Carriages

Newark Castle station, a grade two listed building dating from 1846, is on the former Midland Railway’s Nottingham to Lincoln line. Constructed in the Italianate style, it has been carefully restored, both inside and out. The booking office occupies the southern end, but most of the available interior space is now a comfortable café called Carriages [www.carriagesnewark.co.uk]. The interior décor includes the café’s own, in-house designed coat of arms, in true railway company heraldic tradition and set above the twin, central fireplaces.

The route served by the station has been up-graded since Castle Line re-signalling took place and there is now also a daily East Midlands train via the Castle station from Lincoln to London St Pancras. It seems to be an altogether busier scene, with the regular Immingham to Kingsbury oil tanker trains also rattling across the adjacent level crossing. This fine old building with its preserved, cobbled street station approach, is a credit to all those who ensured it was included in the redevelopment of the riverside area of the town. 

 

Railway Brambles

My wife spent a few weeks in the summer of 1977 visiting an old Wirral railway line on a daily basis. She studied the flora of a typical “man-made” wildlife area for her dissertation at the University of Liverpool and the corridor provided by the former rail route fitted the bill admirably.

The Hooton to Parkgate section opened in 1866, followed by Parkgate to West Kirby twenty years later. A separate station was built there, adjacent to the terminus of the Seacombe, Hoylake and Deeside Railway [later the Wirral Railway], which today remains as part of the Merseyrail electric system. Hooton was a junction on the Birkenhead to Chester main line, operated jointly by the London North Western Railway and the Great Western Railway, as was the new branch serving the western side of the Wirral peninsula. The line was crossed at Neston by the Wrexham, Mold and Connah’s Quay/Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway joint venture, that was later to become part of the Great Central Railway.

Chris’s study looked at “Some Ecological and Human Aspects of the Vegetation of a Country Park.” Having examined nearly every inch of the former track side, she concluded that there was nothing outstanding about the composition of the vegetation, except in a cutting at Neston that had already been looked at in detail by somebody else. However, she noted that the existence of the abandoned railway provided a refuge for flora and a variety of habitats for animals, insects and birds. Cuttings, embankments and the amount of shelter all had an important influence on ground flora composition, with the degree of slope being the single most important factor affecting the distribution of individual species. Country park management policy towards the planting of trees and bushes also affected flora composition in terms of the subsequent amounts of shade they provided. The effects of trampling and plant collection by visitors also had an impact. 

The West Kirby to Hooton line closed to passengers in 1956, to freight in 1962, and the rails were removed in 1964. In 1973, the Wirral Way was opened in its place and became Britain’s first country park, in the form of a twelve-mile, linear footpath, cycleway and bridleway.

The park’s current visitors’ centre stands next to the site of Thurstaston station where the platform edges still survive, as can be seen in this view taken in November 2015, looking north. Though single track throughout, there had been a passing loop at this location.

One year prior to the opening of the park and immediately after our wedding at Wallasey Town Hall, our guests were all invited to join us for a kick-around on a grassy area overlooking the River Dee, adjacent to the then derelict track bed at Thurstaston. We then moved on to take refreshment at the Old Quay public house in Parkgate and after that to a party at the Sandpiper Hotel, run by my in-laws, in New Brighton. Our wedding cake, which my wife had made, was a chocolate reconstruction of Stephenson’s Rocket. My dad said it was the best wedding he had ever been to.  

Six Eff

As a young train spotter living in New Brighton on the Wirral in the early 1960s and with hardly an ounce of historical awareness to call upon, it never crossed my mind that we had anything much to do with the former Great Central Railway. We simply saw ourselves as being enveloped by the London Midland Region of British Railways. In practice, that meant that engines beginning in “4” and the various Standard classes were our main fare. Any Western and Eastern Region locomotives we encountered on our Sunday morning trips to Birkenhead sheds were regarded as rare visitors to be savoured.

The only “6’s” we saw regularly were the three J94 tanks, Nos. 68063/5/6, which I probably imagined had been ex-communicated from the Eastern Region to Bidston sheds for some perceived inadequacy elsewhere. I did not really give much thought to what they were doing there. They were viewed as vaguely interesting idiosyncrasies, often visible from the electric trains that took us to Liverpool. In fact, of course, they were earning their keep on the tight curves that threaded through the Birkenhead dock system.

 

The Great Central Railway was actually much closer to home than I ever imagined as a youngster. When the money had run out for the Wirral Railway’s planned 1880’s connection between Hawarden Bridge and Bidston [to be known as the North Wales and Liverpool Railway], the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway and the Wrexham, Mold and Connah’s Quay Railway Company took it over between them and duly completed the task during the following decade. Their aim was to establish a link to Birkenhead docks. The GCR gained control of the double track set-up in 1905 and with it, the 1897, MS&LR built, two-road Bidston engine shed, which we knew as 6F.

I must surely have had an inkling that in previous times there had been many more ex-LNER locomotives regularly employed on the Wirral. As early as 1898, GCR trains from Wrexham had run over Wirral Railway metals from Bidston as far as Seacombe, which was a relatively short bike ride away from home for us, throughout our youth. The penny only dropped later on that the former GCR had actually been a near neighbour all through my early life. In the mid-1950’s, for example, I had followed the trails of smoke from trains that were passing through the cutting below my junior school playground at Poulton. Those passenger services to Seacombe ended in 1960 and I started my serious interest in railways later that year, as an enthusiastic member of Wallasey Grammar School’s railway society. It was led by maths teacher Jack Dugdale and his right-hand man and a senior pupil at the school, John Dyer.

Class J94 No. 68066 on Bidston sheds 3/7/1960. Photograph: John Dyer.

John was a few years older than me and so his practical interest in railways went a little further back. This meant that not only did he start taking railway photographs before I did, but that he was sufficiently organised to record some of the older classes at work on the Wirral before the industry was much affected by the modernisation that would eventually sweep them all away. That would have included various ex-GCR, as well as other ex-LNER and ex-GWR, locomotive types.

To say that I lost touch with John after he left school for a career in the RAF would be a bit misleading. There is no reason why John Dyer would ever have known me from Adam, or even recognised me, either then or now. I almost certainly appeared as just another rather excitable small boy in short trousers amongst the many who scuttled around in his wake during visits to York and Crewe and around Gorton and Oswestry works. To John and Jack, I owe a considerable debt of gratitude, such is the enjoyment that I have derived from our hobby in the years that followed.

To cut a long story short, I managed to establish contact with John Dyer in recent times. He very kindly allowed me to look through his considerable collection of mainly black and white photographs that record some of the instantly recognisable locations of my youth, but they portray steam locomotive types that I am struggling to remember seeing there myself. He allowed me to share some examples with my friends and subsequently for me to use them to illustrate some of my own written efforts. So, it is that some of his excellent work accompanies this article.

 

Robinson Class 04 No. 63719 at Bidston sheds, 4/9/1960. Photograph: John Dyer.

Bidston sheds closed in February 1963, when I was still thirteen years old. I’m so glad I got there a few times before it disappeared. The site became a steel rolling mill and then a supermarket. Its locomotive allocation went to Birkenhead Mollington Street [6C then 8F], including the Standard Class 9F 2-10-0s that we remember very well, hauling the trains of imported iron ore from Bidston Dock to John Summers Steelworks at Shotton. We regularly cycled to Birkenhead MPD on our bikes to see them, until all the steam had gone.

I watched the last Standard 9F hauled Shotton iron ore train take the southwards curve at Bidston Dee Junction from our sixth form library, the school having moved out to new premises at Leasowe in the summer of 1967. My [already wavering] attention had been attracted by an enormous plume of steam and smoke through clear, cold, November air and also by No. 92203’s bright red buffer beam that I assumed had been specially painted for the event and not just in recognition of its being “flower power” year.

In 1971, the year I started teaching in a large mid-Wirral comprehensive school, the steel works traffic was still running past me daily, up the valley of the River Fender between the Woodchurch and the Ford estates. Generally, and for my own safety, I thought it best not to take my eyes off the rows of pupils in front of me for too long at a time. After all, I was only missing English Electric Type 4 diesels by then.

Class J39 No. 64738 at Bidston sheds, 26/6/1960. Photograph: John Dyer

The former LNER-controlled Wrexham line was transferred to the London Midland Region soon after nationalisation in 1948, so as young train spotters I think we could be forgiven for overlooking the sequence of events that had brought the “6s” to 6F. Eventually, things fall into place.

The ex-GCR route from Bidston to Wrexham remains open today as the Borderlands Line and there is talk of incorporating at least some of it into the developing Merseyrail electric network, as mid-Wirral commuter-land continues to expand. The railway scene never settles for long. Its dynamism is one of its inherent characteristics. At least I’m a little better placed than previously to take it all in and make some sense of it.              

Romance on the Rails

In his book, The Last Journey of William Huskisson,” Simon Garfield tells the tale of a meeting that took place between forty-nine-year-old railway giant George Stephenson and Fanny Kemble, an actress of twenty-one, whose father knew some of the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. She just happened to be wowing theatre audiences in the city in the role of Shakespeare’s Juliet, at the same time as the first trains were being trialled, in 1830.

To cut a fascinating and very readable story short, Fanny joined George on the footplate, where she was all but overcome by the experience, as he explained the basics of how the locomotive worked, in his broad Northumbrian accent. Fanny likened the machine to a powerful animal - possibly the first time, but certainly not the last, that that simile would be employed. She described her impressions of her ride “up front” in a letter to a friend, admitting that she was now, “horribly in love,” with the great man.

In 2008, we went to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool for the exhibition, Art in the Age of Steam. There were railway art masterpieces on show from France and the USA, as well as some notable nineteenth century British examples. Into that category comes this familiar painting [below, left] by Abraham Solomon, entitled The Meeting…and at First Meeting Loved.

The young man is obviously taking advantage of the fact that dad is asleep to chat up the daughter. Apparently, this caused such an affront to [admittedly, frequently hypocritical] Victorian sensibilities in 1854, that Solomon felt obliged to clean it up. He fashioned a sanitised version a year or two later called The Return – First Class, in which the young man, now having improved his credentials by donning military uniform, is trying to get a word in edgeways, while her father, now sitting between them and evidently playing party pooper, goes off on one.

Perhaps the best-known railway romance of all was the David Lean wartime film, Brief Encounter, in which in spite of its success and subsequently iconic status, the liaison itself never really got off the ground. All that “Darling, darling” stuff proved to be just a preamble without resolution. Common sense prevailed and they went their separate ways without any crockery getting smashed, the need for appointments at Relate or trips to the solicitor.

The other mega, rail-related cinematic romance was surely the Railway Children? Who can forget that poignant moment when father finally returns, emerging on the station platform as if from the puff of smoke itself, rather than unjust imprisonment far away? Lots more films have included railway-based love interest, of course, including Dr Zhivago and The Thirty Nine Steps.

The poets have also had their say. Philip Larkin noted preparations for nuptials observed from the train when passing through the towns and villages of Lincolnshire in The Whitsun Weddings, and in [christine1] his poem, Thoughts in a Train, John Betjeman’s attention is attracted by the garb and accessories of an intriguing fellow traveller, though he seems mesmerised by her trappings - indicators, he points out, of a higher social class then her third class ticket would suggest - rather than any of her other, perhaps more obvious, attributes.

When Michael Portillo ventured into Thomas Hardy country on one of his Bradshaw inspired rail journeys, he referred to an example of the novelist’s lesser known contributions as a prolific poet. Entitled Faintheart in a Railway Station, Hardy notices that……….

“…then, on a platform, she:

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.

I queried, “Get out to her, do I dare?”

But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,

And the wheels moved on. O could it but be

That I had alighted there.”

The heritage railways are not infrequently afflicted by romance in recent times, I’ve noticed, whether its members of staff and volunteers finding that love has sprung from their rubbing shoulders in their work situation, or enthusiasts who have chosen a favourite railway location in which to celebrate getting hitched.  

Just one of the many attractions of the refurbished St Pancras station is Paul Day’s sculpture, The Meeting Place, a thirty feet high bronze statue of an embrace between lovers. Not only does it summarise the timeless function of railway stations as places where people have traditionally parted and been reunited, with all that attendant emotion, but its scale and location ensure that it will become a focal point for such similar interactions hereafter.

When we chose rail travel on our own honeymoon, to France, in 1972, there was no Channel Tunnel or Eurostar so we made do with the ferry crossings and their connecting services, firstly to Paris and then on to Grenoble, visiting French friends in both locations. I remember it as exciting rather than romantic, but my wife may have a different perspective. I do know that when I left Britain I was a teetotal twenty-three-year-old who had never touched the stuff but by the time I returned I had developed a real liking for red wine.

We have often said that we should go back and retrace that journey, but I have found in other instances that that does not necessarily work out for the best. It is not possible to re-live the past. Places change. Some of the people we met up with then, are, unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly given the substantial passage of time, no longer alive today. Better to savour the moment and the memories that follow.       

I sometimes stand accused of “living in the past,” with my interest in heritage and its surviving tangible reminders. I bet I’m not the only one to hear that accusation, from time to time. It’s all a question of balance, of course.  The academics, Lowenstein and Elster, referred to “a triple counting of experience,” in which we derive pleasure from looking back on the things we have enjoyed and forward in anticipation to things that have yet to happen, as well as the immediate gratification we derive from the moment itself. Whether in romance or in any other worldly pleasure, who is to say that a bit of “living in the past” shouldn’t be a part of it, from time to time?

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Mucky Pups

I really don’t like fly tipping, fast food junk on roadside verges and chewing gum splodges on pavements. Yet, in the overall hierarchy of human misdemeanours, these are surely way down the list, so why do they get to me so much?

I think it’s because they are so obviously in your face and although they may be comparatively minor they represent such inconsiderate and unsociable acts. The railways are in the firing line here, too. From my recent survey from a carriage window when travelling through the outskirts of Nottingham, I noticed that there was plenty to complain about. Cuttings seem to be the worst. I suppose that once tipped in a cutting, the evidence is immediately out of sight at street level - but not from a passing train!

If there is a footpath parallel to the top of the cutting, it attracts more casual waste and the offenders could have come from anywhere. What strikes me most is where a back garden is separated from the top of the cutting by a single fence, meaning that only the house-holder at that particular property could realistically have dumped the stuff. There are some hideous examples. No need to go to the tip, just heave unwanted items over the fence. Why bother with a bin, at all? Amazing - there they lie, the contents of bulging and torn, black bin liners, slowly rotting alongside an old mattress and discarded hardware items, a presentation for passing rail passengers but below the line of sight of the perpetrators, who can continue to enjoy lounging around in their litter-free garden on a pleasant summer’s afternoon. I imagine that they may have a few more flies to put up with than their neighbours, though.

I’m a bit more ambivalent about graffiti. I thought for decades that it was just a bad thing. Then along came Banksy and those trying to emulate him. That is so clever, I am drawn to admit. I’m also very much in favour of public art even though it is not uniformly pleasing. Expansive factional murals in Belfast have now become tourist attractions.  

Protecting the railway environment is the responsibility of Network Rail and the train operating companies. In 2012, Bill Bryson spearheaded an initiative by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, encouraging the authorities to be more proactive in this respect. Aided by a range of environmental groups at a local level, there will have been many improvements since then but I bet you won’t have to travel far by train from your home station to see that plenty more still needs to be done. In the end, as they say, it is down to education.  

Former railway lines also have a growing army of protectors. Our own local amenity has its own support group, the Friends of Southwell Trail. They comb the former Midland Railway route from Farnsfield to Southwell for litter, control the vegetation and maintain the pathway for walkers, horse riders and cyclists. It all helps to keep the mucky pups at bay.

  

The Countryside

I’ve never been totally at home in the countryside. It is fraught with dangers. It contains far too many animals for a start, like the herd of over-inquisitive cows that ganged up on us as we made for the only gated escape route from their field. Then there was the horse that tried to bite my elbow when I had finally found the nerve to take a short cut across his patch at Tregaron [looking for red kites in the years before the red kites came to us]. Instead, he took a piece out of my jumper. Two potentially killer sheep once barred our way in a very confrontational manner on a hillside path just down the road from here.

Then there are insects. I was stung [or bitten?] twice in Spain by something that came straight at me, landed on the front of my tee shirt, fired a missile, then had the cheek to move a few inches to the left, have a second go and then fly off before I could even whack it away or identify it, leaving me with two very sore and raised incisions. It was a perfectly executed double whammy - a surgical strike.

There is also the problem of terrain. I don’t mind climbing a mountain, though it is more likely to be a hill these days. That is purposeful and I can add it to my list of summits conquered. Unfortunately, I have to come down again and then the knees start complaining big time.    

I am also fearful of straying from marked footpaths. I actually appear to have something of a flair for this. I’ve found that trespassing is easy to achieve, quite unintentionally. When the realisation dawns that we are undeniably off track, it’s at the back of my mind that we will be met round the next corner by a farmer with a scowl and probably a gun, too, to remind us that the concept of “right to roam” is sometimes just that - a concept, and one that has not yet reached his fiefdom. Part of me feels that we are always unwelcome guests anywhere near farmland and especially in those coveted pockets of woodland where they kill birds for fun.

The conclusion I’ve drawn is that the countryside is best viewed from a safe distance. My preferred mode of transport for such forays would always be the railway. The countryside looks prettier from a slight distance than when you are snagging your clothing on brambles or slipping on a wet patch and landing with your hands on some nettles. Railways provide the opportunity to enjoy rural landscapes in comfort and to be protected from rural uncertainties as well as the vagaries of the weather and over-crowded roads.

The mosaic of rural Britain is undeniably varied and beautiful, but that pattern - sculpted by nature and then fashioned by man for a further few thousand years to put the finishing touches - unfolds perfectly in the panorama provided by the carriage window.    

Railway posters have sometimes employed just such a technique by including the window frame in the design, a tactic also employed in the introduction to the Michael Portillo, Bradshaw inspired, TV programmes. 1950’s road traffic was clearly a lot busier than my rose-tinted recollections were suggesting.

New Boy

I’m well aware that I’m still a new boy when it comes to the railwayana scene. After all, I’ve only been doing it for about twelve years. It’s like moving to a new village and not really feeling accepted until all your kids have been through the local school system from start to finish, you are able to reminisce with the neighbours about the Millennium celebrations and you have been there whilst at least another five estates have been added to the built-up “envelope” - as they used to insist on calling it in the days when protecting the green belt was a practical guide rather than a conveniently discarded notion.

I can now wistfully remind my children about the good old days when I could find a parking spec on Main Street. However, the changes have all served to add a lot of new folk who I can now also describe as newcomers, and who will no doubt feel like they are doing their community apprenticeship for the next however many years that it takes.

Though I might now just about be accepted in the village having been here for over 30 years, in railwayana auction terms I’m still wet behind the ears. I’ve been around long enough to remember Myers Grove and two different venues at Malton, so I am now eligible for “those were the days” conversations as far as they are concerned. I sometimes attend auctions with a close friend but mostly I’m there on my tod. I’ve always been struck by how many other people clearly know each other very well and greet each other as old friends. I imagine that they have been going to these events for as long as there have been such events to go to. I’m also conscious that the auctions themselves first sprouted up to satisfy the demand from enthusiasts and that those who were drawn in to run them also came very much from that same interest group, rather than from the established and more general auctioneering set-ups. Although it’s a business, it’s all very matey.

It is this fact that gives the events their own special flavour, of course. It’s all rather in-bred but that is a strength, I hasten to add, contributing as it does to the incredible body of knowledge about the artefacts that represent this special section of the nation’s industrial heritage. There is such an extraordinary amount of detailed factual information being exchanged.

I’ve spoken to folk who originally bought stuff from Collector’s Corner or direct from British Railways and who paid next to nothing for it by modern standards and which may well have included some substantial and significant pieces. If you had done so, of course, it stands to reason that as time has gone on and prices have rocketed, it leaves you in a very good place if you want to refine your own collection or even change direction within the hobby. Those assets give you considerable bargaining power, though my guess would be that they are more likely to be just the sort of items that most people would want to hang on to indefinitely.

I never went to Collector’s Corner, though I knew of its existence. I had even heard that you could buy stuff directly from the railway, but [a] I had no money and [b] it never passed my consciousness that such paraphernalia would eventually interest me so much as it does now. Tastes change through time and it feels like the ability to appreciate things that I had previously ignored or taken for granted also developed more as I get older. 

I thought it was high time I should get about a bit more in some new and different directions to visit one or two railwayana auction locations that I had not reached previously. Consequently, I went to Poynton, Solent and Thirsk for the first time within a matter of weeks of each other, a year or two ago, now.  

We were met on arrival at Poynton by the aroma from the bacon butty van, plonked right outside the entrance, so close, in fact, that I almost felt obliged to buy one as an unofficial entry ticket, rather than be the only one inside without one.

There and back to Solent in a day required a bit of an early start. That last section through rural Hampshire after leaving the motorway reminded me of how attractive a county it is. The centre of Wickham looked preposterously English and affluent. The venue itself was spacious and bright, and the claims made for it as a friendly place were borne out. Its location meant that family groups and others using the adjacent leisure and other community facilities visited the auction space as well, many of them having a bit of a nose around while enjoying a well-earned snack. However, much of the pleasant feel to the place had to do with the auctioneer’s amiable and relaxed style in the chair. Nigel Maddock is, I’m sure, sorely missed by many. He had an easy manner and I found him to be the most approachable of all the railwayana auction organisers.

Next time out, it was in exactly the opposite direction, up the Great North Road to North Yorkshire for Thirsk Farmer’s Market. It was very easy to get to if you didn’t make the mistake of coming off at the first sign-posted mention of Thirsk on the dual-carriageway and end up going right around the town twice. Maybe I just imagined that whiff of teat cream and slightly soiled straw on my eventual arrival, but it was certainly a big contrast with Poynton and Wickham. The auctioneer there was not hanging about, and the bluff, business-like Yorkshire tones certainly brought back memories of Malton, as well as of Harry Enfield’s archetypal Yorkshireman, “I say what I like and I like what I bloody well say.”

I’ve also done a couple of Quorn swap meets more recently. Though I had been there as a potential customer before and combined it with a journey behind steam, now I was there as a trader. The entrance fee for a pitch has got to be the most reasonable one around but I found out on the first occasion that I turned up as a potential vendor that if you arrive late you can easily get shunted off into a siding [literally, as it happens], so it is definitely worth an early start. The most interesting aspect of both days was the conversations I held with enthusiasts who each brought their unique perspective to the event - some specialist knowledge or a chance observation that made me reflect on how rich and varied the railway arena is.

I also had it confirmed to me that wet weather and paperwork don’t mix. Had the forecast been for rain I would have given it a miss but the promise was for a dry day. However, the clouds were soon mounting, pushed on by a stiff breeze and then it started spitting, so I had to spring into life and stuff everything back in through the hatch at the back of the car. The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun and so it all got hauled out again. No matter; there’s nothing like a bit of typical British weather to keep you on your toes.

It is Talisman at Templecombe today. Much as I’d like another nostalgic return there, I’ve copped out of the four hour drive each way on this occasion but I did get my commission bid in on time, so fingers crossed.

Shunters

At the GCR this morning and I noticed this diesel shunter fussing about with stock at the engine shed end of the platform, so I wandered down to see what it was up to. It had drawn up a line of three, out of steam, steam locomotives - two Standards and the Hall, and positioned them so that the GW engine was in place under the water column.  

It reminded me how station pilots used to do a lot of fannying around in the main stations - the Jinties at Lime Street bringing in empty carriage stock and then giving the heavier expresses a half-hearted push up the slope towards Edge Hill. At Central Low Level, it was Fowler tanks at the buffer stops. When I was still at junior school, I had a cab ride in one up the tunnel to Brunswick and back.

I thought that the engine driver was my new best friend, who would obviously bestow the favour whenever I turned up, after that. He would recognise me immediately and off we would go again. I was virtually his fireman, now, after all.

Dad, who had waited patiently for me on the concourse, explained otherwise. It was a one-off and I had been very lucky. He broke it to me gently. That was the sort of man he was.

Coincidence

Yesterday, two people called Chris fell off their respective bikes. Not only that, both of them fell off their bikes before the Giro d’Italia had even started. Amazingly, both also received bloody knees in their respective tumbles. One Chris described his injuries as “superficial.” One Chris received a lot of sympathy and some practical help with the application of a sticking plaster.

The Smallholding

It was my first jaunt on the bike yesterday, now that the weather is on my side. After an hour, I spun down onto the trail for the home straight, past the smallholding that overlooks the old railway line. In times past, it would have been a good vantage point for watching the coal wagons rumbling down the grade towards Fiskerton Junction, and before 1929 it would have observed the infrequent passenger trains that linked Mansfield and Newark at the pace of a snail.

For many years after the railway closed, the smallholding was occupied by a rather unkempt elderly couple who became well-known for their laissez-faire approach to, well, farming in general, I suppose, but primarily to their fowl. Hens, geese and ducks had the run of the place. They wandered everywhere - across the road, up the garden path, in through the open front door, and it was quite common to see them all sitting on the table through the front window. “Anything goes” appeared to be the motto. You couldn’t ride past without smiling.

When the old couple passed on, the building was soon snapped up and transformed into an attractive family home with a tidy garden. The only unusual feature now was the blow-up doll in a front bedroom window. I can only think that the new occupants got fed up quite quickly with the way people slowed down to peer in, as they had done for years beforehand. They thought they would give them something even more dramatic to attract their attention than a gaggle of geese.  

I thought it quite a humorous touch. Maybe the new owners were really saying “Back-off, we are no longer the local feature of amusement that you once knew.”

The doll disappeared a long time ago and there is now nothing unusual about the house at all. At least, I think that’s right. I actually forgot to look.