“Tonight we sleep on silken sheets”

I’m getting quite a taste for grand old station hotels, most recently the Royal at Newcastle. It was opened in 1850 by Queen Victoria, though she probably gave the indoor heated swimming pool a miss for one reason or another.

The Grade Two listed building, originally constructed for the North Eastern Railway, is now part of the Cairn Collection. Jane Russell, Richard Burton, Laurel & Hardy and Muhammad Ali have all stayed there over the years. A more pressing concern was the stags and hens potential, and would they be looking for something a little less stately?

The plan worked and I even got to watch Eng-er-land v Panama on the telly in the bar in almost splendid isolation. I’m quite happy to generate my own enthusiasm, thank you. The hordes of beer-swilling, painted faces were all whooping it up down the road.

This is just my sort of Grand Hotel.

Rocket Science

The Discovery Museum in Newcastle was doing its bit for the Great Exhibition of the North by bringing back the Rocket to its birthplace, which was just down the road at the Forth Street Works of Robert Stephenson.

Having read Simon Garfield’s excellent account of The Last Journey of William Huskisson, instead of marvelling at the locomotive’s enormous contribution to railway development, I find that I’m standing there thinking about the accident.

I went outside in search of Hitachi’s Azuma. Between them, they span the entirety of the existence of passenger railways and fittingly, the new stock is also being put together [using Japanese-made body shells] in the north east of England at Newton Aycliffe.  

 

The Good Life

The bloke on the corner is out again this morning under his sun hat whilst tending his vegetable plot. Everyone else on the green has a front lawn. I wonder if he has glass round the back and can grow tomatoes that taste of proper tomatoes, like those we enjoyed recently in the south of France. French markets are just wonderful for food. The cherries were twice the size and flavour of ours, and then there were the olives……….

Having said that, the natural vegetation up in the hills to the west of Avignon was largely a carpet of garrigue - stunted trees and bushes adapted to summer months without rain. Every now and then, someone had cleared the woodland to grow vines and the local vineyards are the most obvious signs of a rural economy that has been going on for centuries.

The nearest railway line to our friends’ house - always an important consideration for me - is the electrified Rhone Valley route between Montelimar and Avignon at Bagnols-sur Ceze, where the station has unfortunately been closed. However, it does have a very nice boulangerie and patisserie and I must say that that helped to soften the blow on this occasion.  

Eric Burdon and the Animals

On 25^th February 1966 Brian and I went to Newcastle and saw the Animals at the Mayfair Ballroom. Eric appeared as if from nowhere on a revolving stage. We were able to get very close to the front of the dance hall, leaning against a wooden barrier a few feet away from Eric. To say that this had an important affect on me would be a classic understatement. At the time of the Beatles, the Stones and the Who, I subsequently thought of them as my band, the ones that I associated with more closely than any of my friends.

We had not even gone to Newcastle to see the Animals. We had gone trainspotting, because the area still had steam locomotives at work on its freight lines and because Brian’s brother was at university there, so we could spend three nights over half term at no cost. John’s surprise gift to us on our arrival on that Friday night was two tickets for the Animals. My gratitude continues to this day.  

On Saturday, I caught up with Eric Burdon again, fifty-two years since that defining moment in 1966. A whole career has gone by for each of us, but I can’t explain quite how important a figure he has been for me during that time. I can’t tell Eric, either, because although I wanted to, he reportedly made his get-away after the concert through the front door of City Hall, whilst our small knot of groupies hung around the stage door at the side of the building.

No matter. We had heard all the hits - including the blues numbers that stretch my taste as far in that direction as it can go, but which characterise his lifelong love of music. He has been consistent and true to the artists that initially drove him. His style has never wavered.

He didn’t have a lot to say between the songs, though his potted biography hints at all sorts of potential name dropping and high jinks that he could have dwelt on. He mentioned the impact of Bo Diddley on his development and how significant it was for him to tread the same boards as Louis Armstrong. I knew that he had just come home to Newcastle for the music. I was there for the music and for something else. I just wanted to say thank you. So, now I have.     

Playing my piano

The modern St Pancras International station is a wonderful thing. Quite apart from the innovative way that the new has been grafted onto the old, the clever two-tier use of the available space and the arresting Betjeman and Paul Day pieces, there is also a piano.

It just sits there on the concourse and random individuals stop by to play it. Some of them are very good, of course. What a good idea that was by somebody, I thought.

A little bit of research soon put me in the picture.

streetpianos.com/london2012 explains all.

“London: 2012

Play Me, I’m Yours is an artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram, which has been touring internationally since 2008.  More than 1500 pianos have now been installed in over 50 cities across the globe, from New York to London bearing the simple invitation Play Me, I’m Yours.  The project has reached more than 10 million people worldwide, with each new city that commissions the work becoming part of a growing legacy.

In 2012 the City of London Festival celebrated its golden anniversary on a grand scale, presenting Play Me, I’m Yours with 50 golden street pianos spread across London landmarks and beauty spots for three weeks, from 24 June until 13 July 2012. Most of these pianos were donated to good causes at the end of the presentation, but some of them are still available to play including three at St Pancras International Station (courtesy of St Pancras Station Management team),…”

How nice is that?

Pushing on a bit [three years ago, now]

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you -

someone who, hopefully, might also like trains a bit in the future.”

My grandson [and my passenger] is 18 weeks old today and therefore oblivious, for the time being anyway, of the history of the track formation directly ahead of his current method of transportation. With luck, Grandad will explain all in the fullness of time. The [pram] driver’s view is of the old Great Central Railway in its approach to the city of Nottingham from the south. We are adjacent to Ruddington Lane, Wilford, at the site of former bridge 295. That there is an up line and a down line in place along the formation today, is, of course, courtesy of the extension to the Nottingham tramway system, as it threads its way out from the city centre to the south westerly margins at Clifton.

 

The tramway-stop at Ruddington Lane, Wilford, looking north.

The impressive, four-track, GCR River Trent viaduct [bridge 289] and the Nottingham South Goods signal box, which once commanded the approach to that crossing, just to the north of here, are things of the past. Not far to the south, however, the modern Great Central Railway [North] is well established in the old ordnance depot at Ruddington and with the replacement of the missing link over the ex-MR main line at Loughborough under way, the dream of a reinstated Leicester to Nottingham inter-city steam railway is closer to becoming a reality.

There is plenty of time for my new companion to learn about the erstwhile sights and sounds along the route of the Master Cutler and the South Yorkshireman that might have attracted his attention at his current abode, had he arrived there, three, or maybe even just two, generations earlier.

Looking south from the Ruddington Lane tram crossing in the direction of former bridge 296, the GCR alignment went straight ahead. The tram tracks are crossed by the A52, the Nottingham southern ring road, before veering off to the right towards Clifton.

Walking the “buggy friendly” modern footpath alongside the route in the other direction towards Wilford, I noticed these tell-tale blue bricks forming a small bridge that crosses the stream at the approach to the Compton Acres tram stop, close to the site of former bridge 294. Wilford brick works was on the east side of the line to the south of this point. That area is now occupied by Wilford Industrial Estate, apart from which, the surroundings are now engulfed by housing developments.

That growth, of course, is what encouraged the development of phase two of the Nottingham Express Transit [NET] system, with the two newer lines between them more than doubling the network, adding 17.5 kilometres of new route and 28 more tram stops. The other line passes Queen’s Medical Centre above ground, then on via Nottingham University and Beeston before ending up at Toton Lane.   

I never travelled on the former GCR in BR days. I didn’t go around Annesley or Woodford Halse sheds, nor did I ever go train spotting on any of its stations. It was an unknown quantity to me, sandwiched between the West Coast Main Line, which we knew very well from our regular visits to Crewe and Preston and the East Coast Main Line, which we held in high esteem as a kind of enthusiast’s El Dorado. For the most part it was out of our range, though it beckoned us with the tantalising promise of riches. The GCR occupied the railway shadowlands of my youthful imagination, somewhere between the two. I was unaware of any concentration of “namers” frequenting those parts, so, consequently, it was overlooked. Like the S&D, it was gone before I had a chance to pay it the attention it deserved. I’m trying to make up for it now, in a small way, by volunteering on the ambitious and forward looking, present day GCR set-up.

Living in the East Midlands today, I’m now very conscious of the course of the old GCR, both in areas where it has left no trace and those where the blue brick infrastructure still provides an indicator of former glories. Until relatively recently, in addition to the Nottingham Victoria clock tower that somewhat incongruously overlooks the entrance to the shopping centre of the same name, there were many other clear reminders of how, rather belatedly, the GCR had cut a swathe through the whole built-up area. 

For me - and from a considerable distance at home on Merseyside - Weekday Cross was the best known of these locations, now immortalised in the splendid paintings of Rob Rowland, a member of the Guild of Railway Artists. I found its unusual name and its unconventional, yet instantly recognisable, railway location intriguing. Photographs of it must have appeared in Trains Illustrated and elsewhere from time to time in the 1960’s.

The elevated junction, hemmed in amongst the cityscape, was formed where a north to east spur to the former Great Northern Railway’s route to Grantham joined the GCR. Both lines marched through the city using a series of tunnels, bridges and viaducts. As the name suggests, this area was actually at the heart of the medieval city and it has been an important location continuously since Saxon times.

In its latest guise, part of the development site has become the Nottingham Contemporary, a fascinating gallery, though for my admittedly rather conservative taste in art, it tends to show some very bizarre exhibitions from time to time that just add to my general puzzlement with what probably isn’t even called “modern art” any more. I, for one, would still prefer the railway.

It no doubt won’t be long before my grandson is exercising his own preferences, as the wonders of the world open up before him. For the moment, though, he seems quite content for me to keep pushing on a bit while he gets some more shut-eye.

[This article has previously appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette and Main Line, the journal of the Friends of the Great Central Railway]   

It’s all in the name.

I noticed an enamel station door sign, “Cartage,” in a [not so recent, now] railwayana auction catalogue. It is defined, not surprisingly, as “the act or cost of carting” and elsewhere and more precisely, as “the charge for transporting goods for short distances, such as
within a commercial area or town, also called drayage or haulage.” Although the word itself has not quite disappeared from use, perhaps, it struck me as a quaint description in a world now dominated by “logistics” - as currently splashed over every other lorry on the motorway. In the end, it all boils down to moving stuff round, though cartage has the lingering smell of antiquity, or at least of horse manure, about it.

What a wonderfully rich language we have, and it is being added to all the time. Go back a few years and I would have said that a drone was the sound made by planes or insects. Now it has become something much more potent, and sometimes much more sinister than a means of filming moving steam locomotives from alongside or from above. A media snippet of them being used to round up sheep recently drew the response from a representative of the National Farmers’ Union that the idea “would not take off.”   

In the same auction catalogue, there were BR green doorplate signs that had once adorned entrances to various rooms at Southern Region locations - for “Cycles,” “Inspectors,” “Staff Only,” “Station Master,” “Goods Agent,” “Police,” “Private,” “Ticket Office,” “Ladies,” “Female Staff,” “Foreman,” “Ladies Room,” “Asst. Works Management,” “Gentlemen” and “Guards.” Today, if anybody was to go around putting up notices willy-nilly like that it would no doubt be described as “signage gone mad.”    

Signs, per se, have often amused me. Take these two seen in our village, for example. How rural are we in our commuter settlement with our own scarecrow festival? My wife offered to enter me in the competition. I think she was joking.

 

The instigator of the second one, which was carefully attached to a BT pole in an un-adopted road and just a stone’s throw from our house, seems to be going to quite a lot of trouble in order to avoid making a polite request in person. On reflection, I suppose that makes it a typically British modus operandi. I hasten to add that we do not have a dog, though our cat has been known to spread himself around a bit from time to time.

Outside our local bistro pub there is a notice claiming “Fresh food locally sourced from the land and the sea.” And the sea? We are so far from the sea here, that the “L” of ENGLAND is written right across our village in my road atlas. I nearly ran off the road recently, having done a quick double take and accompanying head jerk, when passing a bin lorry which announced across the side that it was, “Ambitious for the people of Nottinghamshire.” Maybe they had in mind the regular dash to Grimsby necessarily being made by our local publican to justify that promise to his customers. 

A quick flick through other recent railwayana auction catalogues has filled me in about doorplates, an area of the hobby that I had previously not taken much notice of [if you get my drift]. Enamelled signs in the six, still familiar, regional British Railways colours having clearly taken over from a wide range of cast iron - and relatively few earlier enamels - after 1948. There seemed to be lots of different ways of referring to similar things and there was certainly an extraordinary variety of plates.

As examples, I soon found - “Ladies Room,” “Ladies Only,” “Waiting and Ladies Room,” “Ladies Waiting Room,” “Ladies Waiting Room 3^rd Class,” “General Waiting Room,” “General Room,” “Waiting Room,” “Waiting Room 3^rd Class,” “General Room and Booking Office,” “Booking Office and Waiting Room,” “Booking Hall,” “Tickets,” “Ticket Office,” “Tickets and Enquiries,” “Enquiries,” “Enquiry Office,” “Station Master and Enquiry Office” and “Station Master.”

Signage had caught my eye when we were in America, as well. Cape May had the “Hell, Yeh, Water Sports Centre,” and outside what we would have described as an off-licence, was the blunt warning, “Liquor store - 10 minutes free parking or towed away.” We left as quickly as we could for a walk on the beach, only to find that a charge was made for using parts of it during certain times in the year - “No dog walking on beach or promenade – $8000 or 90 days in jail.”

My very unscientific survey of recent railwayana auction catalogues also turned up doorplates for Lamps, Porters, Porters Room, Refreshments, Parcels, Parcels and Left Luggage, Post Office, Telephone, Isolation Telephone, Goods Delivery Office, Goods Office, Gentlemen, Lavatory, Cloak Room, Telegraph and Linesman’s Hut, Permanent Way Inspector, Registered Weighing Machine Keeper, Foremen, Traffic Agent, Fire Brigade, Police, Guards Room, Signal Lineman’s Hut, Engineers Department, Ambulance Room, Stores, No Admittance, Shut This Door, Staff Private, Staff Only, Smoking Strictly Prohibited, No Smoking and even Scrap.

At the Sochi winter Olympics, an event-side advertising hoarding, “Cool Hot Yours,” reminded me how jarring comments designed to sound hip in English can often actually come across. In Tallinn, Estonia, I had been briefly transfixed by the name above a gift shop, “Jingly Jah Nooby Pood.” Back in time for the next auction, and the Penrhiwceiber Upper Signal Box board was up on the big screen. The auctioneer paused for a moment. “Looks like all the letters are there but they’ve got them in the wrong order.”

[This article was published in the May edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

Fast and Loose

Do public libraries affect your digestive system? Luckily, I have never suffered much from constipation but if I did, I’d make a beeline for the nearest library. It does it for me every time. Must be all that reaching out, squatting down and stretching upwards to reach the books.

More recently, I’ve noticed that cafes without their own toilet can have a similar result. I thought they all had to have one, but not yet in every case, it seems. Sit down, order some grub, put the menu aside, look up - where’s the loo? Next thing is you are asking the stranger on the next table how far it is to the nearest facilities, because you know that your tuna melt panini is just not going to taste as good if you don’t pay a visit first.

One solution is to go to the station buffet, of course. There will certainly be a gentlemen’s lavatory. If not adjacent, it will probably be on the same platform, so no cheek-clenching stairs to climb. 

Keeping Good Time

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are arriving in St Pancras five minutes early. We apologise if this causes any inconvenience. If you like, you can sit on the train for a while.”

Just loved that.

Giving our regards to Broadway

As we did, briefly, during Saturday May 26^th at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway’s Cotswold Festival of Steam. With four guest engines, including a resplendent King Edward II from Didcot and Oliver Cromwell from the GCR, together with some decent weather, we could hardly go wrong. However, the star of the show for me was the recently restored Merchant Navy No. 35006 Peninsular and Oriental S.N. Co., which I last saw in scrapyard condition at Barry docks in 1967.

Getting a nice picture on festival days is a bit problematic with so many folk milling around, but hey-ho, that’s the way it is at a gala. I have no sympathy with the habitual moaners who attend such events and then expect the sea of humanity [of which they, themselves, are just one small drop in the ocean] to conveniently part to allow them their one-to-one with the locomotive. Then they complain when the staff in high-viz vests encroach into their view finder, while just doing their job keeping everyone safe.

There are photographers’ charters and lineside permits available for a clearer view, if that is really what you insist on - or try travelling earlier or later in the proceedings - or not on gala day at all. A heritage [or any] railway bereft of passengers and admirers would be a contradiction in terms. Instead, rejoice that 35006 has come back from the dead, that the GWSR has returned to play on the Broadway stage and that an army of volunteers from across the country have invested so much time and effort into making sure we all have a good day out.

Eventually, I got my snaps to record the star turns, even though I had to excuse myself when gate-crashing an already bulging first class compartment to get my window-framed shot of a passing nameplate. I also had to include a random head when I managed to find an open window in a carriage door which had been carelessly unguarded for a millisecond by its resident for the day. Perhaps he finally had to go for a wee, before reclaiming his territory.