Tag Archives: Train station

Sep 11 2019
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Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Tourism, Trains, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

The Waverley – never forget.

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The Shangri-La.

I try to avoid my former place of work these days because the experiences – which belong to what I refer to as the East Coast Epoch 2010-2012 – were so epic. Not epic like a Wagner-infused helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now (1979), but something a little bit more transcendent – the comedy and the banter. And I’ve never seen so many fruitcakes in all my life. Public spaces involving transport are microcosms of society. People are nuts.

My fondness for The Waverley is probably nostalgia, pretending in retrospect it was more enjoyable than it was. But it’s like that with most memories; time adds gloss to the mundane. I do, however, know more about trains than any topic aside from the drug and dietary habits of Adolf Hitler. So there’s always that.

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Jun 19 2019
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Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Scotland, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Mark Renton Street, Edinburgh.

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Calton Road this afternoon. It struck me today that I’ve never once snapped this Mark-Renton-gets-run-over spot, the manic laugh he offers to the driver an iconic snippet from Trainspotting (1996).

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I was an employee (an actual ‘trainspotter’, no less) of East Coast Railways a decade ago and used to sneak out the back of Waverley Station to this Renton hideaway for a cheeky fag and a can of Monster, my walkie-talkie in hand just in case my absence was noted. Come to think of it, 30% of my ‘working day’ consisted of either this filmic interlude or listening to Kanye West tunes in the ScotRail bogs.

“Where are you?”

“Just having a shite, I’ll be on the platform in a minute.”

Those were the days.

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Oct 21 2017
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Edinburgh, Tourism, Trains, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

The Waverley.

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Here we enter the circus, a veritable Looney Land. I used to work here in my ‘Wilderness Years’ 2010-2012 and the shit I saw is more than enough material for the basis of a manky neo-gothic crime drama set in the early twenty-tens. Ah, those were the days – before Trump, Brexit, and fidget spinners being habitually revered as the panacea to Autism. My highlight in ‘Stalag EH1 1BB’ was a disgruntled passenger throwing punches at a rail cop because the vexed customer didn’t like the quality of alcoholic beverage he was served in the bar – it didn’t meet his esoteric ‘standards’.

I highly recommend a day trip to The Waverley. Bring a packed lunch and a Polaroid.

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