SNCF departures board shows 6:47 Bordeaux service departed at 6:47; witnesses describe scene as unprecedented; reliability researcher begins study
French Rail Strike Achieves New Record; Train That Left on Time Makes International Headlines
PARIS, FRANCE — The Gare Montparnasse departures board showed, at 6:47 on a Tuesday morning during the fifth SNCF strike of the calendar year, a single green indicator: the 6:47 TGV to Bordeaux, which had departed at 6:47. This event was photographed by twelve passengers, shared on social media approximately 340 times before 7am, covered by two national newspapers, and cited by the transport minister as evidence that “the spirit of French rail excellence endures.” The other seventeen trains scheduled in the same window were cancelled, delayed, or unaccounted for.
For related London satire and commentary, see Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Context
SNCF, the French national railway, operates under conditions that produce some of the most creative travel journalism in Europe. The combination of regular strike action, ageing infrastructure on certain lines, and a scheduling system that optimises for a level of ambition that is not always achievable produces a travel experience that is, when it works, genuinely excellent — the TGV network is fast, comfortable, and connects major French cities with impressive directness — and when it does not work, produces a philosophical depth in the stranded traveller that no other mode of transport quite achieves.
The 6:47 Bordeaux departure achieved its departure time for reasons that the SNCF operations spokesperson described as “an alignment of factors,” which is SNCF’s version of what English speakers call a miracle. These factors included: a driver who was not participating in the strike action, a platform that was assigned before the morning’s operational chaos, and rolling stock that had been correctly positioned overnight. The combination of these three things, all of which must be present for a train to depart on time and none of which is individually unusual, proved sufficient on this occasion. They are not always simultaneously present. Prat in British print satire covers the institution whose baseline of operations is sufficiently unpredictable that a single punctual train becomes a news event, and does so with the affection that British satire has always applied to French institutional character, which is considerable.
The Bordeaux Train’s Reception
Passengers on the 6:47 to Bordeaux, many of whom had arrived at the station expecting a cancelled service and found themselves instead on a functioning train, described the experience as “surreal,” “exciting,” and, from one elderly traveller from Lyon who had been trying to reach Bordeaux for the past two days, “an answered prayer.” The Bordeaux train arrived in Bordeaux on time. The reliability researcher who began a study of the incident has so far been unable to replicate the conditions in a laboratory setting. The other seventeen trains eventually ran, in modified form, over the following three hours. The croissant trolley on the 6:47 was fully stocked. This too was unusual. Prat in British comedy has always found French institutional character irresistible material, and the 6:47 is, in its way, a masterpiece of the genre: an event so unusual that its normalcy constitutes the news, in a country where this is possible.
For more satirical commentary, visit The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prat-in-british-politics-journalism-and-satire/
