Local trains, and heavy rains

A friend, Luke from San Francisco, took the train down from Paris yesterday morning for a visit. He caught the TGV (the high-speed train) at the Gare Montparnasse at 7:50 a.m. and arrived at the Tours TGV station (Saint-Pierre-des-Corps) at 8:50. He had 15 minutes to get on the local train to Saint-Aignan, which was scheduled to arrive here at 9:45. I went to pick him up at the station.

No train! I waited around on the platform for 10 minutes or so, and then I went into the station. On a TV monitor showing scheduled arrivals and departures, I saw that Luke's train was supposed to be 10 minutes late.

The Renaudie vineyard, looking toward La Renaudière

There was an old-style train with a locomotive sitting on the tracks on the side the train from Tours was supposed to come in on, and it wasn't moving. The engine was silent. A passenger started walking toward it and a station agent yelled at her: don't get on that train, it's not taking passengers and it's not going anywhere.

I kept looking up the tracks to see if I could see the train from Tours coming. And then I did; I could see its two headlights, like car headlights, on the tracks a kilometer or two away. It seemed to be sitting still.

Reflections in a puddle

Then a train going to Tours came through. After its departure, a station agent came out and opened up a big metal plate next to the tracks on the other side, pulled up a lever, and started switching the tracks as if he was enabling a bypass around the immobilized train to let the one Luke was on come into the station. It looked like he had it all set up so the incoming train could come around on the other set of tracks, but then nothing happened.

A young woman had driven up in a bright blue Citroën right after I'd arrived, and she kept coming and looking up an down the tracks too, and then going out and sitting in her car for a few minutes. I did the same. We noticed each other and exchanged a smile. Then she took it upon herself to go bang on the glass to ask the agents, who were now in their office, what the situation was. They had put up the guichet fermé sign — the ticket window was closed and they weren't giving out any information.

One of the agents came out and she asked how long the wait would be. He said he didn't know, but maybe an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Wow! They had to get another locomotive in to tow the broken-down locomotive and train away, and that would take a while.

La Renaudière, January 2008

Meanwhile, Luke and the other people on the train from Tours were going to have to sit there and wait, a mile or so from the Saint-Aignan-Noyers station. The woman asked if they could let the people get off the train out there, and he said no, for safety reasons that wasn't possible.

At that point, the woman got into her blue Citroën (not a 2CV, a much newer car) and drove away. My plan had been to pick up Luke at 9:45, go with him to the outdoor market in Saint-Aignan to get some lettuce, a piece of local goat cheese, and a galette des rois to accompany our lunch, and then go home. Walt was at home making a coq au vin.

So I thought, if it's going to be an hour, I might as well go to the nearby Intermarché supermarket and pick up the things I need. Then when Luke gets off the train at 11:00 or 11:30, we'll just stop in a boulangerie and get the galette des rois before going on home.

I drove back out to the main road and turned in on the little access road that leads into the shopping center where Intermarché is located. I kept thinking about that train sitting out there on the tracks. I wondered if it was parked next to a road or street. If I could get close enough to it with my car, maybe I would see Luke through a window and even be able to yell at him and tell him what was going on. I'd never driven over that way before; it's right next to a big grain elevator/silo you can see for miles around.

So I turned off by the déchetterie — the area's recycling center — onto a little road that crosses the railroad tracks, and then immediately turned left onto a sort of residential street that parallels the railroad tracks. It's lined with recently built bungalows with neat little yards and cars in their driveways. I'm sorry I didn't have my camera with me.

I passed the woman in the bright blue Citroën driving back the other way, toward the train station. And then there was the train. Where it was parked, the tracks run right next to the road. In other words, there aren't any houses on that side at that point, between the railroad tracks and the lane — the houses are just on the other side of the road. And there I saw people climbing down off the train with their babies and suitcases.

I drove by slowly but couldn't really see anybody through the tinted windows of the train cars. There was a young woman conductor standing in the doorway of one of the train cars, however, with a bunch of passengers standing behind her. It looked as if they wanted to get off the train but she wasn't letting them.

More reflections

I drove on by, found a place to turn around a few hundred yards up the road, and headed back to drive slowly past the train one more time. Maybe I'd see Luke. But I didn't see him. At the last moment, though, I decided to stop and try to talk to the conductor. I pulled off to the side, got out of the car, and yelled over, "Are you letting passengers off here?"

"No," she said, shaking her head with a resigned look on her face. "We're not allowed to." But there were people getting off the train out of the car behind the one she was guarding, and some of them — I remember a young woman with a toddler and a lot of suitcases — were getting into a black VW Golf that had stopped on the road with its emergency flashers on. At that point, at least it wasn't raining...

I yelled back at the conductor: "There's an American on the train and he might not understand the reasons for the delay. Can I talk to him?" She shook her head no, but then another woman popped up behind her and yelled out, "Is the American a blond guy?" Yes, I said.

"Well he just got off the train and got into a blue car driven by a young woman. They left in the direction of the Saint-Aignan train station." I told her I had seen that woman and her bright blue car at the station earlier, and thanked her for the information.

So I drove back to the train station. No blue car. No Luke. Damn! I called Walt from a phone booth and asked him if Luke had showed up. I thought if Luke remembered how to get to our house — he's visited two or three times before — maybe the woman in the blue Citroën had been going that way and had agreed to drop him off. But Walt hadn't seen anybody.

I stepped out of the phone booth, turned around to go back to my car, and there was Luke walking up the street. He had tried to call us on his cell phone but couldn't get a signal. Then he walked down the road a ways to see if he could get a signal farther on.

Luckily, we didn't miss each other. It was only about 10:30 and we were in the car on the way to the farmers' market in Saint-Aignan for our lettuce and cheese.

I asked him if they had told him he could get off the train out on the tracks. No, he said, but the doors weren't locked. So he and some others climbed down, and the woman in the blue Citroën took several of them to the station.

Life in a small town...