all the
FUNICULARS *

Ah, Euston. What a letdown you are after Paddington. Your passengers must wait in a giant brutalist rectangular space with not even so much as a narrow ledge in it to rest a paper cup of coffee for a moment to avoid growing a third hand to fish out of a pocket the pass to show at the gate (the second hand being busy holding the bag of two croissants and having under its arm a newspaper).

Are there any positive words I can say? Yes. One: The same chain of coffee stands with the good croissants is here. Two: Google Maps Directions (and other online services) give the expected departure platform, something the departure boards in the station do not do, and this nugget of information helps positioning oneself to best advantage in the great cavity of Euston and thereby reducing the tension that surrounds getting to the correct gate in time to snag a good unreserved seat on the train. Three: Virgin Trains include on the departure board little icons of the lettered carriages that suggest how full of reserved seats each one is. Walking along the platform is faster than walking inside the train. Knowing the likely platform (the prediction was only off by one) and knowing the odds on which carriage may offer that elusive window seat with the word "available" over it—I felt like an insider.

The Euston train shed can be well likened to an unfinished concrete cellar.

My itinerary shows a long stopover at Birmingham. I could have taken the following train for a shorter connection, but I planned to take the train I did in order to get in a short walk outside. Good move—the later one was more full of reserved seats. I'd been to Brum in 2000 and 2001 in connection with a book promotion, and stayed a couple of nights in a small hotel near the station. Back then New Street station's main entrance faced away from the city center, and the most obvious city center entrance involved walking through a shopping mall called the Pallasades [sic]. Despite these gaffes in functional design I found that the railway station, when I reached it, was compact and easy to understand, an impressive thing because it is a very busy station at a crossroads of the rail network. And so I was surprised to hear in 2014 that it was voted Worst Railway Station in Britain. I realize that as a veteran of New York Penn Station, my standards are low. Did those voters even go to Euston?

On my Birmingham walk I stayed within a block or so of the station. I saw the tracks in the street that were laid since my last visit, that extend the Metro tram into the heart of the city. I soon found New Street, the street, and my favorite, the narrow but useful Needless Alley with its nineteenth-century iron sign.

But what of New Street, the station? It is still under a shopping mall, but a completely different one called Grand Central. I wanted to see how well they did with the improvements. To be sure it is brighter inside than it was, and the shops are more busy, but successfully combining a shopping mall and a railway station does require some separation of purpose. New York Grand Central Terminal for example has a large central open space in which passengers find their departure gate free of commercial obstruction. Not this.

The departure boards told me that I needed platform 5b, and with less than fifteen minutes to go, in a slight panic I looked around and realized I did not know how to find it. When I happened to spot the gates for 5a and a few other "a" platforms I expected the access to 5b to be within sight, but it was not. One of the cheerful staff directed me to cross a sea of shoppers to another entrance, from which I followed a plain corridor offering access to several "b" platforms one after another until I reached my goal. Having arrived down on 5b, I noticed that not far along the same platform there was 5a. Of course.

My train evidently began at Birmingham International (the airport) and would pull in at New Street 5b as its second stop. A repeated announcement told us to be sure to use the first two carriages for Aberystwyth, because the train would split. There was no word on how long the train was and no sign of where the lead carriage would stop, so the place to stand for the first two carriages was up to my keen observation of the local passengers. The train that came in was a 158 Sprinter. A total of two carriages. I took advice and entered one of the first two... of the two carriages.

The train operating company from here is Transport for Wales, which when spoken or even read carelessly, will seem to be the name of a freight company with a specialty handling large fish.[note 1] Trafnidiaeth Cymru by contrast is totally clear except as to proper pronunciation (f like v, ae like the vowel in high, c like k, y like the vowel in look, and the final u barely there like uh— Welsh is phonetic, they say.)

The National Sheep Association puts the sheep population of the United Kingdom at 33 million. I saw many of them.

An hour later we reached Shrewsbury, our last call in England. It is a huge station, but we stopped barely into it, not even under the canopy. The train staff changed here—from English to Welsh? After a few moments there was the bump of another Sprinter coupling on behind us. Now I was in one of the first two carriages. Good. But not for long. We departed Shrewsbury running in the other direction, so they were the last two carriages. When the guard onboard asked me my destination she confirmed I was in the right car.

Another hour and twenty minutes brought us to Machynlleth, where the destinations of the first and last two carriages were explained for the last time and passengers were urged to move to the correct ones if they were not in them already. I grabbed the photo above from inside the train on the way back.

The name of this place is sometimes spoken just Mach, with ch as in Scottish or German. It's challenging. The first part, Machyn, is something like McCoon, stress on the second syllable, not too bad. But look what's next. The Welsh ll is a unique consonant, sometimes spoken as fl, as the train announcement robot did. But that's not right. My Welsh friend Andrew once demonstrated it to me. Blow air out of one side of your closed mouth, maybe while trying to say fl. The thing is, with this name no sooner you've done that but you have to spit out a very short vowel and th. This one definitely separates the Welsh from the posers.

The parting of ways occurs a few minutes later at Dovey Junction, Cyffordd Dyfi, a classic "junction" station in the middle of nowhere, offering nothing to speak of but an unroofed platform between the branches and the public access of a footpath across the meadows. The junction is named for the adjacent River Dovey, Afon Dyfi. The name reveals that Afon, pronounced Avon, is simply the word for river in Welsh, and a cognate word in old British is the basis for the several rivers Avon in England. So their names are River River. In Wales there is an Afon Afan.

I think my view above of Afon Dyfi is after Dovey Junction. The Aberystwyth branch runs for a time along the marshy riverbank populated by water birds and (inevitably) sheep, and then quite close to the sea, before turning inland to find the valley of the Rheidol and approach its terminal.

The word aber refers to the mouth of a river. Two rivers reach the sea at Aberystwyth, the Rheidol nearer the station and the town, and the namesake Ystwyth immediately to the south. (An imaginary English form of this name would be Ystwythmouth, pronounced Ustwuthmuth.)

Yr hen orsaf, the old station, was shared till very recently with the Vale of Rheidol Railway, a narrow-gauge steam line that is moving into its own quarters close by. As you see the signs have not yet been changed. Much of the large station house is now a pub named for the Welsh phrase.

I stopped for sustenance at the White Horse, proud of its steak pies and justifiably so, the first one I have had that was a slice of a larger pie and not a self-contained pastry. Being in Wales I wanted a Welsh brew, so I chose Brains SA, named I am told for the Brains brewery rather than for a small chunk of brains dropped in each vat for flavor like the pork in pork and beans.

Below, we take a walk across town and along the sea, on a cool day that must have discouraged the crowds.

Rheilffordd y Graig is literally Railroad (of) the Rock. Rheil is the English word in Welsh disguise, and ffordd is the word for road (ff is f (since f is v), and dd is a voiced th). I discussed this with the ticket agent in the station, who appreciated my interest.

The proper name of the railway does not include that of the town nor of the hill, which is Craig-glais or Constitution Hill. Yes, Craig. Graig is the "soft mutation" of Craig that occurs after y. That is all I will say. And close to all I know.

Like most funiculars this one is not worked purely by gravity, but has a motor at the top that is assisted by the weight of the car going down. Also like most, it has a cable (a double cable again) only between the upper ends of the cars, so it is easy to tell in the picture which track has a car at the lower station.

An unusual feature of this funicular is that the grade is not the same all the way up. The lowest part seems to be the steepest, but above the hump it still varies a little as it goes. The cars have a stepped floor.

There were once four footbridges over the line, three of which are still in place, and the abutments for the lowest bridge are still visible. The hill is open to hikers so accommodation for them to cross freely is important.

Let's ride up to the top!

I went down to the first bridge to get a good picture of the top station and a view of the railway looking down.

The top of the hill offers stunning views, and the Welsh coastal path runs through. Below, looking north and south.

There is a cafe at the top, and also a camera obscura, an old tradition here. Let go of a pound at the entrance and go in. This is a good one. There's even a joystick to move the mirror around a little bit. Compare this image to the one above.

The camera obscura building also features a charming model of the cliff railway, which was not moving when I was there. I love that... "ch" as in German or Scottish, "oo" like "boo"... Stoppey-ooch, Edrich-ooch Gooran-de-ooch Remember to do that. Something like that.

What's this? Have we accidentally stumbled across the back door for employees? No. This is the main and only entrance to the upper station of the Rheilffordd y Graig. It's got a different feel from the lower station. I guess people know what it is, so who needs a sign, right? It's kind to offer us a rubbish bin as we pass.

I went back the way I came. I took my time looking at shop windows along that street you saw earlier. One of them offered a Welsh scrabble set, with double letters like ll treated as a single tile. There were children's books in Welsh. I found a store to get a good bottle of Welsh spring water. I didn't kill enough time, so I ended up waiting more than a half hour in Yr Hen Orsaf, the station, not the pub.

Just outside the station and down a street I did notice a pub sign with a very sarcastic name, so I give you that as a last glimpse of Aberystwyth.

By the time we reached Birmingham I was hungry again. It wasn't going to be three breakfasts and forage this day. Back in the morning I noticed a large pub called The Railway right outside New Street station, so for the name alone I had to go there. On many of these days I did not plan a specific train back, and so I give no timings in the itinerary unless I happen to remember. Back to Euston... and back to the hotel. Sleep.