'Modern' Trains

I feel a touch or two sick. Dizzy, and just ever-so-slightly wrong. Modernity at first glance - as ever - is the cause.

Perhaps three or four years ago, a new high speed train entered service in the UK. Initially, it was a Virgin West Coast phenomenon, since extended to that company's Cross Country routes, but this particular specimen was a Midland Mainline beast [that is to say, train]. They look sleek; they look shiny; more than anything, they look modern. Their predecessors were solid looking, but worn. Features that were cumbersome on the old trains are now given over to the gadget. Automatic doors; light-responsive taps; thin, curved handrests with headphone sockets; coffee machines rather than hot water and satchets. That sort of thing.

Now, aesthetically, they're not my bag. I'll make no secret of my occasionally luddite tendencies. Skeptic of myself that I can be, I grudgingly accepted them and thought little more of it. After all, they were a bit faster, and when stuck in the old vestibule, I did often fear that the by-necessity opening windows would tempt me into decapitation by curiosity. Then I started to notice that my head - though very much in situ - would be swirling come the end of a journey. I'd never quite be able to read the book I'd taken with me. I'd finish the journeys a touch nauseous, and with my eyes stinging. The lighting of the carriages, you see, is unnaturally garish, even if, given the aesthetic it's pursuing, its encasement and positioning cannot be faulted.

But here's the thing: it's not an isolated irritation, not a one-off case of overexuberance on the designers' part. Scratch the surface, and the whole veneer starts to give way. The new seats look modern, but they're slimmer than the ones they replaced - in spite of occupying the same proportion of the track - less comfortable, and don't recline. There's a modern, digital screen for recording reservations, but you can no longer see at a glance whether a carriage is fully reserved, and the aisles are continually congested with people straining to read lurid green pixels. The bathrooms have modern all-in-one soap dispensers, hand driers and taps, all controlled by light-sensitive LED. But the floors still run with piss, and the LEDs are arranged such that only fingers shrivelled by anorexia and the masochistic employment of a nail-file could operate any one function in isolation. The hot drinks machines are shiny, with a picture button for every kind of drink, but the coffee is an acrid parody, and the hot chocolate is surely tepid Nesquik. And all this encased in a coated plastic edifice that luminates under those hypernatural lights.

The coffee should have been a clue. We've seen all this before. For something to be modern in Britain, it must above all focus on adornment, and through its form a hyperactive rebuttal of all that is 'old' British design. Shiny buttons, flashing lights, electric machines, as little as possible done by the hand of a human. All encased in plastic, of course.

The contrast may be with continental Europe - a German train with barely concealed metal grating but natural lighting, comfortable seating, a cheap and serviceable restaurant car; a French espresso machine made of plain metal and which needs refilling for every fresh shot - but the parallel is more illuminating. America's fun, and the fact it's all so pretend and plastic and stylelessly consumeristic has a great deal to do with that. But really, it's all branding in lieu of substance. Tesco Finest or Sainsbury's Taste the Difference aren't good food; they're moderate food using stylish packaging and the right words to create a superficial approximation of quality.

It may be luddite, but give me decent and brutish rather than stylishly shit. There was always something nagging me that little bit extra about those trains, and now I think I understand why. And even the most cursory extension of the thought troubles me, because I fear the phenomenon pervades rather more than just trains, coffee and groceries.