I heard the news today

“Aim to know more about the world than you did yesterday,” is the advice that adorns the cover of my current little notebook. I travel everywhere these days with my notepad and pen. It is the obvious thing to do if you have a brain like a sieve but you want to write about stuff. Not a diary but just prompts; things that I have seen, heard or read during the day that amuse me or strike me as pertinent.

Its latest incarnation and my next volume is the “Hornby Trainspotter’s Notebook with Pencil” combo [Made in China] that my daughter and her partner gave me as part of my Christmas present.

Much of what I write down comes from books and newspapers. I love newspapers, though I only buy one once a week. I made exceptions when we are away on family holidays. I remember how reassuring it was to still feel connected with home when on the beach in France by picking up a day old Independent at an exorbitant price that was probably comparable to the total value of the sac de croissants, grande bouteille d’Orangina and slab of Poulain chocolate that I had also bought. I had to go for the Independent, the Times or the Telegraph, because there was no sport to speak of in the continental edition of the Guardian, which was very remiss of them.

In this country, I find there is nothing better than taking the pristine, neatly folded copy of the Guardian down to the beach - so vulnerable to the elements and with the financial section already whisked away by a sudden gust of wind [I’m tempted to let it go, to be honest]. By the end of the day the whole thing looks like a dog has had it. It is short-term gratification - absorbed and expendable, but what a simple pleasure in the meantime.

Looking up from the paper this time last year I noticed another phenomenon – colourful bubble tents just everywhere, suddenly springing into shape and popping up across the beach, the shore looking increasingly like the pimpled surface of a table tennis bat. Between them, multi-coloured windbreaks all over the place, not just singly and one per family, but in multiple, all joined up into stockades against the wind, like Wild West settlers guarding themselves in the face of a hardly surprising attack from a group of unjustly displaced indigenous people.

The way that the media in general reports and writes about life is such an important part of our freedom in a liberal democracy. Long live discussion, debate and access to a plurality of opinions. I always make a point of looking at articles which don’t neatly coincide with my own view of the world. How else could we learn and adapt our own ideas if we close off the possibility that we might have just got it wrong sometimes?

Critical commentary, parody and mickey taking are themselves important parts of our belief systems in a healthy democracy. So, too, is the extraordinary range of hobbies and interests which appeal to the population at large. Just look in the larger town centre book stores at the extent of the magazines section. They stretch way down the aisles in the bigger supermarkets as well. Long may that range of choice continue to provide an insight into the richly varied and idiosyncratic ways that the British people choose to spend their leisure time.

The news on the telly is not immune to a bit of OTT journalism from time to time, when talking about the railways. Apparently, on the day after Boxing Day 2014 when everyone wanted to go back home, this was not going to be that easy via Paddington or King’s Cross, because of OVER-RUNNING ENGINEERING WORKS, which was kind of spat out as though it was the child of Satan. What was headline news on that day was quickly displaced the next morning, when real tragedy unfortunately struck elsewhere.

I know it is a bad thing that people are inconvenienced. I know I wouldn’t have liked it if it had happened to me, but it was not the end of the world. They would all get home. They would all get over it pretty soon. Nobody died. There would certainly be reasons for it and someone obviously messed up, even if the equipment was partly at fault. People will definitely have been blamed and they will no doubt have paid a price for their mistakes. I know that things have changed and that the public rightly won’t stand for incompetence in national bodies any more, but the shrillness of media responses should be commensurate to the scale of the problem. I think we sometimes lose a sense of proportion between hic-cups in our generally smooth and affluent existences and the genuine hardship that still blights so much of the rest of the world. Reporters gave air time to those who had noticed that, “Some people were ill…. others were upset” and even that, “Babies were crying.” And that’s news? All that stuff happens anyway, anywhere and all the time, actually.

Around the same time, one TV news channel surmised that there would be snow on Boxing Day and felt obliged to show us library pictures of a random suburban street with snow on the ground with the caption, “Last Year,” in case we could not imagine what snow might look like after a few months without it, or perhaps just to give us a clue as to what to look out for.

I know. They have to sell their papers. Now that we are to leave the EU and the numbers of immigrants are set to fall, what on earth are some of them going to find to write about? Personally, I’m bracing myself for more OVER-RUNNING ENGINEERING WORKS.

[Updated from an article which first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

The Keswick Underpants

Going on holiday by train has held a magnetic appeal for me all my life. However, the door to door convenience of the car can’t be denied and on most trips away from home we have come to depend on its added flexibility. More recently, though, we have been letting the train take the strain once again. Manageable sized, long-handled suitcases with very noisy trolley wheels acquired, packed and off we go.

I can’t be the only one who has gone on holiday without checking carefully enough that a specific but essential item of clothing or a vital accessory has not been forgotten. Often it is the attachment for my electric razor that allows me to shave in locations that do not have a specific two pin socket available for that purpose. That can present even more problems when abroad, with opportunities to overlook all sorts of different combinations of the required plugs and attachments.

I have also been on holiday with others who have omitted items on a far more significant scale than I have; for example, to France with no underwear and on another occasion to Scotland with no suitcase at all, which necessitated a complete gentleman’s outfitting in Helensburgh, arguably quite a challenge in itself – especially with no M&S to fall back on.

A suitcase can be a troublesome thing. In America, we watched as others fought with enormous examples, in spite of advice from the holiday organisers not to bring them. This reminded me of a story a friend told me about someone she knew who had been dog sitting when the animal had died. She had put it in a suitcase to take it to the vet. On the upwards escalator from the platform at the tube station, a man offered to help her. “What have you got in here?” he asked, feeling the weight of it. “A hi-fi that I’m taking to my brother,” she replied, at which point he ran off with the suitcase.

I once went to the Lake District without any underpants, or grunds, as we called them in our youth. For all its outlets heaving with specialist clothing and mountain climbing gear, Keswick was decidedly short on grunds when I undertook a full-scale search sometime during the 1990’s. Eventually, I found a pack of three and I still have them. They have a little badge with the maker’s name at the front, so that every time they surface at the top of the pile, bobbing up for another strenuous work-out, I say “Keswick underpants” to anyone who might be listening, which is usually just me.

One of my rare experiences of travel by train right through the night and fully clothed throughout, was at the start of a one week, all-line, rail rover feast that I indulged in, which straddled the end of May and the beginning of June in 1972. Having made my way from Liverpool to London on day one, I then took the 11.45 from Paddington to Penzance, now known as the “Night Riviera,” and not in the sleeping car but “on the cushions.” I had an awful, uncomfortable, fitful night and didn’t sleep a wink.

The Night Riviera sleeping car train prepares to leave St Erth for London Paddington on Friday 12th August 2016 behind Class 57 No. 57605 Totnes Castle. 

My only positive memory of the event was being sufficiently “with it” to enjoy dawn on the South Devon banks, where, through the early morning mist and my banging headache, I noticed that the world had been taken over by bunnies. They were everywhere. I had no idea that before most folk wake up, rabbits apparently rule the land. Perhaps Rabbit Kingdom starts just after Exeter St Thomas, but I somehow doubt it.

I explored British Rail’s Inter-City main line network for the rest of the week and crept home incognito to my own bed each evening. I resolved that next time I tried something like that, I would book a sleeping car berth. I realise that at this point, I am probably already being castigated widely for being a real wimp - lacking in resolve and unfit to describe myself as a true enthusiast and that I wouldn’t last five minutes with the Severn Valley Steam Gala, four days, three nights, twenty-four hours a day, hard-core, steam locomotive, haulage-mile collectors. I have just one thing to say to them. You are quite right. I am probably the rail fan equivalent of the “fair weather” football supporter, who only follows his team when they are winning.

I’m pleased to announce, that in my endeavours to win back some respect [which I know is a tiresomely over-used and consequently under-valued word these days, as it is surely to be earned rather than demanded], I have now enjoyed a further four nights on overnight trains in recent times, though I can hardly claim to have been roughing it. Along with a plentiful supply of grunds and an appropriate range of electric shaver fitments, I have been part of organised ventures to the USA and in mainland Europe, which have included sleepers between the following locations: Washington DC to Chicago, Chicago to Denver, Flagstaff to Los Angeles and at a later date, Cologne to Vienna.

I thoroughly enjoyed them all, revelling in the experience for its own sake, appreciating the magnificent scenery continually unfolding before my eyes and hopefully contributing to the general bonhomie on board - that feeling of togetherness that group travel can so readily engender. In the case of the evening trip up the Rhine Valley in a Czech Railways sleeping car, we were pleasantly surprised to have at our disposal a panoramic view from seats that converted into a double bed, as well as a cabinet full of extras that were, just like the health service, “free at the point of use” [and, just like the NHS, we had already paid for]. These included a bottle of wine which was empty by the time we had reached Bonn.

On that pleasant spring evening, the valley itself could never have looked more splendid, so much so that I kept imagining that I was seeing fairy-tale castles amid the forested peaks on the other side of the Rhine. The other thing that struck me was how well used the rail systems on both sides of the river were for freight trains. It was absolutely buzzing with activity.

        

A fellow traveller during our American visit likened the Amtrak experience to sleeping the night on a shelf in a cupboard. I did feel grateful that I was carrying a little less weight than some of my travelling companions. The requirements were a touch short of Houdini-like. A degree of athleticism and flexibility was a definite advantage for those sleeping aloft.

I generally travel light in summer, relying almost entirely from May to October on shorts and tee shirts, but my preference for casual clothes sometimes catches me out. I was once denied access to a post-wedding party in a club in New Brighton because I was wearing a leather jacket, in spite of the fact that I was waving my invitation card in my hand. Restrictive clothes policies have really grated with me ever since. I suppose that the die was cast on that summer evening long ago. Another couple were turned away from the same event for wearing sandals and someone else for not sporting a tie. He went around the corner, took his belt off, tied it around his neck and was promptly allowed in.     

I have noticed that when another holiday is imminent, it now automatically triggers another trip to the shops for holiday clothes. Shopping is not my favourite pastime, but I had rashly blurted out that I needed some new jeans. As if by decree, they suddenly all come with buttons or studs instead of zips. Why? Zips are obviously superior, easy, quick, robust, sensible and practical. I blame fashion. Fashion has got a lot to answer for.

I did, however, find a pair of shoes for £36. I showed the young sales assistant the dirty mark on one of the laces and asked for a reduction and I was offered a 10% discount. After some rapid interaction with a calculator, her reply was “That will be £20, sir.”

A final piece of advice, while we are still on the subject of clothing; if you are planning to visit Grassington any time soon don’t wear high heels. It’s just a minefield of cobbles. You could easily turn your ankle.

[Adapted from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette. It is included here with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

Railwayana locations

“When I were a lad,” I found that a love of trains helped with my geography and geography helped me with my love of trains. I gained a little classroom kudos by knowing where places were [those that had sheds, anyway], and getting around the country a bit at a relatively early age probably even earned me a few test marks from time to time.

It just grew and grew until I was a lifer as far as trains were concerned and a geographer, to boot. One avant-garde branch of my subject in the trendy seventies was that of the so-called phenomenologists. What it really boiled down to was a belief that you could not explain the world solely in scientific or objective terms but you had to also take into account the subjective dimension – how people perceive it.

That was interpreted as an apparent weakness in the subject and contributed to accusations that geography wasn’t seriously studying anything very much and gave other disciplines opportunities to be rather sniffy and dismissive of it as a pseudo-science. Before my own formal studies were complete, I remember becoming quite attached to the notion of “a sense of place,” an idea that was thrown into the mix at around the same time and which hinged on a theme borrowed from psychology that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In our context, I suppose, it meant that each place is unique and has its own characteristics that give it its own distinctive feel, a concept that would be quite difficult to take issue with in the first place but one which still appeals to me today.

I certainly think it helped me to develop a keen sense of place itself, as well as of relative locations. Our country packs in such a wide variety of landscape types into a comparatively small area. There is a whole lifetime of different holidays to be had in the British Isles alone. I’m undertaking my own fieldwork exercises to try to prove it.

Circumstance eventually parachuted me into a very central area of our own landmass. On the downside, we are a long way from the sea. In the plus column, we are tied up in Notts between the A1 and the M1 and therefore fairly handily situated for travelling in every direction. I am also well placed for attending railwayana auctions and for many of the heritage railways. Although we are seven miles from a railhead, once on the trains we benefit from that centrality again.

An early attraction for us was the wide range of essential services available in our steadily expanding commuter village, with its non-expanding main street. That operates now as a kind of restrictive gastric band that is somehow not quite working in the way it is supposed to. We have not yet required the attention of the mole catcher [“No Mole, No Fee,” as the advertisement in the bus shelter reminds us]. Our own moles are still drawing a blank beneath the stone slabs of the patio. The fortune teller on Main Street works Tuesdays only. Our calamities have tended to fall much later on in the week, so on the occasions that we might have benefited from a quick peek into the future to see if we would be able to put things right, we have just had to stick with the tea leaves, instead.

Given that the auction houses that either dabble in, or commit wholeheartedly to, railwayana are also rather far from the extremities within the UK, I really have no excuse for not having visited them all at least once. Taking the Railway Antiques Gazette’s own list of Diary Dates as a starting point and making the proviso right from the off that any notable omissions are my mistake alone, I found that the following outlet locations have been prominent in more recent times, in addition to the swap meets and collector’s fairs:

Wickham [Solent], Templecombe [Talisman], Dorking [home base for online auction railwayana.net, now aligned with GCRA], London, Bristol, Pershore [GWRA], Stoneleigh and Bloxham [both GCRA], Birmingham, Newark [Talisman again], Stafford, Crewe, Poynton [GNRA] and Thirsk [now showing in the north east after Malton, Scarborough and Kirbymoorside]. Closures [Sheffield], transferred locations [Cotswold], takeovers [GCRA] and recent additions [Poynton], all indicate a fairly dynamic situation overall.

If you take out the sales that are not exclusively railwayana, like Thirsk, and the specialist sales like those in London and Birmingham [tickets], you are left with a swathe of main auctions that are still very much concentrated in northern and central England, from Poynton by way of Crewe, Stafford and Newark to Stoneleigh, Bloxham and Pershore, with a southern extension to Bristol, Templecombe and Wickham. Wales, Scotland and the far south west remain out of the picture altogether.

No doubt this pattern owes much to accidents of history, as was the case for many of our greatest industries, in times gone by. As might be expected, where enthusiasts originally identified a need that they thought that they could meet, they found that there were a surprising number of potential customers prepared to travel some distance to take advantage of the new provision. Most of the large centres of population in the country are quite well served as a result.

I have regularly been to Newark, Pershore and Stoneleigh and in “the old days” many times to Sheffield and Malton. I went recently to Solent for the first time, having heard only nice things about it. Of course, as a geographer, of sorts, I relied on my road map and not on sat’ nav’ to get me there. 

[Adapted from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]  

Railway heritage at its best

Wherever I go in this country, I come across notable examples of our rich railway heritage that have been saved for future generations by supportive legislation and the hard work of motivated groups and resolute individuals. On a recent Yorkshire holiday, we fitted in a visit to Hellifield station in time to give my daughter’s boyfriend his first experience ever of steam on the main line. I wanted to try to communicate why it is that I find scenes like this one so impressive.

The shell of the old station has been carefully preserved. Its honey-coloured stonework glowed in the low sunlight of a late autumn afternoon. The Duchess of Sutherland glided majestically into the adjacent loop for her water stop, her exertions over the Carlisle to Settle route behind her for the day. Magnificent, I thought. What a great ambassador with which to introduce young people to my own obsession.

She was a regular at Lime Street station in the early 60’s and on Edge Hill shed when we bunked it. She would most likely have been work-worn and grimy then, and as she was a familiar acquaintance we might have hardly given her a second glance. I can’t begin to tell you how pleased I was that she was still here and that my daughter and her boyfriend were here too, to witness our very personal reunification.

Railwayana – rescued, restored, railway relics – Really??

This railwayana lark leaves my wife a little bewildered. A close friend I go to auctions with faces the same issue. It wasn’t a problem when it was just framed posters and a few carriage prints. A portfolio file and archive quality pockets for ease of access and viewing also offered appropriate protection.

They are tucked away most of the time and don’t take up much house room. We both like the double royal posters and recognise them as an appropriate way of recording places that are important to us from our past as well as our present and they are consequently dotted around our home. I wake up to my wife on one side of me and Desmond Barnes’s incarnation of the girl at the end of the pier in New Brighton in the 1950s on the other.

My friend and I both have our respective sanctuaries in our own houses. I call mine an office and my wife calls it a tip but all parties agree that there are fewer restrictions here. There is not much available wall or shelf space left, as you might imagine. “Cluttered” is the most regularly used word to describe it, though I would prefer homely, nostalgic, reminiscent, comforting, reassuring, symbolic, informative, interesting and evocative.

When my friend and I return from auction we receive polite enquiries about what we have successfully bid for or bought from a side-stall. This is undertaken in the interest of protecting any remaining communal and/or office spaces from any further unnecessary “clutter.” Odd snippets of paperwork might just make it without attracting too much attention. Bulky bits of metal, on the other hand, could be a little less welcome.

I have concluded that for me it is partly an age thing. I have become increasingly appreciative of our history and heritage as time has passed. I find there is something reassuring in the sheer dogged permanence of railwayana and its reluctance to be discarded, even though initially, that is exactly why it ended up lying in front of us on those display benches.

Whilst the railway has changed and its designs have been updated, these things that we handle were important to us in times past because they were the accompaniment to our formative years. We have perhaps increasingly valued that period of time ever since. The subsequent care and attention that has eventually been lavished on these artefacts and paperwork indicates a recognition of their lasting value. Buyers often make a substantial personal commitment and dig deep into their resources for the privilege of cherishing them.

My small collection is very personal. It is now part of how I see myself. It reminds me of people, places, times and events. It brings my past back to life. I gain pleasure from such attachments. I love the feeling of belonging that it re-ignites. I want visitors to the house to recognise my close association with railways because I’m proud of my hobby.  

"I remember when this was all houses"

An explanation is required. My dad was born on the Wirral in 1908. “I remember when this was all fields” was how he frequently described the westward march of the Merseyside conurbation across the formerly rural parts of the peninsula he recalled from his childhood.

On a walk out of our own Nottinghamshire village this week to a vantage point that overlooks the steadily expanding settlement, I noticed that the trees planted for the Millennium celebrations have grown so tall that only one or two rooftops and the top of the church spire are now still visible - hence the title. Man-made landscapes change through time, including this intentional return to woodland.

Each time I go back to the Lakes or the Cornish coast, I am reassured and delighted to find them more or less as I last left them. The beauty of the largely natural landscapes, imprinted on me in my early years, has been regularly reinforced thereafter.

Not so, however, many of our man-made environments, including my own special area of interest, the railway landscape, which continues to evolve. In response to a recent announcement on a regional TV programme that our local line was going to be blessed with substantial investment, I had a sudden if somewhat belated urge to record scenes that might also be about to disappear forever. I thought I had better get there before they keep their promise to spend money on it. The penny had dropped that “invest in” means that visible changes are afoot, in just the same way that “close down” does.

Network Rail had announced their intentions, as posted on their website, to make improvements to the level crossings on what is now referred to as the Castle Line between Nottingham and Newark, involving the removal of the signal boxes and gate boxes and the upgrading of the barriers to “obstacle detection crossings with full barriers.” Once completed, all the signalling on the line will be controlled from the East Midlands Control Centre in Derby.

I’m pleased that there is to be investment in our local line. I know this involves the dismantling of structures that have become familiar landmarks and I feel sad about their disappearance, but there is, as in all things, a balance to be struck. We have an amazing proliferation of heritage railways which just keeps on growing, accumulating the artefacts from previous eras and using or displaying them appropriately.

We also have an army of determined photographers, historians, writers and modellers to remind us of the attractions of man-made landscapes which have been lost during the march of progress. Whilst we shall, no doubt, continue to be vigilant in our efforts to preserve as much as possible of value from our rich heritage, we should also take pride in the continued success of the railways themselves, which undeniably require, from time to time, everything from a little tinkering, through unrecognisable redevelopment, to the creation of whole new systems.

[Adapted from an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

"Just because you want to watch the trains go by"

That 1960s BR rail safety TV ad’ had a rather sneering and sarcastic tone. The words were directed at railway enthusiasts, though it was not train spotters who were the most endangered species at the rail side but rail workers, followed by the travelling public.

Some stations banned spotters altogether for health and safety reasons. That decision was supposedly made for the benefit of passengers but also perhaps to take a bit of pressure off the station staff. There could be quite a lot of us around from time to time.

Since those days, an avalanche of rules and regulations has been accompanied by a gradual improvement in working conditions, especially for those engaged in safety critical operations on the railway. I would like to think that such advances emanated from greater consideration by the public, government and employers for the well-being of the workforce. It was not “health and safety gone mad,” as some might have been tempted to describe it - though increased fear of litigation no doubt pushed things along a bit, too.

   

In France, the United States and Tanzania - examples I have seen at first hand, the railway is not hemmed in with quite the same insistence on interminable miles of robust fencing as it is here. Everybody knows that trains are big heavy bits of metal and it’s therefore probably not a good idea to get in the way of them. Road vehicles everywhere pose a similar threat, but other than alongside motorways, we don’t seal them in quite so vigorously.

Circumstances are certainly different elsewhere, both culturally and developmentally. Those countries are all characterised by larger expanses of land, lower population densities and sparser rail networks. In Britain, the railway often appears to be more up close and personal, cheek by jowl with suburbs that seem to go on for ever.

In much of western America, appointed places to cross the railway are frequent, almost always on the level and many passageways do not have any kind of barrier. It is largely a matter of “Look and Listen” before you cross, as is still the case in some of the more rural parts of Britain. In developing countries, people walk along the track, using it as a thoroughfare, generally saunter over it as required and in many cases live uncomfortably close to it, through necessity.  

It must contribute notably to the cost of train travel in Britain when almost every inch of the network has to be sealed in with fencing which seems to be growing higher and becoming more substantial and invasive. It is also uncompromisingly metallic and very unsightly. It makes the lineside a less welcoming environment and it spoils the view.

In Trains and Buttered Toast [John Murray, 2008, p.125] Sir John Betjeman wrote, that “Railways were built to look from and to look at. They still provide those pleasures for the eye.” Unfortunately, I think we now seem to be in a spot of bother with that assertion.

[Based on an article of the same name that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey. Thanks also to Simon Turner at GW Railwayana Auctions for permission to include an illustration from the GWRA archive.