Shopping in the Railway Works Retail Outlet
Shops had a double meaning in my childhood:
The obvious, which was the domain of women,
Open every weekday except Wednesday afternoon,
And the ‘Inside’, which was the domain of men,
And accessible to children on Wednesday afternoons only –
When we clutched our precious Permits
(Applied for all those long weeks before),
To process down through the tunnel,
To spot train numbers beyond anyone’s dreams,
As we wandered through the Railway Works,
And its alchemy-alphabet of shops:
A Shop, A Erecting Shop, A Shop Engine Testing Plant, A Shop Extension; B Shop, Boiler AV Shop, Boiler House, Brass Turning & Fitting Shop; C Shop, Concentration Yard, Carpenter’s Shop, Carriage Finishers (No.7) Shop, Carriage Repair (No.19) Shop, Carriage & Wagon Construction (No.24) Shop, Carriage & Wagon (No. 16) Shop, Coppersmiths’ Shop; Cylinder Shop; Diesel Engine Repair Shop, DMU Lifting Shop, Erecting Shop; Forge & Smiths’ Shop; Grinding Shop; Iron Foundry; Lifting Shop, Locomotive Paint Shop, Locomotive Wheel (AV) Shop; New Points & Crossing Shop, Points & Crossing (X) Shop; Road Motor (No.17) Shop, Rolling Mill; Steam Hammer Shop, Stamping Shop; Tender Shop, Trimming Shop, Truck Shop, Turning Shops; Wagon Frame (No.13) Shop, Wheel Shop, Wheel-smiths’ Shop.
I took my mother back there in 1997, when the designer outlet opened, on the site of all those closed down railway shops, and we went shopping where ghosts of five generations of my family marched through that tunnel. I sniffed the air: Smoke, steam, gas, coal, coke, oil, soot; I heard the factory hooter again; Mum picked up a keepsake magic touchstone: For she knew it could open a closed-down factory.