Are We Nearly There Yet?

The challenge for this week’s Sepia Saturday themers was ‘trains’, not a subject I am very familiar with, so I was surprised to find  some examples among the family holiday albums. No sepia I’m afraid, and only dating back as far as 1988, when we had a holiday on the Yorkshire Moors. I seem to remember that we thought the children would be thrilled by a trip on the North York Moors Railway. After all, everybody loves a steam train don’t they? How wrong we were. I don’t think the adults got excited either; is that me engrossed in the newspaper?

The views were mostly bucolic, typical Yorkshire Moors, with the occasional stop at a rural station, such as Pickering, Levisham or Goathland. The latter is now better known as Aidensfield in the TV series ‘Heartbeat’ and as Hogsmeade in the first Harry Potter film.

So, as compensation for being bored rigid, it only seemed fair to give everyone a treat in Scarborough. Great! The Ghost Train, that’s much more like it. Trembly smiles all round; “It’s all right Daddy I’ve got you!"

Steam trains can be very evocative and romantic. Who could forget the part played by Carnforth Station in David Lean’s film ‘Brief Encounter’? But for me the very mention of a steam train reminds me of the words of one of my favourite poems of the First World War era, Adlestrop by Edward Thomas.

Yes, I remember Adlestrop -- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop -- only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.