{"id":1447,"date":"2023-11-12T02:35:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-12T07:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indirections.com\/?p=1447"},"modified":"2023-12-08T12:58:25","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T17:58:25","slug":"whens-your-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indirections.com\/?p=1447","title":{"rendered":"When’s Your Train?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/span> 4<\/span> Minute Read<\/span><\/span>\n

Remember that proverbial squirrel spinning its heart out inside the black box of anything that is mysteriously mobile? If Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger was right, before looking under the lid, there’s an equal chance the mysterious power source is something else entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Zurich HauptBahnhof | Dennis Linine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There was a time during what seemed like a career as a professional traveler when I could sleepwalk my way through certain airports. But train stations, with their “keep off the tracks” layout and not-so-obvious routings, have set me on edge from my very first “Tous \u00e0 bord!” Standing on the quai in Chambesy, Switzerland, a one-by-two-inch punch of brown recycled cardboard in my hand, expected to figure out, in three languages I couldn’t read, which train was mine, I basically closed my eyes and, crossing my fingers, jumped jump the first one that stopped. Forty years later, especially when calling for a connection, I’m still at sea on a train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost as awkward as wandering onto the wrong airplane in the days before scannable boarding passes\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Mr. Knell, so nice to see you again, but aren’t you going to Boston today? This plane is headed to New York.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u2014was the morning I thought I had boarded the express from Zurich to Winterthur only to find myself its sole passenger when it stopped dead one station short of mine. I had been listening to an audiobook\u2014were my eyes closed? I had yet to pick up a syllable of German, so seeing was believing in those days\u2014and by the time I pressed pause, my car had been shunted onto an out-of-service side track. Note to future travelers on Swiss Rail: if your train is not parked inside a station, don’t even think of stepping out of it even if the emergency door release is<\/em> operable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When my friend Kenneth Ritley<\/a> worked for Swiss Rail, he oversaw the software that worked out the shared revenues of over 100 federated transportation systems that colluded to get you from Point A to Point Z, three countries away. According to Ken, the fare-splitting algorithm was a briar patch in a haystack. That’s because, concealed from the common traveler’s consciousness, is the fact that unlike airlines, which routinely federate local, regional, and national carriers to fly frictionless across an infrastructure shared only by birds, federated train systems ride along tracks they almost never own. On a rail journey from, say, Geneva to my favorite vista of the Alps in Wengen, I might change trains three times but easily travel on tracks owned by a dozen different interests. Ken’s software figured out how much of my (now) 2-inch-square ticket fare was paid to which bank, train operator, and rail owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Swiss system is an entangled crisscross of iron and language, its larger transportation network is even more impressive. Beyond its trademarked trains, over the years, the Swiss have scrambled a federation of feeder trams and buses so widespread one need only walk five minutes in any direction anywhere in the country to hitch some kind of ride. I never asked Ken about it, but since some rail passes entitle the traveler to hop on and off connector trams and buses, each time I rode, I imagined my fare being split into a million centimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But with all its implicate complexity\u2014in an industry gone paperless, if you can still find a printed timetable, you\u2019d never need firewood\u2014the ability to deliver me to a spot of my choosing at the promised moment is a hard-earned source of Swiss pride. After five years of riding them, saying that Swiss trains always run on time is not only a universal law; some days it can almost be said that your watch can be set by clocking the departure of the 11:32 express to Bern. I may have stepped by mistake onto the 11:34 to Basel, a courteous attendant promptly informing me of my error\u2014NOT\u2014but the 11:34 will get me to Bern on time, every time, whenever I hop on the wrong train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The word train is one I use when teaching my grandsons Winston and Theodore about homonyms, words whose spelling is identical but whose similarities end there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider, in addition to the trains I’ve mentioned so far, the following homonymous litany from the OED:<\/p>\n\n\n\n