The Glenfinnan Viaduct. Photo: javipolinario via pixabay.
For the love of steam
Ken Veitch reflects on some happy memories riding the rails
‘To be able to enjoy one’s past is to live twice’
Martial, Epigrams, AD 86
A while ago at Moffat in the Scottish Borders I bought a book entitled The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of Britain’s Railways. In his excellent narrative, author Michael Williams laments ‘the extinction of many things that once made rail travel joyous’.
My first home in Altrincham seventy-four years ago was within sight and sound of a busy railway. This, thankfully, was still the steam age, with clouds of smoke and wheels spinning on greasy rails. I soon graduated from the shunting yards near my home to the footbridge that once spanned the north end of Crewe Station, where I joined train spotters also absconding from school. We noted wonderful engines with names like Bechuanaland, Princess Margaret Rose, The King’s Own Liverpool Regiment and City of London. I like to think that such times, as well as providing excitement enhanced my understanding of numbers, physics, history and geography.
My favourite train journey, so clearly and happily recalled, was to my grandparents, who lived at Manley near Chester on the edge of Delamere Forest. Our train was pulled by engines with names such as Somme or Ypres. Aged four, I had no idea what these names meant. Across Cheshire we rode, steam drifting across fields of cows, till we alighted at Mouldsworth, a country station of white-edged platforms, oil lamps and rhododendrons. Hand in hand, my father and I walked on quiet lanes overhung with trees, with dad pointing out flowers and creatures. At gran and grandfather’s house there was the smell of baking and a garden full of everything. I felt then, and still feel, that I was in a magical fairyland.
I am now a grandpa, and I still have to pause to watch a train go by. Recently, at Carlisle, among a crowd in silent awe, I watched the magnificent engine Duchess of Sutherland, built at Crewe eighty-five years ago, glide into the station heading a train of some 400 steam worshippers. The work of those who designed, drove and still operate these engines is a labour of love.
As I salute the memory of my parents and grandparents who provided such joys for me, I wish to share the true pleasures of life with my grandchildren (Joel, Alastair, Sam and Emily) contemplating flowers and painting them, running in the sea, making and tasting chocolate cakes, making dens in the woods, and, who knows, riding on steam trains. I hope these times will be stored up and shared in turn with generations to come.
