Despite my best intentions I have fallen woefully behind with my blog updates over recent months. Some because I was on holiday, but also because I seem to run out of time (perhaps an appropriate link to this week's Sepia Saturday theme). This particular blog has also been somewhat neglected over the past few weeks as well. Those of you awaiting the last few postings in my vintage jazz journal series will have to wait a little longer, as today I build on the theme of time and reflect on another time. The magazine cover below is from the May 1952 edition of Trains Illustrated magazine. This was most definitely another time and a time of which I have only read about, having been born just after the Beeching axe swept across Britain. Another time would have meant more trains, more stations, more carriages, stations with waiting rooms warmed by open fires, quality and friendly station cafes, station masters, guards, luggage porters, etc.
W.R. 0-6-0PT No. 9427 enters Snow Hill station, Birmingham, with a goods train
The only place to really experience this sort of thing today is on heritage railways. I visited the Watercress Line in Hampshire a few months ago and wrote a short blog article about it. And of course there are fortunately hundreds of books and DVD's about steam, so whilst another time will never return, all is not lost.
Snow Hill Station is one I knew well in the 1990s when working at British Rail.
ReplyDeleteLovely magazine cover. To think of what it took to take those steam engines running ... what a lot of hard work.
ReplyDeleteKathy M.
The heyday of steam trains would be a fun time to visit if time-travel were possible.
ReplyDeleteNostalgia galore here but alas, those times are gone forever... By the way, can I ask you a question about locomotives?
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to go on one of those heritage railways. We had steam trains (freight)passing by the town where we lived in Germany as late as 1969. I remember loving the sound they made.
ReplyDeleteIf they weren't so polluting steam locomotives should be reinstated!
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