The Flying Banana

The flying banana is a network rail train that is used to check rail lines for hidden faults. It uses scanners and video cameras and other technical equipment to monitor the state of the rails across the network.

This train looks in design like any other train you might see on the network, except for the fact that it comes in a bright yellow livery. Hence its nickname. It stands out from the crowd. You can’t miss it.

The reason I bring this up is because I spend a lot of time outdoors at the edge of the creek, looking directly across to the Coombe viaduct. (I also spend a lot of time beside or underneath the Coombe viaduct, but that’s not relevant here). You hear the trains from across the water and you see them as they pass over the viaduct. The surrounding scenery is predominantly green – grass and trees and fields. The trees and shrubbery are a deep green, even in a barren summer such as the one we are currently experiencing and the ones we are likely to regularly experience in the future.

Most trains down here are run by GWR and the GWR livery is currently a dark shade of green. Trains crossing the viaduct are almost camouflaged. You can barely make them out against the background. What would be an iconic image, a train seen in the distance crossing an impressive structure high above the water is in effect neutered and unremarkable.

To understand this, you need to experience it. You need to be witness to those rare (but not uncommon) moments when a train like the flying banana crosses the viaduct. The vivid colours of the train and the muted tones of the backdrop are the perfect compliment. It stands out. It pops. It’s beautiful. It’s art.

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I’m not a trainspotter. I’ve never stood on a train platform watching trains going past. I’ve never photographed engines or carriages; I’ve never scribbled down the numbers in a notebook or recorded them later onto a spreadsheet. I don’t know what a class 125 is or what a Pacer is (or was). I’m a train enthusiast. No, scrub that, a rail enthusiast. I admire it as a form of travel. I like the architecture of it – the rails, the bridges, the stations and the viaducts. I like the sounds of it.

As a child I had a train set or two. A simple plastic set, where you had to push the carriages and engines by hand along connected lengths of red tracks  – the kind of thing I’d co-opt my sister into playing with me against her wishes. Later I graduated to Hornby. Metal tracks tacked into hardboard, powered by electricity or a chunky battery pack. I never scaled it up to a full on layout. I never had the space or the time or the money. Music and books and other interests superseded it.

I could indulge my love for trains in the real world.

When I turned forty I wrote my first (and only) novel. (I’d co-written a novel before that, the infamous product of the 3 day novel contest, about which I wrote elsewhere.) The novel was terrible, but there was a strand within the book that concerned trains. The book’s narrator had a best friend called Ernie. Ernie was a postman by trade, but at weekends he was researching for a book he planned to write about the lost railways of Essex. All the ghost stations and closed lines that had been the victim of the shortsighted Beeching cuts in the 1960s.

Ernie was a quiet guy, a bit of a loner. His friend (the narrator) would drive him out to all these different remote spots where they would seek out and record what did or didn’t remain of these former railway sites. The Ernie character was me and he got teased a lot. He would gently protest that he was happy in his life, working as a postman and then pottering about researching his book at the weekends. He didn’t need a girl (or boy) friend.

The narrator would contest this – the narrator would sometimes poke fun at him. “You only think you’re happy, because you don’t know what you’re missing out on.”

The point was, the narrator led a complicated life. He’d been married, but now he was separated and lived alone. His wife had joined a religious cult. His daughter had been struck mute after being struck by lightning. The flat he lived in had been located above an estate agents, but now the shop had changed hands and was about to reopen as a retailer of adult lingerie. Locals were gathering outside to protest this change of use taking place in their sheltered and conservative Essex town. There was a lot going on for the narrator and most of it was not good.

The same could be said for the novel. There was also a whole other strand about Western fiction and a local second hand bookstore where the owner resembled the Bill Bailey character from Black Books.

Anyway, I loved the segments featuring Ernie. The way he was the butt of every joke, but in reality he was the sanest, sweetest guy and he had his life sorted out perfectly. He was happy - and that ultimately was what bugged his friend so much.

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The current government have begun a process of putting all the train operators back into public ownership. It was a capital crime that they were ever sold off – same with so much else that we gave away to private investors under Thatcher. This is a small good news story. Nothing will change overnight. Trains and their livery won’t be replaced until they need to be. But eventually the dark green of GWR will disappear. Great British Railways have their own distinct livery, it’s not so far removed from the old Network South East – for those old enough to remember that era. It’s all blues and reds and whites to symbolise the UK flag. It’s not what I’d call beautiful and it won’t really stand out much more than the current GWR does when crossing Coombe viaduct. Which is a shame.

I just hope they never rebrand the track testing train. I’d hate to lose the flying banana. It’s a small piece of joy in my life when I get to see it. And I like to celebrate the small moments of joy. Without them, life is kind of empty.