Stanislav Šmatlák

“The riff-raff always gravitated towards the station. It was their place to be. Lots of people would confirm that. When the cops were looking for someone, they’d almost certainly find them at the station. If not at the one station then at the other. There was nothing else back then. If you said of someone that you knew them from the station, that could have been me as well. I lived, worked, spent my time there. I wasn’t the homeless bloke who slept there. But lots of people thought I was, before they got to know me.”

“There isn’t a single signalman at the station. It’s all done by computer. It’s changed a lot. There’s not a single shunter at the station. It’s done by machines. That is, when a train comes to the station, it stops, the engine driver moves over from the back to the front, and the train is ready to leave. In the past, when the train came in, they had to pull it out so the engine could depart. It was hard work. The relay has made people’s work much easier. The signalling relay, to be precise.”