Making peace with noisy rail passengers

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

When it comes to travelling by rail I have it down to a fine art. I try if possible to travel on off-peak time trains and know where the quietest seats are.

But there are occasions when my plans don’t quite work out and just that happened some weeks ago.

I sat in my usual seat, the coach was quiet and I was delighted with myself. But the delight did not last too long. Three or four stops on, some adults and a large number of children boarded. They were loud and unruly. 

I presumed then and still presume they were members of the Travelling community. For a moment or two I thought of moving to another coach but decided against as that would have been a rude thing to do. I stayed put. The roaring and screaming moved up the decibel range and mixed with that was a large quantity of bad language. 

Regularly I heard adults tell children to keep quiet but doing so using strong expletives. And once that happened the children would begin to cry. It was a vicious circle and it kept going for the entire journey. 

But it did appear the children were generally well behaved. I got the impression most of the the shouting and bad language came from the adults.

In the midst of the bedlam, shouting and bad language there were moments of quiet but they never lasted too long. While all this was happening I was texting a friend and giving him a blow for blow account of how my most recent rail journey was going. I’m not the most patient of people but on this occasion I decided I was going to sit there, say nothing and mind my own business.

We were approximately ten minutes from the next station when one of the adults asked me if I might know the time of their connecting train. 

She asked the right man. Not only was I able to tell her the time of the train but I could also tell her from which platform her train was departing and when it would arrive at her destination. She was delighted with the information and thanked me profusely. 

One thing led to another and we began chatting with one another. I asked her where they were going and told her where I was heading. After about two or three minutes chatting I felt very much at ease in her company. I can’t speak for her but I got the definite impression that she too was at ease talking to me.

Yes, the shouting, the bad language is never acceptable. But the question I keep asking myself is, had I made up my mind about those passengers the moment they boarded the train? I’m inclined to think I had. What if I had politely asked them to keep their voices down and desist from using bad language?

And I could have done it in a friendly and pleasant manner. We could have got chatting much earlier.

But what strikes me most about the whole experience is that once the passenger and I began speaking to one another the ice was broken and we were both engaged with each other in a friendly and pleasant manner.

We all need to talk and listen to one another far more than we do. It’s important to look outside our own little bubbles. How often do we make up our minds about people never having spoken with them?