Handbags & Massive Losses: Everything Wrong With The Railway

By Yudhanjaya Wijeratne –October 14, 2015

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

I take the train to work.

Like a lot of people, I wake up every morning and cast a bleary eye on the clock. There’s a train at 8:10. Good. I can reach the station at 7:50 AM, enough time to buy a ticket and realize that there’s nowhere for me to sit. All is normal.

Sri Lankan trains are divided into “Express” and “Slow” variants. The difference is that the express trains only stop at designated ‘major’ stations, like Gampaha, Ragama, Dematagoda, Maradana and Colombo Fort. The slow trains are meant to pick up those from the little stations that pepper the land in between – like Horape, where I live.

I suppose in theory, this was meant to quickly and efficiently move the larger populations between popular hubs and let us peasants take the slow trains. It makes sense, right? Places like Horape are where people come from. Nobody really wants to go to Horape.

Unfortunately, whoever designed this system forgot to tell people to stop reproducing. What happens is that a veritable wagonload of people get on at these ‘little’ stations, like Enderamulla. These people are stuffed into cramped, sweaty carriages, packed like poorly dressed sardines in a can.

Photo- Eran Wickramaratne – Deputy Minister of Highways and Investment Promotion boarded train/ Picture via Eran’s Facebook. 

This is where the Sri Lankan ‘bus mentality’ comes into full play. You will be pushed against. You will be pressed. Various people will hang on to you for dear life. That one dumbass will spread-eagle himself in front of the doors, jamming an elbow right in front of your face. That other dumbass will pull down a window, presumably with the intention of speeding up death by CO2. There will be, and this is statistically guaranteed, a bunch of women hanging onto that pole in the middle, preventing anyone else from actually getting more than a few feet into the carriage.                                        Read More