800101 and Andy and Steve
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...
View from a Carriage Window: Fields of Ridge and Furrow near Minety
View from a Carriage Window: Fields of Ridge and Furrow near Minety Gaze out of your window between Kemble and Swindon, Look left and right between Purton and Minety, And you will see a clear pattern of ridge and furrow (‘Like corrugated fields or waves in a...
Barbados and Stroud and Stroud and Barbados
Barbados and Stroud and Stroud and Barbados At the solstice, on the longest day of the year, I traced long lines across the Atlantic archipelago From Stroud to Africa, from Africa to Barbados, And from Barbados to Stroud railway station. I visited Risée...
The Names of Engines
What’s in a Name? Roger Lloyd in his 1951 book The Fascination of Railways wrote thus about engine names: ‘On the Great Western we have an endless series of castles, halls, courts and granges. The Southern specialises in admirals and shipping companies … also...
Box Tunnel
Thinking outside the Box Tunnel In the Beginning was the Word, But there was also a tunnel at Box, Near where a young child christened Wilbert Lay awake in his bedroom, dreaming Of steam-powered words puffed along the gradient By straining freight trains and...
Dudbridge to Dublin?
Dudbridge to Dublin? In those far-off early days before the opening of the Severn Tunnel, when the main line to South Wales ran through Gloucester, and when the 1801 Act of Union incorporating Ireland into the United Kingdom was less than fifty years old, and...