Postcard from London: Mind the gap!
I finally managed to escape chilly Scotland last week and worked my way down south to London, where the weather is a little more reasonable.
When I left this city in 2011, I suppose I was giving effect to a quote attributed by British diarist Samuel Johnson back in September 1777: ' he who is tired of London is tired of life’. In several ways, I suppose I was tired of the city and of its daily grind.
Apparently, I did not realise that somehow the city lingered in my thoughts and clung to me almost like a stubborn pimple that would not yield to lancing, with its many old, fond and exciting memories.
Perhaps, I was not really tired of London, even if I do not see myself resettling here. So far, I have been having a fabulous time, combining touristy things with an eating and drinking tour in response to invitations pouring in from my many old friends here.
Train memories, realities
As my clean, high-speed train sliced smoothly through the British countryside with its rolling, picturesque meadows on the way to London, with free wi-fi, phone charging points, comfortable seats and a drink from the trolley service on board, it occurred to me with a certain jolt that with my long stay back home in Ghana, I had almost forgotten what it felt like to sit in a proper train and how central an effective railway system is to a country’s development.
Even though I grew up in Tarkwa, famed back in the day as an important railway town, and regularly travelled by train from the town to school in Kumasi in the 1980s, our railways have become a distant memory for many of my generation who grew up in that iconic age, with iconic but largely forgotten railway towns such as Huni Valley and Oppong Valley.
How have we come to this? It is not as if the railways declined and literally disappeared because of a lack of patronage.
Tarkwa was a favourite means of transport for the traders who plied the route between Kumasi and Takoradi, dealing in salt, fish and many items, and I daresay the demand remains high.
Timber, manganese and bauxite all depended on the rail system as a cheaper and easier means of transport.
Rail travel does take the pressure off our road networks in terms of transporting bulky items.
London Tube marvels
Whilst our railway system is effectively dead and many of our citizens have never ridden a train in their lives, I shudder to think how public transport in the UK would fare without trains.
On the iconic London Underground system (also known as ‘the Tube’) alone, Transport for London (TfL) the 2023/24 financial year reported passenger income standing at approximately 5.2 billion pounds, with about four million journeys a day.
With more than 500 trains in service across the network - 100 plus of which are around 50-years-old - the Tube's frequent service is vital for commuters, shoppers and visitors to London, as well as supporting economic growth in London and around the country.
Today, the complex labyrinth of train lines running beneath the city is a far cry from 1863, when the Metropolitan Railway opened as the world’s first underground railway, with Baker Street as the first station.
The deepest tube station in London is Hampstead on the Northern line, with its platforms at a whopping depth of 58.5 metres (192 ft) below ground level.
The city of well over eight million residents would come to a complete gridlock if the Tube were to break down, and whenever staff have gone on strike, the misery of commuters has been widespread.
Just as we were taught in school that ‘Egypt is the Nile and the Nile is Egypt’, I believe it can be safely said that ‘London is the Tube and the Tube is London.’
Historical ironies, no more excuses
Ironically, whilst the revolutionary steam engine in the UK back in the 19th century powered the country’s industrial revolution, opened her up and contributed largely to her prosperity, the British introduced railways in the then Gold Coast with the primary aim of accessing the colony’s natural resources in the interior from the coast to help feed the factories in Europe.
More than a century later, little has changed. Not much has changed beyond the original rail route designed for specific reasons.
Our country’s position, replicated across the continent, remains that of hewers of wood and drawers of water, happily shipping off our resources to the west for a pittance and a mess of potage.
Notwithstanding the injustices and brutal realities of the past, which continue to seep in today in the global order, I believe strongly that harping on about the past is not particularly helpful and is indeed counterproductive, not just with the collapse of our railways but also in literally every aspect of our national life.
We have simply run out of excuses.
It is true that some efforts have been made in the past to bring back our railways. But more needs to be done to bring life to whatever has been conceived on the drawing boards and at policy meetings.
I have a few lunch invitations from friends in various parts of the UK over the coming weeks, and as a Tarkwa boy, I am looking forward to the train trips. But beyond that, I yearn for the day when I will catch the 8.23 a.m. train from Dome Pillar 2 to Circle or the 7.18 a.m. express train from Achimota to Kumasi.
Maybe the gap between my dreams and the realistic prospect is a tad too wide.
Well, as they announce frequently on the London Tube when the trains pull in, ‘mind the gap between the train and the platform’.
May the gap in my mind close soon.
