The demands passengers place on contemporary public transport systems are increasingly focused on providing a safe, comfortable and reliable transport experience. One expression of these demands is the recent introduction of designated quiet carriages to trains. The experience of travelling in these spaces has been given little academic scrutiny. Using a case study of the commuting experience between Newcastle and Sydney, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, this paper investigates the practices, relations and affective atmospheres of quiet carriages. The paper argues that passengers on trains come together to craft quiet through interactions between human and material actors. This crafting of quiet results in noticeably different quiet atmospheres at different times of day and in different parts of the journey. Drawing on participant observation including an auto-ethnographic account of travelling in a quiet carriage, the paper distinguishes between four types of quiet crafted by the passenger collective -sleepy and comfortable quiet, busy quiet, tense quiet and spooky quiet. These four types of quiet play upon the body with different intensities and some have stronger affects that linger after the completion of the journey.

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The tools, technologies, and practices people use to find their way are rapidly changing. Over the last decade, the “new mobilities paradigm” (Sheller & Urry, 2006) has enhanced how we understand our mobile lives. New mobilities research has focused attention on the ways in which we experience the world as we move through it: including the more ephemeral, fleeting, and affective practices that shape everyday mobilities. Despite this, most new mobilities research focuses on journeys where people know, or can relatively easily interpret information about, where they are going. As a result, analysis of stories about how people experience being “lost” and “found” as they negotiate their everyday mobilities is largely absent from the mobilities literature in human geography. This is problematic because the practices of trying to find our way and being lost and found fundamentally shape mobilities and produce affects which shape future journeys. This paper theorises the impact of exploring wayfinding practices for mobilities research. By bringing together conceptual insights from current mobilities research and popular accounts of being lost and found, this paper will open up discussion regarding how researchers conceptualise, articulate, and account for the lived experiences of being lost and found in their work.

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