Encounters on the Train
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
March 2026
Encounters on the Train
A quick Google search flagged up a 2014 study, 'Mistakenly Seeking Solitude', by Professor Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder from the University of Chicago who gave people getting on to a train a $5 Starbucks gift card to either sit in deliberate solitude for their journey or to start a conversation with a stranger. While the majority of participants predicted they’d enjoy solitude more, researchers found it was those people who talked to strangers who reported an overwhelmingly more pleasurable experience. The authors wrote “Connecting with others increases happiness, but strangers in close proximity routinely ignore each other.” Although chatting with strangers may not bring lasting happiness (though one can always hope ...), it can bring brief moments of joy and an insight into other lives.
I must admit to loving the solitude of sitting on a train with a book and cup of tea as the scenery races past. When I was younger, I would talk to anyone and they seemed inclined to talk to me. Maybe a combination of middle age and a million preoccupations make a silent journey so precious. And obviously many people work on the train, so as not to waste a second, building a ‘Do not Disturb’ force field around themselves. Now I am older, I do find I am talking to strangers again. In this way, I have discovered that many Cornish when heading to London spend the whole weekend feasting on the big musicals: Abba Experience, Hamilton etc. I remember conversing on the Eurostar with a young American woman who had missed her plane to Monaco where she was running a PR event at the Grand Prix. She had unfortunately travelled to the wrong London airport, Luton not City, hence the reason for being on the train. Then there was a young man, travelling from Bristol to Plymouth who described in enthusiastic detail his Games Design Course at Falmouth Uni as well as his Board Games Club. Decades ago I met a woman from Ghana on a train to Heathrow who was meeting family. She was over two hours late because she had been baking but didn’t seem concerned that they had been waiting for her for so long despite having travelled from Africa!
Probably my most memorable conversation was on a train from Lisbon to Paris back in the late1980s. I was returning home from Lisbon where I had been teaching English as a Foreign Language. The carriage was small with bench seats facing each other. There was space for about eight people. In my memory, there was just myself and another woman who must have been in her eighties. She had a fur wrap around her neck and her once elegant jacket and skirt were now faded though well-pressed. Her thick make-up and over-coiffed hair gave the impression of someone yearning for former times of youth and beauty. Apart from a nodded greeting, we didn’t speak as we sped through Portugal. But when we got to the Spanish border, the train had an enforced stop for a couple of hours because the track gauge in Spain was different to the one in Portugal and the train had to be customised. I think, hope, they are now compatible. It was a tedious wait so we began to converse in French which was neither of our native tongues. She came over as a haughty, proud woman but one who suffered from acute melancholy and self-pity. The Portuguese call it ‘saudades’ i.e. a longing for something lost and irretrievable from the past. With a strong sense of drama she related that she was a White Russian exile living in Paris; one of the wealthy families who had been forced to flee Russia during the revolution in 1917. Quite possibly with the family jewels sewn into her underwear. Now, seventy years later, she lived in reduced circumstances in a small flat in Paris with just a single maid, never having been reconciled to the loss of what she considered to be her birth right. She looked me in the eye and said ‘You can never possibly know. It is harder to have known wealth and lost it, than to never have had it at all …’ While I may not have agreed with her sentiment, she was right I could never have known what she had been through being, for her, on the wrong side of history. I am so glad we spoke.
Fascinating as these conversations can be, I would caution against talking across a table where there is hot tea in the vicinity. On one rather not be remembered occasion, I was sat opposite an incredibly handsome man. So much so, that when I took the lid off my tea, I poured it down my front …! Don't ask me why. I was then too embarrassed, and drenched to look at him let alone chat. He, poor man, must have been baffled. Then many years later when my daughter was small, we were travelling home from Chester on a very full train and lucky to have a seat. The man opposite made it very clear that he was not at all happy to be sharing his journey with a toddler. For some reason, I decided I needed a cup of tea which my lovely cherubic daughter then knocked all over the man. He was enraged and despite all my apologies, demanded payment for dry cleaning. On that occasion, I may not have accorded him my usual level of politeness and moved to another carriage with the baby, leaving my husband to deal with the aftermath …
In 2019 the BBC set up a scheme called ‘Chat Day’ to encourage people to start up conversations with strangers. West Coast Virgin trains had a designated a 'chat carriage' on each train, while the bus company Arriva placed 'conversation starter' cards on vehicles throughout the UK. And in the same year a trainline in San Francisco ran a speed dating event on Valentine's Day to encourage strangers to get chatting. From the photos they looked like they didn't need much encouragement.
I really recommend Alexi Sayle’s Strangers on a Train on BBC Radio 4. He travels across the country and is lucky to have a producer who scouts out random, interesting people for him to ‘interview’ or chat with on the train. He has some great and surprising conversations. This is the link to the episode where he is travelling from Bristol to Penzance.
If anyone has any good conversations or encounters to share, please do. We're off to Tresco on the Isles of Scilly with friends next week. Very excited. Sadly can't travel there by train so can't feature it in the blog, unless I decide to break my own rules ... Enjoy the Spring; it's been a long time coming.
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