eireann still has the kind of stock which puts Ireland's train travellers in the Balkans class of rail. Fear not. I have a cunning plan. The Belfast-Dublin line was upgraded thanks to that international border which our two friendly states share. Thank God for Partition. It gave us a decent railway service in the end. So good, in fact, that I recently saw a prominent member of Sinn Fein travelling on the Enterprise in First Class. Ah, the war is definitely over. The radicals are in First. Waiter, more tea, and be quick about it, damn your soul.
Given all the talk about regionalism, the answer is simple. Let Munster and Connacht declare themselves independent of Dublin rule and become republics.
This will ensure that the services from Galway to Dublin and from Cork to Dublin become international (recognising the obvious, says you). EU grants will flow like milk and honey.
Not that they're won't be problems. One of the things which baffle people on the Enterprise service are the toilets. One button to open, one button to close and a third button to lock. I've seen people standing outside them the way some people worship at shrines. They wait and wait, hoping that something will happen. No handle to be found, they pray that the door will somehow open miraculously.
Getting out
Getting in is the least of their worries. Getting out can be just as difficult. I once rescued an elderly lady from the loo (no need for medals, it was nothing really). She was hammering furiously on the door trying to get out and simply didn't realise that she had unlocked the door and just needed to push the bottom button to escape.
But it's not just the elderly who have their problems. On one recent trip, a young man who had neglected to press the locking button was surprised in mid-stream, as it were, when a woman opened the loo door. As she retreated in haste, other passengers in the carriage watched in amusement as he frantically tried to close the door again with one hand. Of course, Iarnrod users don't have these sorts of problems on its trains. There is a lot to be said for an old-fashioned bolt - if you can actually get down the crowded passageway to the loo, that is.