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The Slow Train A Railway Miscellany Peter Ashley

Introduction

All of us will have our particular snapshot

memories of how railways used to be and how they affected our lives in a myriad of ways. Especially if, like me, you were fortunate enough to be born in The daughters of the vicar of Onibury in Shropshire

wait for their father to arrive back from Shrewsbury. Climbing up onto the level crossing gate they crane their necks to be the first to see the steam rising

above the trees that tells of his train’s progress from Craven Arms. Nearby, the church clock strikes six.

A guard lets down a set of steps from a carriage

at Scratby Halt on the Norfolk coast so that a family and their luggage can descend to a platform made

of tarred sleepers. Dog roses climb around the name of the halt and Mum, Dad and three children walk in single file on a path through poppied cornfields to a bungalow on a shallow clifftop.

A schoolgirl in a navy and white-ribboned straw

hat runs to join her noisy classmates in a carriage

compartment, one of them keeping the door open for her as the train starts to shuffle out of Formby

station in Lancashire. As she sinks back happily into the dusty carriage cloth her friend anxiously studies her geography exercise book and says ‘Did you put “Greece” for question nine?’.

the days of steam engines, string luggage racks,

leather window straps and the ability to buy a ticket

without needing a degree. Of course nostalgia lends

to everything it touches a roseate glow of perfection that was never real (train compartments were once

sooty enclaves that could either be tropically hot or arctically cold), but much of what has etched itself into our collective memory tells of a much-loved public service; one that unconsciously gathered

around it images and artefacts that were accents and highlights to everyday life.

Country stations, which will generally be our

bucolic destinations here, were very distinct from their city counterparts where main lines were the

veins and arteries of the railway system. Rural lines

were the capillaries, connecting village to town from

Cornwall to the Highlands in a country where almost everyone was once within twelve miles of a station and a stationmaster that were as respected as the local church and vicar. Surely these are the lines

(immortalised in the song by Flanders and Swann that gives this book its title) that are today most

Introduction

All of us will have our particular snapshot

wait for their father to arrive back from Shrewsbury. Climbing up onto the level crossing gate they crane their necks to be the first to see the steam rising

above the trees that tells of his train’s progress from Craven Arms. Nearby, the church clock strikes six.

A guard lets down a set of steps from a carriage

at Scratby Halt on the Norfolk coast so that a family and their luggage can descend to a platform made

of tarred sleepers. Dog roses climb around the name of the halt and Mum, Dad and three children walk in single file on a path through poppied cornfields to a bungalow on a shallow clifftop.

A schoolgirl in a navy and white-ribboned straw

hat runs to join her noisy classmates in a carriage

compartment, one of them keeping the door open for her as the train starts to shuffle out of Formby

station in Lancashire. As she sinks back happily into the dusty carriage cloth her friend anxiously studies her geography exercise book and says ‘Did you put “Greece” for question nine?’.

the days of steam engines, string luggage racks,

leather window straps and the ability to buy a ticket

without needing a degree. Of course nostalgia lends

to everything it touches a roseate glow of perfection that was never real (train compartments were once

around it images and artefacts that were accents and highlights to everyday life.

Country stations, which will generally be our

bucolic destinations here, were very distinct from their city counterparts where main lines were the

veins and arteries of the railway system. Rural lines

were the capillaries, connecting village to town from

(immortalised in the song by Flanders and Swann that gives this book its title) that are today most

missed, although not all lines and stations suffered

look out of the window of a slowly moving train. The

mended that 5,000 miles of track and 2,363 stations

what we once unconsciously experienced so pleas-

the myopic Beeching report of the 1960s that recombe closed. We are indeed fortunate that the survivors have at last been given the respect they always

deserved by bodies such as the Railway Heritage

Trust and that so many continue to work supremely hard on thoughtfully preserved steam lines.

My first awareness of the railway was the sound

pace and atmosphere that was unique, so much of

ing to the eye. Oil lamps on crossing gates, gaslight on enamel signs. Waiting room fires, waiting milk

churns. And to the ear: the shriek of whistles, the

clocks and bells, the shouts of porters ‘larking with the mails’.

The catalogue of images here will of course be

of trucks being shunted down on the sidings by

personal, and yes, remembered wistfully. But quite

ent clanking somehow comforting – someone else

branch line, operated by Southern. It was a beautiful

Wigston Magna station in Leicestershire, the insistwas still awake. If I’d been good in the public library, my mother would take me down to the same tracks to see both slow trains and fast trains, the same

London-bound expresses that I later watched from my school playing fields instead of keeping an eye on a muddy football. The holiday trains – green Southern electrics humming down to Sandling

for Hythe, the long-lost lines that took us to salt-

breezed halts in Norfolk. And the ghosts of railways

whose remains I now see every day – a brick goodsyard shed alone in a field surrounded by cattle,

massive bridge abutments without the bridges.

You will have your own mental images of how it

was on our forgotten railways, what it was like to

recently I travelled on the Uckfield to East Croydon sunlit autumn afternoon, the train was warm and

comfortable and out of the window I saw details that

reminded me of the company’s namesake, which ran this route from 1923 to 1948. Green-painted country stations, well-lettered signboards, a revival of

Southern Railway’s evocative logo on the train itself. And, of course, the exquisite pattern of quiet fields

and woods rising up on both sides of the line. There is still so much to enjoy on a slow train.

missed, although not all lines and stations suffered

look out of the window of a slowly moving train. The

mended that 5,000 miles of track and 2,363 stations

what we once unconsciously experienced so pleas-

the myopic Beeching report of the 1960s that recombe closed. We are indeed fortunate that the survivors have at last been given the respect they always

deserved by bodies such as the Railway Heritage

Trust and that so many continue to work supremely hard on thoughtfully preserved steam lines.

My first awareness of the railway was the sound

pace and atmosphere that was unique, so much of

ing to the eye. Oil lamps on crossing gates, gaslight on enamel signs. Waiting room fires, waiting milk

churns. And to the ear: the shriek of whistles, the

clocks and bells, the shouts of porters ‘larking with the mails’.

The catalogue of images here will of course be

of trucks being shunted down on the sidings by

personal, and yes, remembered wistfully. But quite

ent clanking somehow comforting – someone else

branch line, operated by Southern. It was a beautiful

London-bound expresses that I later watched from my school playing fields instead of keeping an eye on a muddy football. The holiday trains – green Southern electrics humming down to Sandling

for Hythe, the long-lost lines that took us to salt-

breezed halts in Norfolk. And the ghosts of railways

whose remains I now see every day – a brick goodsyard shed alone in a field surrounded by cattle,

massive bridge abutments without the bridges.

You will have your own mental images of how it

was on our forgotten railways, what it was like to

recently I travelled on the Uckfield to East Croydon sunlit autumn afternoon, the train was warm and

comfortable and out of the window I saw details that

reminded me of the company’s namesake, which ran this route from 1923 to 1948. Green-painted country stations, well-lettered signboards, a revival of

Southern Railway’s evocative logo on the train itself. And, of course, the exquisite pattern of quiet fields

and woods rising up on both sides of the line. There is still so much to enjoy on a slow train.

East Side Stories above Great Eastern Railway luggage label top A British Railways Eastern Region ticket office sign opposite Aldeburgh, Suffolk. An ex-Great Eastern J15 65459 arrives from Saxmundham in 1953 (Photo: R.E.Vincent)

above Hornby tinplate O gauge signal cabin. Note the holes for screwing it down onto your bedroom floorboards left Signal box, Darley Dale, Derbyshire. Peak Rail maintaining the Midland tradition opposite East Holmes signal box in Lincoln, opened in 1873. Caught here very unexpectedly with the Red Arrows flying up from RAF Scampton in 2000

Christmas at Oundle in Northamptonshire, or at least the authorâ€™s fantasies of how it might have been in the past. The Jacobean-style station was designed by J.W. Livock in the local stone and opened in 1845. It closed to passengers in 1964

All the large railway companies ran fleets of parcel vans and lorries to bring goods from stations to outlying towns and villages. This Christmas scene outside Oundle Post Office could be at any time in the ten years from 1938 to 1948

(Photo opposite: Nick Wright)

As steam trains breathed their last on the national network, branch lines became the preserve of the Diesel Multiple Unit where you could sit at the front and pretend to be the driver above and opposite At Corfe Castle on the Swanage Railway, Dorset

above Shunting was probably not only done extremely carefully but with a number of sooty fingers in ears opposite top A consignment label from 4th January 1949 for a load of nutty slack. Note the central hole where it was spiked in the office opposite bottom 1912 Midland Railway colliery consignment note in careful, legible handwriting

The Slow Train will amble across the countryside to show how railways were once so much more than overcrowded and overpriced trains. Country stations and lonely signal boxes, milk churns and oil lamps, enamelled signs and platform clocks. Here are the fragments of a more leisured age, from a time when the local railway was a well-loved institution at the heart of so many communities.

ISBN: 978-1-78884-092-7

Ă‹xHSLHSIy840927zv;:,:(:&:! ÂŁ12.00/$17.50