The people who run the splendid new Dublin-Belfast train service at last seem to have realised what a dreadful deprivation they have been imposing on its second class ticket-holders in recent months by refusing to serve us breakfast. I love having breakfast on trains. In the 25 or so years I have been travelling the cross-border railway, I estimate that I have eaten around 500 breakfasts cooked and served by the employees of CIE/Iarnrod Eireann, Northern Ireland Railways and, in latter years, Dubel Catering. I am, by any definition, a "regular" in their dining cars.
Or I was until they effectively discontinued their service last September. Until then breakfast on the 8 o'clock train to Belfast had been one of my life's small pleasures. As I pedalled through the rainy Dublin suburbs towards Connolly Station, the gloomy prospect of a period of hard labour ahead in the North was lightened by the thought of the buttered toast as the sun rose over Dundalk Bay, or the scrambled eggs and rashers as we sped past Slieve Gullion.
Smiling presences
I would take half an hour to peruse The Irish Times and make a few notes for my first appointment. Then, somewhere north of Drogheda, I would stroll up to the dining car, where the smiling presences of Paddy Melvin, John Nally and their colleagues would ensure that the inner man was fortified for the difficult tasks ahead.
As the train emerged from the hills of South Armagh and hurtled along the picturesque valley which contains the Newry Canal, there would be a passing moment of contentment in the old-fashioned and - it has to be said - rather shabby dining compartment. "Next stop, Portadown" crackled the intercom, and we were back to black northern reality with a bang.
All that is a thing of the past with the ultra-modern French-built Enterprise Express which entered service last autumn. This promised to cut the fastest journey time between Ireland's two major cities to an hour and 45 minutes - a promise it has not yet kept because of continuing work on the line north of Lisburn - and provided air conditioning, automatic sliding doors, space age digital toilets and other wonders of eve of third millennium rail travel.
But it didn't provide breakfast - at least not for us ordinary citizens clutching our increased price second class tickets in all but the top two carriages. The first time I wandered up to the bar where breakfast was supposed to be served, I was told they had not yet finished serving the first class passengers and I would have to wait. I had to wait until we were 25 minutes out of Belfast, giving me barely time to bolt my fry before we pulled into Central Station.
After that, it went from bad to worse. Between October and May, I must have travelled eight or nine times on the early morning Belfast train. When I asked the sullen young man or woman with the tea trolley was there any chance of a bit of breakfast later on, I got one of three answers: "They're too busy serving the First Class"; "We're a bit short-staffed"; or "I don't know" (or even "I haven't a clue").
Standard minus
It seemed as though the nutritional needs of us poor Standard Class - we should have been called "Standard Minus" to go with the posh new breakfast-eating class of a person who was henceforth to be called "First Plus" - counted for little in this brave new railway age.
I gave up in the end and stopped having breakfast on the Belfast train. I would throw down a bowl of cornflakes before I left home; grab a cup of coffee from the sour face with the trolley, casting a cold eye on the ham sandwiches and Danish pastries that were Iarnrod Eireann's idea of breakfast for the masses; and arrive in Belfast in a foul, hunger-driven humour.
I was amazed then when, on a rare early morning trip to Cork, I found that the dining car opened up to me, a mere second class passenger, a brisk 35 minutes after leaving Heuston Station. Where were all the merchant princes crowding the first class carriages? Was it only the Belfast train which had a surfeit of plutocratic passengers?
Then at the end of May, deliverance arrived. When I steeled myself one more time and nervously approached the bar with a timid inquiry about the possibility of a bit of scrambled eggs somewhere south of Finaghy, I beheld the smiling countenance of one Charlie O'Connell, a youthful graduate of the grand old school of Irish dining car attendants. No, he said, scrambled eggs weren't actually on the new Enterprise Standard Minus breakfast menu - which was limited to a choice of two dishes - but he'd see what he could do.
Favourite breakfast
Five minutes later, as the sun-dappled Cooley Mountains hove into view outside the window, I was presented with my favourite breakfast of yesteryear: scrambled eggs, rashers, tomatoes, hot toast and tea.
So all is not yet lost. The kindness and common sense of one dining car attendant ensured that this Joe Soap, at least, started his day's work in Belfast a contented customer - which is more than can be said for the Fat Controllers who designed the Belfast train's catering services. From northern trains to northern caves. Gareth Jones is the kind of man who gives immigration a good name. He arrived here over 35 years ago from Wales and has been a leading figure in the worlds of geology, caving and hill-walking ever since.
The handsome latest edition of his classic guide to The Caves of Fermanagh and Cavan (co-authored by Gaby Burns, Tim Fogg and John Kelly) has recently been published (Lough Nilly Press. IR£16.50)
As a lover of clear mountain air and snowy summits, I shudder when I read about the so-called pleasures of subterranean slit trenches called Excremental Way and Fenian Terror Bypass. But I take my hat off to a man who is clearly as charming and knowledgeable under the hills as he is on top of them.