Train people and non train people.

From Wikipedia. “The return excursion train which was due to leave London at ten minutes before twelve on Saturday night last arrived at Bourne between three and four o’clock on Sunday morning. When near the platform at Bourne station the engine came into violent collision with two empty carriages which were standing upon the line, driving them completely through two very strong gates at the South Street crossing, one of the gates being smashed to splinters, and the carriages considerably damaged. There were nine passengers (including two ladies) in the carriage attached to the engine and we have not heard of anyone sustaining greater injury than a severe shaking. One gentleman’s hat was smashed to such an extent that he has put in a claim for a new one“

I grew up in a small market town that, at one time, had a branch line railway coming from esentially nowhere and ending up somewhere else in the flatlands of Lincolnshire. I never got to ride one of the trains and never even saw it in action because the line was closed to passenger traffic long before I was born and the line was completely closed in around 1959 thus the year after I was born – my apologies for repeating born but that was where I lived but wasn’t actually born in Bourne.

Several years into my childhood I managed to climb through an open window of the one time station building cum goods shed with my then best mate Dave and we spent some time trying to bum slide down what I assume was some kind of wooden goods ramp from the first floor down to the level of the platforms and tracks.

Having just re read author Beau Miles’s book The Backyard Adventurer I can easily recognize myself as a version of a young Miles, both of us are, or were, natural redheads with lots of freckles and a high propensity for total scruffiness which still lingers, in both of us, even 6 decades later. Older Beau says that young Beau was a bit of a dirtbag but then he’d never met me to compare his dirtbagness against a professional in the art.

Anyway, in his book Beau Miles says :

Many kids are train people. Small humans quickly figure out that trains are aspirational in that you can’t really own one, and when they’re given their first toy train kids find themselves with a magical artefact representing freedom, wealth and envy. Anything that remotely resembles a train and it’s line is a place to practice ; sugar sachets chugged neatly along the rim of a coffee table or a speedy tampon swooshed around the exciting arch of a handbag strap. Then something happens and you hit a time in life, likely around the age of 39 when you realise you’re either a train person or a non train person. You go in one of two directions: 1) you have a curious attraction to the Siri-type voice telling you to mind the gap, which can be a sexual innuendo if you think hard enough about it, which means you’re not a train person or 2) while still attracted to train Siri you know the average gap between train and station depends on the kind of train you’re on (which you know), and if platform works have taken place at the station to lessen the gap (which you also know), This means you’re a train person.

I don’t particularly think that I was a train person, or for that neither was I a non train person although in wet and cold England we would probably call one of Beau’s train persons a trainspotter which has a vastly different meaning. I of course was more of a Tank person (nerd) and I absolutely knew the differences between what my Mother announced to be a Tiger tank that we standing in front of when we got out of the car at the Bovington tank museum and which I absolutely knew was in fact an SD KFZ 173 or Jagdpanther…..parents eh ?

Several years ago my partner Jackie asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I think I may have said “a train set” and i’m pretty sure she thought I was joking which is why I got a new sweater and socks instead – to stop me being a scruffball/dirtbag if only briefly – I go through wool sweaters in a matter of months i’m that hard on them and pretty well everything I wear.

There’s been a whole fizzy head full of railwayana to talk about in the blog this week since I found myself sitting on the old concrete sill of the workshop and wondering what tom do next. I’d actually caught myself daydreaming about the little model railway layout that might one day be trundling round the higher section of the workshop at just over head height. That idea has morphed from an LGB scale based, garden railway idea to a smaller gauge (maybe 7mm) line based on the one time elevated line around New York. My current daydream has it based around the idea of Pictures at an Exhibition or scenes from a life (my life of course) and would have the line passing through and past models and pictures that come, at least in part, from my background.

I can’t mention railwayania and books without giving a nod to one of the late Terry Pratchett’s novels (Raising Steam) about the construction of the first railway on Discworld – where most of his novels are set. A scene in Raising Steam has one of the main protagonists aboard one of the early passenger trains and rattling it’s way across the agricultural plains where most of the cabbages are grown. In my mind that could easily be the monotonous flatlands where I grew up – it’s still a very agricultural region – while the train rattles it’s way past endless stops with desperate sounding hamlets called things like twoshirts and turkey balls falls – sorry….the latter one I think comes from Bill Bryson rather than Terry Pratchett but the idea is the same.

I came across Miles’s run along a disused railway line in Aus when I re read his backyard adventuring book recently, then, because I couldn’t remember all of the quirky detail I had to go look it up on Youtube and watch the whole thing again. In his book Miles stresses that he likes to do as little (or less) of reading and researching a project as he can get away with. In my example of rediscovering that the small market town I grew up had had a local branch line railway but which closed just after the time I was born. I kind-of assumed that the branch line would have connected to the big city a mere 20 miles away but apparently it never did as there was never any great call for passenger traffic on that route and by my time it was well served by a bus route.

With my childhood memories of having trespassed into the old railway building I decided to try and find out the route and stops of that original line as in my mind it was a railway that came from ‘nowhere’ and equally went nowhere. At the time (pre 1930) it would have been possible to take a day trip to the seaside at Skegness or an equally thrilling trip to the throbbing local metropoli of Stamford or Grantham – if you’ve never heard of them then fear not – you’re not missing anything.

Afterword.

More than half a lifetime ago I once flew halfway round the world to jump aboard a sailing boat and then spend several months slowly sailing home. Then, a year or so later I did the whole thing in reverse and a few years following that I had my own Beau moment when I realized the questionable value of doing that kind of thing and instead bought a pair of boots and a rucksack and started having my own backyard adventures. One time, and it’s long before Beau Miles’s time I also conceived the idea of walking to work rather than catching train or bus. My own walk was a little over 3 hours but it still felt like an adventure so I repeated the exercise several times.

As many readers will know iv’e pretty much had to give up on all forms of outdoor adventure, even to the point of giving up sailing. Just recently though iv’e been wondering if it would be possible for me to have some Beau inspired microadventures near to home and I may have the beginnings of a hint of a sniff of a maybe viable plan. In times past I used to do my longer training and load carrying hike between home and the nearby market town – I used to try and do it at speed. Now, I happen to think that I couldn’t even do that hike in one push, especially with the kind of load that I used to carry but iv’e been thinking about doing it as a hike with bivouacs over a couple of days with as little kit as my skills would still allow.

Best wishes Y’awl