John's Blog No.93 - Pensions-Diversion

A light diversion this with ashort tale of futuristic travel, which could become real within ten years if HS2 was replaced by vacuum transport VT1 at a tenth of the cost. The technology is there and proven. We were up early and excited, it was our first adventure into the newly opened rapid transit system, which all our friends were raving about. It was dubbed as extra terrestrial travel because it was out of this world. The Day Out - Our electric taxi arrived on time at the door of our Manchester home7.00 am to take us to the terminal; we had paid for and downloaded our boarding passes on the web, packed our bag for a day break in London, whose main object was to travel on this new high speed airless system. The terminal was not what we expected, it had neither the vastness of a railway station or the endless corridors of an airport, just a small building with two doorways, arrivals and departures, the latter having two entrances standard and reserved, leading to a single boarding platform. Inserting our boarding pass released the gate and we entered. There was a line of car like capsules waiting with passengers stepping into them, it was instant boarding and we stepped into the first one available. It was a bullet shaped car with three rows of seats, two facing and one back to back to take six passengers with luggage space at each end. The two children scrambled into the front seat and my parents, wife and myself slipped into the facing seats, stepping down from the platform and slipping our bag into the back compartment. Once seated we were told to insert our boarding card and fasten our seat belts by a voice inside the car and then a canopy slid up from one side, over our heads to seal the car. We moved off immediately into the airlock, paused momentarily whilst a large door sealed behind us, cutting out the remaining daylight; we could feel a change in pressure much like in an aircraft and then we moved off again. We could see lights from other cars in front and behind us, as we were travelling in a convoy. The voice reassured us that all was well and that the cabin was pressurised and air conditioned even though there was no air outside, the lack of air meant no wind resistance with thermos flask insulation and the need for air conditioning. The same voice confirmed our destination, said there was little traffic and we would therefore be travelling at the top speed of 340 mph with a journey time of 30 minutes. There was a monitor with a route map and speed indicator plus all the normal travel items of music, TV, Computer terminal, etc. We could see the speed rising rapidly and in less than a minute we were at full speed, there were no motor noise and the silent linear motor had switched off by then, it was uncannily quiet no noise at all and a little claustrophobic. The trace on the map moved slowly and steadily towards London. However we appeared to have barely settled down, when we were well on our way with little time to read the short leaflet explaining our revolutionary mode of travel, to be followed very shortly by a five minute arrival warning. We hadn’t really noticed that we were underground as the journey time was so short, just like a long tunnel or a Metro journey and so smooth that one could not believe that one had been travelling at all. It was a bit of a shock to step out at the London terminal, realise one was actually there, that it was just after eight with the whole day ahead.