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I have to confess at the start, that I have always had affection for the train. I come from Teesside, the home of the passenger railway, how can I not? Over the years, trains have carried me along the Iron Curtain, from Northern Scotland to the southern tip of Ireland and, on countless occasions, into work and back.

I have spent hours on end, sat on my bag at a mainline station, happily watching and wondering about the curious mix of people passing me by. Railway stations generate a curious sense of hope and of being at a hub of the universe.

Such romantic notions quickly fade, though, when that icy old British Rail wind blows along the platform and you hear the third consecutive announcement that your train is delayed. Railway winds are lazy. They do not bother to go around you. They pass straight through your bones.

Fog shrouds Emmanuel Church.

The Journey

History and culture aside, though, trains are no use in 2009, unless they can compete with the car and at 7:30am, I leave the house to walk to Saltburn railway station. It’s about a 15 to 20 minute walk and the fog is so dense, I am wet by the time I reach the bottom of the road.

I don’t mind walking. I used to walk to work every day and it is good thinking time. I have made many important decisions walking to work. The trouble is, though, you are at the mercy of the British weather.

Green intentions are easy on a midsummer’s day, but that same sense of self-satisfaction is hard to hold onto when you are battling a blizzard, watching others pass you by in their air-conditioned metal boxes.

Only slightly damp and a little cold around the knuckles, I arrive at the train station in a pretty good mood. A stroll through the town centre as it is waking up always brings about a satisfying sense of connection with the world.

The station is an only slightly unpleasant environment. There is a rank of metal cages for cyclists to lock their bikes in, so they know they will be dry and intact when they return (one wonders how long before they are removed, having been identified by someone or other as a security threat), and an effort has been made to brighten up the platform with a blaze of flowers.

The shelter itself is another story. The paint is scratched away and endless people have felt moved to scrawl messages that mean nothing to anyone. It is a shame, it is pointless and it is hard to think of a way to stop it happening.

Waiting for the train brings about one of those pleasing chance encounters. I am sharing the shelter with an ex-pat Teessider back home from Australia to visit family. It turns out she used to work for Dorman Long, where they built Sydney Harbour Bridge and now lives on Botany Bay, where Captain Cook came ashore. You can’t help feeling a swelling of pride.

Saltburn railway shelter.

The case for the train

The return fare was £4.10 which, even taking parking charges into account, is more expensive that using the car. The journey took 45 minutes. I can’t get away from the fact, though, that I arrive at work in a far better mood than the day before, when I had travelled in by car.

The case for public transport is more than financial though. There is a social case. If I had travelled by car, I would not have met a woman who lives in Botany Bay this morning. I would not have looked out of the window and been cheered by the sight of the man fishing in Redcar’s Locke Park so early in the morning, or the ducks on Coatham Marsh.

Perhaps more importantly though, I would not have walked through my hometown this morning. How many of us leave the house in the morning, get into the car, travel to work, leave work in the evening, get into the car, travel home and then walk straight from the car into the house? If you have no cause to go into town at the weekend, you have gone a fortnight without ever interacting with anyone in your home town.

As money becomes tight, though, the train will need more than soul food and green credentials to compete.