Trains, planes, no automobiles

Perusing the blogosphere this morning, or more specifically, visiting Cornish Dreamer's wonderful blog, I found myself getting all nostalgic for trains and train stations: -- it has been 4 years now since I was back in the UK, and I really miss the trains, that acrid, slightly nasty smell that all stations seem to have, peering down the tracks to where they curve off into the distance, watching for the train....
I just had to listen to Flanders and Swann's wonderful lament "Slow Train". How lovely that RT's post was about the route from St Erth to St Ives --- apparently that line was saved from the axe after all.

One of these days I'll have to get back over: but now that there are four of us, it becomes so much more expensive for us to fly over. Perhaps in May next year we will be able to go.

N.


Slow Train
Miller's Dale for Tideswell ...
Kirby Muxloe ...
Mow Cop and Scholar Green ...

No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road.
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street.
We won't be meeting again
On the Slow Train.

I'll travel no more from Littleton Badsey to Openshaw.
At Long Stanton I'll stand well clear of the doors no more.
No whitewashed pebbles, no Up and no Down
From Formby Four Crosses to Dunstable Town.
I won't be going again
On the Slow Train.

On the Main Line and the Goods Siding
The grass grows high
At Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside
And Trouble House Halt.

The Sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate.
No passenger waits on Chittening platform or Cheslyn Hay.
No one departs, no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives.
They've all passed out of our lives
On the Slow Train, on the Slow Train.

Cockermouth for Buttermere ... on the Slow Train,
Armley Moor Arram ...
Pye Hill and Somercotes ... on the Slow Train,
Windmill End.