Night Trains

by Martin, Andrew;

  ***

  Half an hour after landing at Copenhagen, I was crossing the bridge on the train, which runs on the lower deck of the bridge – so there isn’t the same sensation of rising porpoise-like out of the water as you would have in a car. On the platform at Copenhagen Airport, my passport had been checked. As a result of the migrant crisis, the Schengen agreement had been partly suspended in Sweden. And my ticket had just been checked by a train guard in civvies: camouflage shorts and a hooded top. I only knew he worked for the railway by the laminated ID card dangling around his neck, and by his interest in my ticket, which would be otherwise unaccountable.

  As we approached Malmö, I was looking at my notes.

  The Berlin Night Express goes from Malmö to Berlin, but the interesting core of the journey is across the Baltic, between Trelleborg in Sweden and Sassnitz in Germany. This route was served by a train ferry from 1909, and the vessel in question is very famous (among people who like ferries). It was called Drottning Victoria, and it was built by Swan Hunter in Newcastle, and remained in service until 1964, at which point most of the trains carried – whether by day or night – were foreign. There were direct services from Malmö to Moscow, Budapest, Belgrade, Prague, Gdansk, Hamburg and elsewhere.

  In April 1917, Vladimir Lenin crossed from Germany to Sweden on Drottning Victoria, en route to Finland Station in what was then called Petrograd. This was facilitated by the German government, anxious to bring the war in the east to an end. Lenin had sworn to sue for peace if he obtained power and – equally promising for the Germans – to trigger a class war within Russia. In The Life and Death of Lenin, Robert Payne wrote that it served German interests to ‘hurl the revolutionaries like a bomb upon Petrograd’.

  The Germans had obtained the consent of the neutral Swedish government to send Lenin across Sweden rather than through the German lines to the east. Lenin and about thirty of his colleagues began their journey in Zurich, their place of exile. The journey was famously made in a ‘sealed train’ but this was more like a sealed carriage in an ordinary scheduled train, the seal taking the form of a chalk line in adjacent carriages, guarded by German police. Why the seal? To prevent Lenin infecting ordinary Germans with the revolutionary virus, and to prevent the Provisional Government in Russia finding out what was going on. According to Payne, most of the Bolsheviks, but not Lenin, smoked incessantly on the train. Lenin drank a lot of beer but objected to the smoking, and decreed that it should take place only in the lavatory. When it became obvious that there would be a massed rush to the facility, Lenin designed a system of regulation. Karl Radek, evidently one of the more amusing Bolsheviks, recalled that Lenin ‘cut a piece of paper in two and distributed permits. For every three tickets of category “A” for the legitimate use of the premises there was one smoker’s ticket. This naturally evoked further discussions about the value of human needs, and we acutely regretted that comrade Bukharin was not with us, as a specialist in Böhm Bawerk’s theory about marginal utility.’

  The Germans arranged for excellent meals to be served on the train, so as to give the impression that everything was going swimmingly in their country, but from the window Lenin saw starving people in the passing villages – and very few young ones among them. At Karlsruhe and Berlin there were long delays, which apparently disappointed Lenin, who had the same high regard for the efficiency of German railways as everyone else. One imagines him checking his watch, and shaking his head, like some petulant commuter.

  The train reached Sassnitz on the night of 12 April, and the Bolsheviks were transferred from the sealed carriage to a sealed room, where they spent the night. They crossed the Baltic on the next morning and, rather disappointingly, neither the train nor even the sealed carriage was put onto the boat. One Swedish expert on the route sent me an email saying, ‘There were probably other cars [carriages] on the Drottning Victoria but for some unknown reason, Lenin’s car remained in Sassnitz, and he took another train from Trelleborg.’

  In both wars, the train ferry was operated by our old friend MITROPA. After the Second World War, MITROPA survived as one of the few joint stock companies in East Germany, where it provided the railway catering. It then served reunified Germany until 2002. (Lars von Trier’s black-and-white expressionist film of 1991, Europa, concerns a young American lured into a pro-Nazi conspiracy hatched by a sinister railway company called Zentropa, a deliberate echo of MITROPA. The idea of a sinister railway catering company would be absurd, so Zentropa is a railway in the fullest sense.)

  ‘After the Second World War,’ according to my Swedish correspondent, ‘the Ferry route faced a lot of problems.’ This was because Sassnitz found itself in the GDR. ‘The trains to Berlin,’ he wrote, ‘ended in various stations, but from 1955, traffic was re-established with Berlin Zoologischer, in West Berlin, as the end station.’

  The passenger services were operated by Swedish and German state railways until 2000, then deregulation kicked in. In 2001, the German private operator, GVG, took over from Deutsche Bahn on that side of the partnership. In 2012, one of the private Swedish operators, Snälltåget, took over on the other side. Snälltåget – owned by the French transport multinational Transdev – also operates day trains to Stockholm, and sleeper trains to the ski resorts Åre and Vemdalen. These sleepers operate between Christmas and Easter, whereas the Berlin Night Express is a summer service only.

  ALL WINDOWS DOWN

  The train from Copenhagen took me to a platform beneath Malmö Central Station. Since the coming of the Øresund line in 2010 the subterranean level at Malmö has been busier than the upper one, and the station proper had the peaceful air of a railway museum on a quiet day. It dates from 1856, and is barn-like, with a white timber roof and red wooden beams. I walked to the enquiry desk to make sure the Berlin Night Express would be leaving on time at 17.00. ‘I can confirm that is correct,’ came the unflappable Scandinavian response. I was curious about the name of the operator. Snälltåget apparently has a punning double meaning. The Swedish connotation is ‘nice train’, but there is also an echo of the German ‘schnell’. ‘So it means fast train as well,’ said the consultant, ‘but in fact it is not really a fast train at all.’

  ‘But it is nice, I hope?’

  ‘That is for you to decide.’

  I had four hours to kill before train time – and I had a headache, which increased my susceptibility to the disorientating effects of the north European summer. Platform 1 was decorated with small oak trees planted in tubs and festooned with fairy lights, suggesting Christmas, but it was a day of blazing sunshine and seagulls wheeled loudly over the station (which is next to docks), suggesting another topographical dimension altogether. On the wall of Platform 1 were big black-and-white pictures of the station in the early twentieth century. It was beautifully austere, with people sitting on wooden benches, as in a church. I wondered whether any of those people were waiting for the one Wagons-Lits service that had touched Malmö: the Nord Express.

  Platform 1 was accessible through a variety of very clean and well-managed shops, including a pharmacy, where the emphasis was on podiatry: corn plasters, insoles, sensible sandals. This means of access must have helped both the shops and the station. It was one of a number of good railway ideas I’d noted. On the train from Copenhagen there’d been transparent polythene bags on hooks to act as litter bins. In the subterranean station of Malmö there had been moving images on the platform walls, projections of countryside scenes, to alleviate the depression of being in a tunnel. Just outside Malmö Station proper, an iron sculpture of a bike was mounted atop a pole, to signal the presence of a bike store. In 1935, Railway Wonders of the World had observed, ‘Sweden was one of the first European countries to recognise the benefit of an attractive city station in drawing business to the railway, and the salesmanship side of her railway undertaking has been very well developed.’

  The streets near the station were wide, quiet and reminiscent of Britain in the 1950s, with many sweet shops, clothes
shops with slightly battered mannequins in the window and a population of sinewy cyclists, some riding wooden bikes. It was hard to believe there had been serious race riots in Malmö in June 2015, and that it has a reputation for ethnic tension and gun crime.

  A strong wind seemed to buffet me with redoubled vigour every time I turned a corner, making my headache worse. I had got up too early, having been worried about the running of the Gatwick Express from Victoria. It was subject to disruption, the RMT union being engaged in shadow-boxing with the Govia Thameslink Railway, which was ‘evolving the role of the conductor’. Conductors would no longer be required to close train doors, ‘so they can spend more time helping passengers’. It was hard to believe the trouble was not related to the terrible nomenclature of the privatised railway. GTR is a subsidiary of Govia, which is a joint venture between Go-Ahead Group and Keolis. GTR runs the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern rail franchise. (That might sound like more than one, but it’s ‘franchise’, singular.) Within the franchise GTR runs the Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express services. I trust all that is perfectly clear?

  In the event, I had arrived at the airport on time, but having slept for only a couple of hours.

  Returning to Malmö Station, I wondered whether this troublesome breeze might be whipping up the waves on the Baltic. Even by the admission of Snälltåget, the Berlin Night Express was ‘liable to cancellation at any time’ (whereas the Night Ferry never missed a single running because of rough seas). There was a new man at the station help desk, but he was as unflappable as the other: ‘We have a three-class warning system, and the wind today is not even class one.’

  By now the train was in the station: five venerable sleeper carriages of ribbed steel, like the 1950s ‘P’-class of W-L. Like the P, these carriages were unpainted except for the word Snälltåget, written large in multi-coloured lettering. Snälltåget might be owned by a multinational, but the impression was of a hippyish train, the railway equivalent of a VW camper van with a ‘Nuclear Power? No thanks!’ sticker on the bumper. At four fifteen, the passengers were already arriving: mainly young couples and their young children, who were being lifted up to peer through the windows. Varying numbers of beds were made up in the compartments, which were all couchettes. The maximum number was six.

  Somebody who looked like a student came along and propped a sign on the platform asking that passports be shown to officials of the train before boarding. Two officials were ushering people aboard the train in a friendly way: both had high-visibility vests and long blonde ponytails, although only one of them was a woman. The woman ticked my name off a list as I climbed up. She had very long, pale-blue artificial fingernails, so she would probably not be chaining down the carriages in the ship’s hold.

  It turned out that the extremely efficient press officer of Snälltåget had reserved an entire compartment for me, which made me feel guilty, since every other compartment was packed. One of the bunks was folded down, with enough clean bedding for six heaped on it. The upholstery was blue, and the armrests on the seats – about the size of breeze blocks – were detachable, so I could have chucked them all on the floor and stretched out along the length of the seats. There was a curtain, and an openable window, so the carriage was not air-conditioned, but I immediately liked my sunlit, old-fashioned quarters, and as we pulled away dead on time, I was reminded of Philip Larkin’s poem, ‘The Whitsun Weddings’:

  All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense

  Of being in a hurry gone.

  After fifteen minutes along what is known as the Continental Line, we had reached Trelleborg. Poised for loading onto the boat, we waited in the middle of a wide marshalling yard, with freight wagons on either side, and seagulls swooping overhead. What was missing, in comparison with the Night Ferry, was night (the sun still shone brightly), arc lights and a steady English rain.

  FS SASSNITZ

  I walked into the corridor, opened the window and stuck my head out, joining half a dozen others doing the same. Our locomotive was wandering away, revealing the yawning hold of the ferry, into which we would soon be pushed. A very perfunctory diesel shunter – like a big go-cart – now buffered up to the rear. The driver was doing that thing that always lessens my confidence in any professional: checking his messages on his mobile phone. But for all I knew, he would receive the instruction to start the manoeuvre in the form of a text message. My understanding of shunting is weak (I offer the excuse that it, like the operation of train ferries, is a dying railway art, what with all the fixed-formation trains). It bothered me that the man on the shunter could have no sight of the front of the train he was about to push into the boat hold. Surely this was an accident waiting to happen? When I got home, I mentioned this to my eldest son, who is quite technical, and he thought about it for two seconds before saying: ‘Well, presumably the train’s the same length every time, so he’ll have a mark to stop at.’

  An announcement came: ‘We will now be joining the ferry!’ and the shunter started up. We were indeed sent in as one train, whereas the longer Night Ferry train was split into four when loaded.

  My compartment came to rest right alongside a big black four-by-four. Another announcement said we could either remain on the train, or walk to the upper decks, where we could take advantage of two restaurants or the duty free shop. There had been a similar option on the Night Ferry, but unannounced, and more low key. It was about midnight when that train was put on the boat, and passengers were supposed to be asleep. There was a saloon bar on the boat, however – latterly denoted ‘the lorry driver’s mess’. There was also a service hatch that rattled open at about midnight so the train manager could sell duty-free cognac, whisky and bourbon to insomniac passengers.

  Before quitting the Snälltåget train, I collected my valuables. (Unlike all the motor cars, the train would not be locked for the crossing.) I then walked along to sample the ‘Toalett’. There was a notice about not smoking in the WC. The rather droopy threat was in accordance with the hippyish ethos of the service: ‘Smoking could mean you have to leave the train.’ Unlike the toalett on the Nene Valley’s Helga, this one did not flush straight onto the tracks. These carriages might be old, but they were house-trained. In the case of the Night Ferry carriages, the toilets did discharge straight onto the tracks, so they were parked over receiving pits on the boat. The smell could become nauseating as the night wore on. Then again, the smell of this current boat hold – petrol fumes – was not doing much for my headache, as I stepped down from the train onto a one-foot-wide steel platform. A man, securing the train with chains threaded through its mooring rings, nodded at me. He said that on an evening like this, when – in spite of the wind – the sea was nearly flat, they only secured the front and end carriages. Had he heard of the Night Ferry? He frowned: ‘No.’ So I explained about it. When I’d finished, he said, ‘Adolf Hitler … you heard of Adolf Hitler, right?’ I confirmed this. ‘When he visited Sweden in the war, he came by this train ferry.’ Surely this could not be true, because Hitler never visited Sweden. But perhaps my mention of the Night Ferry had subliminally triggered the thought. The Night Ferry was surprisingly one of those British institutions admired by Hitler – another was the Grand Hotel, Scarborough – and Hitler said he wanted to ‘roll into Britain’. Evidence in support is the fact that in 1940 the Nazis destroyed everything at Dunkirk except the train ferry dock.

  To access the upper decks, it was necessary to press a button that released an airlock, allowing a sliding door to open. The ferry was called FS Sassnitz, and it was like a modern-day cross-Channel ferry but smaller and more innocent. There was no Costa Coffee, for a start. The self-service restaurant, which had a 1970s school dinners atmosphere about it, was called ‘Everyone Deserves a Break’. (There was also another, posher restaurant, of the ‘Wait-Here-To-Be-Seated’ kind.) I took a wood-laminate tray and began pushing it along the self-service counter, but at the sight of the pork scallops in bread crumbs, and salmon ste
aks, I returned the tray to its place. The food looked like decent canteen fare, but I wasn’t up to eating.

  On the deck, happy Europeans were sitting around in clusters of white plastic chairs. Some were sipping beer or wine, in a restrained way that nevertheless increased my nausea. I was leaning over a railing looking out at the Baltic, when I noticed a woman smiling at me from a nearby chair. I asked if I could interview her. ‘Go ahead!’ she said, her English shamingly good in that familiar way. ‘Why take this night train instead of flying to Germany?’ I asked. ‘Well, first of all,’ she said, ‘I’m not on a train. I think you must be on the train, but I’m a foot passenger. In Sassnitz, I’ll pick up a hire car, and then drive to Poznań.’

  A young girl, nearby on the deck, was happily wafting her arms to mimic the roll of the ship. I felt a sweat breaking out on my forehead. ‘Poznań’s in Poland,’ my interviewee was kindly explaining. ‘I work in Malmö, but I live in Poznań. I could fly there for about the same price, but you see, I am travelling with my companion.’ She gestured to a crate half hidden behind her chair. A small dog lurked inside. It slowly dawned on me (the Polish woman watched the process with amusement) that there were many dogs, and other pet carrying cases on the deck around us. Perhaps this was the future for night train ferries. I blurted something of the kind. ‘Yes, there’s even a dog toilet,’ the Polish woman said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen that.’

  ‘Well, it’s not so beautiful.’

  My thoughts ranged over my European odyssey: my encounter beneath the ‘Accueil’ sign at Gare d’Austerlitz, the stolen euros, my cravenness as the Turkish customs post. Perhaps this comedy of embarrassments could only have had one culmination: the emetic of Brexit, which had occurred a couple of weeks previously.