"Yeee-Haaa!"

I’m always late to Talisman Railwayana Auctions. I have no excuse. It is the closest such event to home, so I suppose that I am in leisurely mode from the off. Crossing the heavy A46 traffic on the outskirts of Newark has become a bit of a pain, so I galvanise myself for the roundabout and revert to chilled mode, once I’ve safely turned into the showground.

What’s that over there, though? It’s a Confederate flag, and there’s a cowboy in full kit - in fact, a whole family of them. Mum’s in leather boots, colourful check shirt, denim jeans and there are broad-brimmed, cowboy/cowgirl hats all over the place.

I have since learnt that this is the Hillbilly Hoedown, as advertised on Rockabilly Radio and online. A hoedown [I checked] is a social gathering at which lively folk dancing takes place – a party in the countryside with traditional music. Vintage cars, trucks and caravans are welcome, along with Western-inspired outfits.

Parking for the auction, I remembered my only incursion into the real, “un-touristy,” rural American landscape, in the Blue Ridge Mountains around Luray, in Virginia [on the Shenandoah Valley line of the old Norfolk and Western Railroad, immortalised by the photographs of O. Winston Link]. We visited a diner on the edge of town called High on the Hog, which advertised itself with the epithet, “A taste of the south in your mouth.” I had felt a little wary as we went in. I needn’t have worried. We were made welcome, were well fed, introduced to some fine IPA beer, entertained by a young man singing and playing folk-rock rather than country and western music [phew] and we all had a thoroughly good time.

The opening up the wild west in the USA, largely facilitated by the railways, was the stuff of 1950s junior school lessons - and the comics and TV programmes that co-existed with them at home. The railways were the only lifeline for many relatively isolated farming settlements until well into the twentieth century.

In addition to a station for people, parcels and pigeons, the spread of the railways in Britain provided villages like our own with goods sheds, loading bays for live animals and milk churns, generous approach roads and spacious yards, where coal and building materials were brought in and local agricultural produce was taken out.

Current railwayana auction catalogues continue to bear testimony to this trade. Many of the collectibles are artefacts that reflect the railway companies’ own role in feeding its customers - in station buffets, company hotels as well as on-board the trains. Talisman RA on 12/8/17 had at least 26 examples of glassware, tankards, table china, serving vessels, cutlery and kitchen equipment, all marked up with company insignia. Lot 60 summed it up, really, “Elliptical copper Milk Churn Label inscribed, “Express Dairy Full to St Pancras.”

Other reminders of the way that goods used to be handled came in the form of a platform barrow, horse harness decorations and the GWR enamel warning steam rollers, traction engines and motor lorries to keep off the cart weighbridge.

I gingerly made my way back down the access road towards the exit from the showground. I wound the window up and kept my head down in case of any stray arrows, a sudden blast from an itchy trigger finger wielding a Colt 45, or any attempt to lasso my Ford Fiesta. Once on the open road, I soon made my get-away. I headed for the hills and into the sunset, my best girl by my side. [Well, she was soon after I got home and we discovered that we were in urgent need of some cat food from the supermarket].