Life in Culebrón

This is a piece about days out on the train. As usual I got distracted. If you're not interested in the Spanish railway system skip the next four paragraphs I was told, ages ago, that, where there are twin tracks, Spanish trains "drive" on the left. That is they use the left hand set of rails in relation to the direction they're travelling. The reason, so said my informant, was that the first railways in Spain were built by British engineers and without giving it a second thought the Britons built the system that way around. It turns out that I was lied to. It's partly true in that the first line on the peninsula did use a British Engineer but his line, from Barcelona to Mataró, opened in 1848, ran trains on the right.  As the railways boomed the first big Spanish railway company - MZA - Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante - bought the Barcelona to Mataró line. They bought the direction of travel too. MZAs big competitor in the pioneering...

I used to visit Spain as a tourist long before I lived here. Usually I'd just buy a plane ticket and then find a hotel/pension when I got to wherever. Travelling around was done by public transport.  I've always liked trains. For tourists cast adrift in a foreign land, they have the big advantage, over buses, of going to stations that have name plaques. Provided you know the name of the place you're going then it's just a case of being able to read. Of course this is long before trains, trams and buses began to speak or you could GPS track your position. Now Spain isn't bad at signing things but it isn't good either. Signs are apt to be missing when you most need them. Sometimes they are there but not obvious. They lurk. Not big enough. Not in your eyeline. Not right somehow. Once you get the hang of it they are more noticeable but that's when you don't need them. When you're in a hurry, flustered, weighed down by kilos of baggage etc., they never se...

Whilst I was shaving this morning, I heard a piece on the radio about changes to the rail service in Murcia. The National news has ten minute sections of local news every now and then. In the bathroom the local news comes from Murcia and in the kitchen the local news covers the Valencian Community. It's to do with signal strengths and because we are on the frontier between two regions. RENFE, the train operator and ADIF, the rail infrastructure operator, have been in the news a lot lately. Over in Extremadura there was lots of fuss about really old diesel trains breaking down all the time and leaving people stranded for hours. The people of Extremadura complained that they live in a forgotten part of the country. In fact there has been a lot of grumbling, from several parts of Spain, that all the railway money is being poured into the glamorous high speed trains whilst the much more travelled commuter lines are being largely ignored. The story was rekindled a few days ago w...