Author: Stuart Butler

~ epistle to a goods shed ~

I would notice you barely in passing

you were merely a shell from the past

you stood empty like mills but now you are filled

with an energy longing to last

you were built and designed in those pioneer times

by Isambard Kingdom Brunel

you are one of a kind and you serve to remind

of the skills he had mastered so well

and it’s said you’re the final survivor

of a goods shed in fine Cotswold stone

but you stood for so long like an ancient old song

graffiti’d neglected alone

your style it is Gothic and Tudor

and your roof is all slated from Wales

but it keeps out the rain and the sound of the trains

as they rumble along on the rails

where eight ancient arches adorn you

as you sit by this old railway line

this beautiful structure is breathing again

and may well be the last of its kind

and now I look round this old corner of  town

and thanks to endeavour and pleas

it’s no longer a home for the homeless

and no more is it down on its knees

yes I’ve seen it host poets and comics

I’ve seen it host many a band

I’ve got lost in its maze and seen crazy golf days

and watched stuff that I don’t understand

and I’ve seen it transformed over Christmas

to resemble some magical fair

and I’m sure even Brunel would have to admit

it’s a place with a great atmosphere

and I still always glance as I’m passing

it’s no longer just some old eyesore

may it always survive to enrich all our lives

and bring joy to this town ever more

c.Crispin Thomas

The Fascination of Railways Rodborough Church Performance

A friend at Stroud Walking Football lent me his boyhood collection of 17 Awdry stories, given to him at Christmas and birthdays in the early 1960s. I emailed him with a few questions and observations, seeking out his memories. I listed all the inscriptions: from an uncle and auntie; from Grandma; with love from Mummy on his 4^th birthday and so on.

Here follows part of his reply:

‘So, Stuart I have to say that your email has prompted quite an emotional recall. You have highlighted some things from my early life that I had forgotten about.

I was born in September 1958 so would think that my first book was purchased by my Grandma in 1961. Sadly, she died when I was about 7 so I didn’t know her for long. She also lived in London so I didn’t see much of her.

Your reference to Uncle and Auntie Clarke is especially poignant as I had sadly forgotten the important part they played in my early childhood. I am an only child and unfortunately my mother was very poorly when I was around two years old and spent time in Mount Vernon hospital. Dad worked in London so Mr and Mrs Clarke, who lived next door, looked after me for some months as I remember. They were probably late 50s with a grown-up son and Mr Clarke worked as an Inspector on the railway, I think. They were really good to me at what must have been a difficult time and I am embarrassed to say that I had forgotten about it.

‘I think like most children my favourite was Thomas, although I did like the pomposity and arrogance of Gordon. Whilst my parents read to me in the early days, I particularly remember Uncle David visiting a couple of times a year and sitting on his knee whilst he read to me. He and my Auntie Joan were unable to have children and they were always close to me as their only nephew. David had a passion for railways and they lived in Sussex so when we went to visit a highlight was a trip to the Bluebell Railway. This was instrumental in starting my interest in preservation railways and over the years I have always enjoyed visiting them if we are on holiday and there is one in the area.

Well Stuart that concludes my memories and I am amazed at how much I have written. I hope it is useful and obviously let me know if you need anything else.

All the best with this project.’

I was so moved when I received this and it made me realise that there’s a lot more to the Thomas books than just text and pictures. I think the books are a version of the famous madeleine moments in Marcel Proust’s A la recherce du temps perdu (Remembrance of things past). Here’s the famous biscuit passage: ‘… as soon as I had recognised the taste of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me … immediately the old grey house upon the street where her room was, rose up like a stage set … and with the house, the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine.’

And a jump in logic here, perhaps, but please allow me – I think the madeleine moments trope applies not only to the Thomas books but, for many people of a certain age, to railways in general. So let us test this proposition with extracts from

Roger Lloyd’s 1951 book, The Fascination of Railways

‘The curious but intense pleasure that is given to many people by the watching and the study of railway trains, their engines, and the detail of their organisation is both an art and a mystery. It is an art because the pleasure to be had is exactly proportionate to the informed enthusiasm one puts into it. It is a mystery because, try as one will, it is impossible to explain to others exactly in what the pleasure consists. The connection between the sight of a railway engine and the quite deep feeling of satisfaction is very real for multitudes of people but it eludes rational analysis.’

Mr Lloyd then transports is to a favourite bridge: ‘Once on top of that bridge a rather murky but for me a most real heaven lay all about. If no trains were coming through there was shunting in the Yard to watch. But trains were very frequent and they generally came very fast indeed, rushing at the bridge with a great roar, and crashing under it with a roll of thunder. I would stick my head as far through the iron lattice work as it would go and try to look right down the chimney. I never could, of course, but for long after there was a highly satisfactory smell of sulphur, and flying smuts which descended on one’s clothes, and the tail lamp vanishing into the distance. To that bridge also I owe the fact that I discovered the right way to view a freight train. It must be viewed from above the track, for then you can see what all the open waggons contain, and lose yourself in a maze of pleasant speculation about the extraordinary variety of goods which one freight train takes and make guesses about where a particular wagon has come from and where it is bound.’

‘But I have written so far only of boys and men. There are certainly more of them than of girls and women. But I once made the mistake of saying publicly that this railway interest “seems to be exclusively male.” At once I was rebuked, and by many people. There was the schoolboy whose mother found watching trains “such an amiable thing to do.” She liked their speed and colour, but her real satisfaction was in the ambling freight train with a small tank engine in front, because then she could think of it as a “dear little train.”

Then there was the vivid scene described to me by a man who had made a special pilgrimage to New Southgate in order to see a special excursion …’ [run by an engine brought out of retirement, Stirling’s 4-2-2 No. 1] ‘…and there he found ‘four alert girls, who were obviously watching the rail traffic. This was something new to me, and on some pretext or another I introduced myself to a very animated conversation … As soon as the girls discovered that I too was a locomotive enthusiast, they seemed anxious to impart the news of the day and in less time it takes to tell I was examining a beautifully written set of quart-sized note-books in which were recorded the number, name, type, classification, shed, and date when seen of every engine on the line. Besides all this these girls had other notebooks, which they kept in the form of journals, showing the engines at work on particular duties, the formation of the trains involved, and the passing time at their observation place on the lineside.

“Of course, you’ve come to see No. 1,” said one of them … Apparently they spent most of their holidays at this spot, and when I came to ask them how they came to be so interested as to keep such careful records, they seemed almost at a loss for a reply, as if they were doing the most natural thing in the world. In due course, No. 1 came along on her way back to London; wrist watches were consulted, and entries were made in the journals. “He was making about 70, I should think,” said one of the girls.’

‘There would be no difficulty whatever in demonstrating that the number of people who are fascinated by railways is very large and surprisingly various, and it therefore follows that there is something about railways which has the power to fascinate. The basic element of it is no doubt an affection for the steam engine, for I never met a railway enthusiast yet who could take the slightest interest in an electric train, or who does not in his heart regret that the diesel engine was ever invented.’

But, like all of us, Lloyd’s writing is conditioned by the time in which he wrote. His observations about electric trains were probably correct in 1951. But speaking as one who was born in that year and who lived through the demise of steam as a boy, I find that I can stare at an electric train and bingo! Marcel Proust works his madeleine magic and I am transported to a platform with semaphore signals with all the sights and sounds and smells associated with steam.

Zen and the Art of Railway Carriage Travel

‘To the lover of railways, travelling is an art. Like other men he uses trains as a convenient means of shifting his body from one place to another, but he makes this process serve other ends as well. He uses it to get the ‘feel’ of the line, to see new engines and recognise old ones, to learn more and yet more about railway working; and he hopes to get from all this a real and, deep pleasure. If his journey takes him by a route over which he has not travelled before, then his pleasure is intensified until it almost becomes excitement, and he knows that he will not read very much of the book in his bag. But all this is given to him in more generous measure by the norm or average of trains than by the exceptional or spectacular.’

Which is how it is for me on the Stroud to Swindon branch line.

THE SLEEPER

10.30 P.M. GLASGOW-EUSTON

‘… the most thrilling incongruity of all is undoubtedly the act of undressing and getting into a bed not in one’s own bedroom but in a train while being hurtled through the countryside at a mile a minute.

I feel sure that if they would openly confess what is in their minds, practically every sleeping car passenger approaches the train and clutches his special tickets with a real thrill …

But having parted with considerable sums of money … on the non-stop 1030 p.m. Glasgow to Euston, it would be just as well actually to sleep in it …

I actually got quite quickly to a light sleep too, which was marvellous for someone interested in railways. For the trouble is of course that people who have this infirmity are much too interested in what is going on to let themselves fall properly asleep. My own Waterloo is the battle for the sort of steady slumber which thank God, always blesses me at home, is to start wondering where we are. It is hopeless to let yourself do this on a line you know really well, for you start testing yourself to see if you can discover your whereabouts by the clues of sound alone. My light sleep is instantly dissipated by a slowing of the train and the changed rhythm of the wheels …

Why are we slowing? Is it a signal? No, for we aren’t stopping dead. Well, then perhaps we’re climbing Beattock. Now I come to think of it there was a lighted station a few miles back, and I suppose it must have been Carstairs. Yes, I think that must be right because I can now hear the engine laboriously and steadily puffing, and obviously we are climbing a long incline. It must be Beattock Bank. Or no! It might be Shap Fell. I might have slept longer than I supposed. If it is, then that lighted station must have been Carlisle. But then if it was we should have stopped for a minute at Upperby shed to change the engine crew, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t. By this time, there is nothing for it but to switch on the light and look at my watch. That settles it. It’s only just midnight, so we couldn’t possibly have passed Carlisle. This must be Beattock after all.

Well, now that I know that, perhaps I can go to sleep again; and in fact I do so at once, and, as the event showed I stayed asleep for quite a long time. What next wakes me is a sudden pressure at my feet as the train swings round a curve … Then where are we? … Once more I am comfortably dozing, when we swing round another curve, over many points, and pass a busy engine shed … I get up, slide the louvre from the window and look out … Preston … I must have steadily slept the whole way from Beattock and missed Carlisle altogether.

Having thoroughly yielded to this nosey inquisitiveness I really go to sleep this time, but even in sleep I am vaguely conscious of the geographical messages of noise. We rattle over a bridge. Obviously the Sutton Weaver Viaduct, so we are near Warrington. A little later comes the characteristically cavernous sound of Crewe … Then comes a station where a train thunders over our heads as we pass beneath it – probably Lichfield, or it might be Tamworth. Either way it is nowhere near time for that cup of tea which the attendant is going to bring as we run through Bletchley, so go to sleep again … And oddly enough I do so, for I hear nothing whatever of Rigby or Crick Tunnel, or the noisy cutting where the line from Northampton joins us.

The next thing I know is the attendant’s knock, and a cup of tea … The night is far spent and the day is at hand: the full light has already come.  But the mist is not yet lifted from the fields, and, sitting on the bed and then slowly shaving while watching the countryside slip past, one can see the sun gently dissolving the low cloud of vapour … Not until Willesden does that magic fade, but then before there is time to regret its passing we are running by Camden engine sheds … It is the journey’s end, for in a moment we are running into platform 3 at Euston at 7.30 …’

Finally, in passing I note that the conclusion to his book appears almost to negate the earlier Madeleine-ism of steam and contempt for modernity:

‘Anyone who loves railways must admit to much nostalgia over the past. But in this, as in every other thing which has life in it, the dead must be left to bury their dead; and the living must pay a seemly reverence to the dead, but look to the future.’

Stations like Stroud (and Macbeth)

They’re great theatre, railway stations, don’t you think? The platform as the stage with Life and Existence itself in the limelight. For it’s almost as if a state of beatitude is attained whilst sitting on that platform, regarding one’s fellow travellers. A temporary, fleeting, unification of opposites.

For there we sit and stand: colleagues on a platform about to share the same train and the same direction in life. And for that moment, as we glance at each other, assessing and guessing who we might be (our station in life as it were), we are unified by time and space.

But at the very same time, we are also cognisant of the fact that this unity is absolutely temporary – who knows where we are all eventually going, stopping and alighting? Who knows who we really are? What strange and ephemeral unity is this?

And then we stare at the platform opposite. All those people going the opposite way on a different train at a different time. We are divided by time and space: two railway lines divide us and a timetable too. Yet those passengers on the opposite platform are experiencing the same sort of epiphany too.

Somewhat perturbed by these earl morning philosophical reflections, I think a cup of tea might be just the ticket.

I glance in the mirror in the café and see Macbeth behind me, there in a chair, clutching a cup of coffee, whispering:

‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.’

An A to Z of Women’s Past Work: the GWR in Peace and War

A is for acetylene cutter and assembler and dismantler of automatic instruments and acetylene welder

B is for booking clerk and brass lacquerer and bridge-keeper and blinds puller and boilersmith’s mate

C is for charwoman and carriage cleaner and clerk and cellar & page girl and carter and cloak-room attendant and crockery collector and carver and carriage fitter and carriage cleaner and chargehand and crossing-keeper and conductor

D is for draughtswoman and drop stamper and dining car attendant and drilling gang

E is for engine-cleaner and electric truck driver and electric welder and electric plater and electrician’s assistant and enquiry clerk

F is for ferry attendant and fitter’s mate and forewoman and fitter

G is for goods porter and gatekeeper and gardener and goods clerk and general labourer and gatewoman and gate-opener and guard

H is for hotel staff and horse-cloth & sack repairer and horse-keeper and hotel porter and harness cleaner and hammer driver and hammer girl and horse-drawn delivery driver and holder-upper and housekeeping

I is for issuer

L is for laundress and labourer and letter-sorter and luggage-room porter and lift attendant and lining woman and linesman’s assistant and lamp-lady

M is for machinist and messenger and motor van driver and munitionette and machine grinder and machine setter and machine miller and machine turner

N is for number-taker and nut-scragger

O is for oiler and office painter and overhead crane driver

P is for porter and parcels clerk and platform porter and parcel porter and painter and printer and plate layer and passenger guard and polisher

R is for rivet hotter and restaurant car waitress and railway policewoman and railway hotel staff and railway saleswoman

S is for shorthand typist and stewardess and signal cleaner and stores issuer and shed labourer and signalwoman and sewer and station ‘master’ and shunter and storeswoman and station refreshment room staff and supervisor

T is for trimming shop and typist and telephone and telegraph exchange operator and ticket collector and train-attendant and train information attendant and tracer and telephone attendant and train announcer and tube cleaner and tea lady and telephone and communications maintainer

V is for van guard

W is for waitress and washerwoman and waiting-room attendant and workshop woman and weighing-machine attendant and wagon-repairer and wharfingers and flag maker and women’s room attendant

Derived from The Fair Sex Women and the Great Western Railway

Rosa Matheson Tempus Publishing Ltd

The Refreshment Rooms at Swindon

The next time you stop at Swindon and grab a coffee, you might be astonished to discover that the refreshment rooms at Swindon were both famous and infamous (also possibly remind yourself of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias with a quick search on your phone).

Here’s the Devizes & Wiltshire Gazette 1842 with its description of the refreshment rooms (the contract for the building of the station specified that every passing train had to stop at Swindon for a potentially lucrative refreshment break): ‘… the station itself is the handsomest we have yet seen … there are four large refreshment rooms, two on each side of the road, of noble proportions, and finished in the most exquisite style … walls panelled … fireplaces … beautifully painted ceilings. Such rooms cannot fail to improve greatly the taste of every one who enters them… ‘

The refreshment stop was for just ten minutes, however, which did not contribute to improvement of taste; here is a textual depiction of the mad dash at Swindon from Doyle and Leigh in 1849 that went alongside their cartoon Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe: ‘Before we had half finished, the Guard rang the Bell, and my Wife with a Start, did spill her Soup over her Dress, and was obliged to leave Half of it; and to think how ridiculous I looked, scampering back to the Train with my Meat-pie in my Mouth! To run hurry-skurry at the Sound of a Bell, do seem only fit for a Gang of Workmen; and the Bustle of Railways do destroy all the Dignity of Travelling; but the World altogether is less Grand, and do go faster than formerly’.

Let’s finish with Charles Dickens again, From The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices. 1857; it’s not about Swindon but it certainly captures the atmosphere of a busy railway station at a junction with a railway works.

‘It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors … shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph bell was in a very restless condition. All manner of cross-lines came zig-zagging into it … and, a little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly going through the motions of drawing immense quantities of beer at a public-house bar. In one direction, confused quantities of embankments and arches … in the other, the rails soon disentangled themselves into two tracks, and shot away under a bridge and curved round a corner. Sidings were there, in which empty luggage vans and cattle-boxes often butted against each other … and warehouses were there… Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the hungry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their coke and water were ready … the other, for the hungry and thirsty humans … who might take what they could get…’

The Rodborough GWR Bus Service

The GWR experimented with some local bus services in the 1920s around Painswick, Cainscross, Chalford, Kingscourt and Rodborough. I recorded some residents’ memories of Spillmans off Rodborough Hill a few years ago: red brick terraces above the mills on the busy Bath Road, betwixt two pubs and with an old Co-op and a jug and bottle. More LS Lowry than chocolate box Cotswolds: a mill town in the Cotswolds.

Irene Connor remembered Old Tom

You knew all the horses,
Pulling the carts with their heavy loads
Over the cobblestones of Rodborough’s roads;
Coal and milk and spuds and beer and bread,
And, of course, the fishmonger,
With his basket on his head,
“What have you got for me today?”
They asked, whilst you watched
The horses and the dray;
But your favourite was good old Tom,
Good old Tom, loved by children –
But adults looked in horror, as Tom, once more,
Lowered his head over fence, hedge or wall,
To munch approvingly on such rich pickings,
As cabbages and lettuces and leeks
And the green tops of turnip, swede and parsnip,
Then the especial delight of a rich, ripe carrot;
All those houses with veg not cars in the front garden,
Good old Tom thought they were growing it just for him.

Irene also remembered a cobbler in a hut, below the alley-way in Spillmans,
Hammering away, nails into leather, Silver whiskers, bushy brows, Mutton chops of snow,
You’d creep by, Peer through the cracked door, Standing slightly ajar, Then tap politely, yourselves, You, the little elves, “A sprig for my top, Mister Marmot?” He’d raise his head from his hammering, Like a little gnome, himself, Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat, This man born before the Crimean War, Still mending boots between our two wars, Tapping away as his pocket watch ticked on, Rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat, Until, one day, He was there no more.
And you were no longer elves. Catching the bus instead.

Spillmans in the 1920s

More LS Lowry
Than rus in urbe:
Steam whistle hooters,
Gas hiss in mantles,
Rain streaks on the window-panes.
Flat caps bob in unison,
Stout boots clatter on the cobbles,
Bread and marg in your pocket,
A small army on the march,
Wife at the washing,
Spillmans Pitch,
Early Monday morning.

As the bus trundles up the hill.

800101 and Andy and Steve

800101 stood gloomily at Gloucester station. His mood was worsened every Monday morning (and Monday mornings were bad enough anyway) by the excited chatter of two men who should know better at their age. Every Monday morning, they awaited his arrival, happily carrying their football kit. At their age!

And every Monday morning, they alighted at Stroud station, swinging their boots as they walked past the old mill: “Monday again, Steve.” “So it is, Andy. The best day of the week. Our walking football day at Stratford Park.”

800101 turned and glowered.

————————————————

He was about to commence the part of the journey to Paddington that he disliked the most. He quite liked St Mary’s Crossing near Chalford where he cheerily tooted his horn as he passed the cottage and the gates, and Isaac and his mum would give a cheery wave,  but then, without fail, the self-doubt returned. How he loathed the climb up the incline and the agony of the tunnels at Sapperton!

What had stuck in his mind was the nightmare he once had whilst dozing in the sidings at Old Oak Common. His restless sleep was disturbed by the haunting presence of a silver-haired clergyman talking about how in the old days a train needed banking engines to get up that incline from Chalford and through those tunnels at Sapperton.

———————————————

He recalled how he had awoken with a start! What if he ran out of power climbing up the hill and slipped backwards? Or ran out of power in the tunnels and came to a dead stop? A cold sweat dripped down his cab window.

He had tried therapy. He had listened to old diesels. He had even listened to the wisdom of old steam engines. He had looked at websites and entered chatrooms. He had even tried AI. All to no avail …

Every time he left St Marys behind, the nightmare returned … “I’m not sure I can do it, I’m not sure I can do it …”

————————————–

The following Monday, 800101 was delayed by a signal at Gloucester. The two men decided to enjoy the fresh air on the platform rather than ensconce themselves in a carriage. The two men chatted away whilst 800101 eavesdropped with a quite overwhelming sense of complete and utter joyousness.

It turned out that these two walking footballers used to work on the railway. They were reminiscing about how they used to maintain the track, the tunnels at Sapperton, the gates at St Mary’s and how regular inspections ensured tip-top safety; they then walked down the platform to stand and admire 800101: “A perfect example of the high-speed 800 class”, said Andy. “None better. Perfect way to travel”, replied Steve.

————————

The signal changed to green and off they went with 800101 proudly passing Standish Junction to cheerfully stop at Stonehouse and then Stroud where Andy and Steve alighted once more.

800101 gave a cheerful toot on the horn; Andy and Steve turned round where in surprise they saw a great big grin and a wink. “Have a great game, boys, score one for me. But make sure you walk and don’t run. You know the rules. But I’ll be running up the incline today. I CAN DO IT! I CAN DO IT!”

Thanks to Andy and Steve, the nightmares have gone. Without doubt, 800101 is now the happiest member of the 800 class that you could find anywhere on the line.

And every Monday at Stroud station you can see three thumbs raised.