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 4th 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.’