Andy Kirkham

He also featured in the famous divorce case of Lady Colin Campbell "Victorian Sex Goddess" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8008094-lady-colin-campbell

There's a delicious parody by Alen Bennett Place Names of China Bolding Vedas! Shanks New Nisa! Trusty Lichfied swirls it down To filter beds on Ruislip marshes From my loo in Kentish Town The Burlington! The Rochester! Oh those names of childhood loos - Nursie knocking at the door "Have you done your Number Twos?" Lady typist - office party Golly! All that gassy beer! Tripping home down Hendon Parkway To her Improved Windemere. Chelsea buns and lounge bar pasties All swilled down with Benskin's Pale. Purified and cleansed by charcoal, Fill the taps in Colindale. Here I sit, alone and sixty, Bald and fat and fulll of sin. Cold the seat and loud the cistern As I read the Harpic tin.

One of my favourites: Harrow-on-the-Hill When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley And electric trains are lighted after tea The poplars near the stadium are trembly With their tap and tap and whispering to me, Like the sound of little breakers Spreading out along the surf-line When the estuary's filling With the sea. Then Harrow-on-the-Hill's a rocky island And Harrow churchyard full of sailor's graves And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing Is the level of the Wealdstone turned to waves And the rumble of the railway Is the thunder of the rollers As they gather for the plunging Into caves There's a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton, There's a line of harbour lights at Perivale, Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire The little fleet of trawlers under sail? Can those boats be only roof tops As they stream along the skyline In a race for port and Padstow With the gale?

I recall a lovely scene, which must have been caught just by chance, of a steam train departing eastwards from Bath Spa, and then a westbound train arriving beind the BRCW prototype Lion.

The Burnham-on-Sea one is lovely, and I could watch it again and again, but with multiple viewings I do notice a significant defect: he never properly explains the history of the Somerset & Dorset; he rather labours the point of the Somerset Central having been broad gauge and originally an ally of the Great Western, but never mentions the coup by which the Midland and the LSWR snatched it away; he talks about the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway, but never explains for the benefit of non-enthusiasts what a joint railway is. One thing I liked was to see the parcels being unloaded at Highbridge with "Airfix" printed on all the boxes: bound for Woolworths, no doubt.

Is it known what the projected route of this line was, west of Llanymynech and through North Wales? For those that don't know, this line was built as double track railway from Shrewsbury to Llanymynech and spent its whole life in debt until forced to close in 1880 when the Board of Trade condemned it as unsafe. After lying delelict for 30 years it was resurrected by Colonel Stephens as the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire LIght Railway.

I came upon this poem in an anthology of Westcountry poets published in the 1950s. It starts off describing the journey, then meanders into other thoughts Home Coming to Cornwall December 1942 A.L.Rowse A landslide on the line, the train diverted Back up the valley of the red Exe in spate Rich with Devonshire soil, flooding the green Meadows, swirling round the wooded bends, The December quality of light on boles of trees, Black and shining out of the gathering dark, The sepia brushwork against the western skies Filtering the last watercolour light. (Why should the eyes fill with tears, as if One should not look upon the like again? So many eyes have seen that coign of wood, That curve of river, the pencil screen of trees.) I fall asleep; the train feels slowly round The unfamiliar northern edge of Dartmoor. It is night and we are entering Cornwall strangely: The sense of excitement wakens me, to see Launceston perched on a shoulder like Liége, The young moon white above the moving clouds. The train halts in the valley where monks prayed, Under the castle-keep the Normans ruled And Edward the Black Prince visited. We stop At every wayside halt, a signal-box, An open waiting shed, a shrub or two, A friendly voice out of the night, a lamp- Egloskerry, Tresmeer and Otterham- And out upon the shaven moonlit moor. The seawind blows from the Atlantic coast, A seabird sails over, whitens in the moon: The little scattered houses crouch for shelter, A few withies about them, a stunted elm Or shawl of ash or thorn, a pool that gleams In the strange wavering light upon the downs That look towards Rowtor where King Arthur hunted The red deer, and met at last with Modred: Where all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea. In the mind's eye I see the old great poet Search still for Arthur's grave in this waste land Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwell. All is bare and silent: no light shows: The white sheep crop on the glimmering pastures; There is the unforgettable smell of the moor, Of the seawind on a hundred nameless herbs, On bracken and gorse, on heather and fern and ling. (The sick man leans upon the window, weeping He knows not why, at his home-coming After many weary months of weakness.) In the moment of breathing in my native land I remember to hate: the thousand indignities, The little humiliations, the small insults From small people, the hidden enmities, The slights that hurt the sensibilities Of a child that, longing for affection, learned To reward envy with contempt, to speak The biting word that freezes sympathy, The instinctive expectation of a blow To pride or self-respect or decency; And as a man to mark the averted gaze Of petty shopkeepers on their dunghill pavements; The meanness of the moneyed middle-class, The slow passivity of the workers that know Not their own interest or their enemies. But, most of all, the vast misunderstanding That divides me from my people I lament, The self-willed folly that condemned me long To opening the eyes of fools, the task Of a Tregeagle or a Sisyphus; The million fond stupidities that make A modern electorate. Alone in the night, At the window looking over the moonlit land, Alone with myself I could beat my head against The walls for rage and impotent defeat. Quick! Shut the window. Pull down the blind Over the lovely landscape. Shut out the sight! I'm probably not qualified to judge it as poetry, but I have to say that to me it just seems like prose (although perfecty good prose) chopped up into lines. The last bit serves to confirm what I've read about A.L.Rowse - that he wasn't a nice man, being mean-spirited, bitter and envious. But that's as maybe. I thought it was worth quoting because it evokes rather beautifully a night journey over the North Cornwall Line. But it will strike anybody with a grasp of railway geography as odd; a diversion of a (presumably Great Western) train up the Exe Valley will not take it to North Cornwall, unless via Dulverton, Barnstaple, Torrington and Halwill. And if this landslip caused a diversion from Exeter, surely the train would have been able to regain its original route at Plymouth. Of course if the diversion was not caused by a landslip but by German bombing of Plymouth, it might make sense. Did any such diversions take place? They would have involved reversals at Wadebridge, Bodmin General and Bodmin Road Another poem with a railway connection was by Cecil Day-Lewis which begins: Seen from the Train Somewhere between Crewkerne And Yeovil it was. On the left of the line Just as the crinkled hills unroll To the plain. A church on a small green knoll - A limestone church, And above the church Cedar boughs stretched like hands that yearn To protect or to bless. The whole Stood up, antique and clear As a cameo, from the vale. I swear It was not a dream. Twice, thrice had I found it Chancing to look as my train wheeled round it But this time I passed, Though I gazed as I passed All the way down the valley, that knoll was not there, Nor the church, nor the trees it mounded. ........ (After which it ceases to refer to trains) Finally there were two poems (not about trains) by Robin Atthill, author of the classic David & Charles history of the Somerset and Dorset. His brief biography states: ROBIN ATTHILL. Born 1912 at Netherhampton, near Salisbury; has lived in Somerset since 1918, in the Mendip country; broadcaster on West Region, W.E.A. Tutor in North Somerset; taught English at Sherborne School 1942-8, now Senior English Master at Downside School. Publications: poems, If Pity Departs (1947); West-country studies, The Curious Past (1955).

The caption states that the location is Birmingham New Street. Can that possibly be correct? Also, when did GWR lining change from yellow to orange?

I came across this campaign to save the pub after which the Rhubarb Curve is named https://savetherhubarb.com/

I was in the Kidderminster Railway Museum the other day, looking at the loco nameplates, and the question struck me: how many nameplates were scrapped and how many survive? Presumably in pre-grouping days and perhaps in pre-nationalisation days, most nameplates were scrapped. But considering the locomotives that were still in service in, say, 1960: what proportion of those hundreds of Hall, Grange and Castle plates still survive?

I always thought they looked like a Ford Transit

I've always admired this locomotive and felt that it was somehow denied the celebrity it deserved. I remember seeing it at Shildon about 20 years ago with shabby, cracked paintwork. It's so good to see it in the limelight now. Congratulations to all concerned.

My wife was planning to travel from Bristol to Kidderminster this coming Friday, October 6th, on the following schedule, with changes at Cheltenham and Worcester: Bristol TM d. 20:35 Cheltenham a. 21:13 Cheltenham d. 21:32 Worcester SH a. 22:08 Worcester SH d. 22:16 Kidderminster a. 22;37 Unfortunately there is an ASLEF work-to-rule on that date, which will result in cancellations. Obviously she doesn't want to get stranded at an itnermediate station if a connection is cancelled, and is thinking of calling off her journey. It would be useful if she could ascertain on the day of travel before setting out whether all her services are running, so that she can decide whther to travel or not. Is this possible? Or do cancellations tend to be announced at very short notice?

The only way between the platforms at Dent is by a foot crossing (at least it was 20 years ago) and I found it really quite scary because the station is on a curve and a non-stopping train could suddenly appear wih no warning.

Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I don't remember the construction of HS1 arousing so much protest as HS2, nor suffering so many cost inceases. Why the difference?

Chiswell, Isle of Portland. "Ope" appears to be the local word for alley.

It's going on my bucket list right now.

Where is this, please?

I investigated the possibility of travelling from Bristol to Worcestershire Parkway and found that there is only one direct service - a Bristol - Stansted service calling at 7:36. Otherwise it is generally served by Crosscountry services from Cardiff to Birmingham. It seems a poor show that there is really no direct service between this station and the West Country. Does it represent a (partial) failure of the concept? had it been an aspiration for Bristol trains to call there? Why do they not call? Is it for commercial reasons (insufficient demand) or operational (the line is too busy)?

Yes it's a bit disappointing to see them un-named and in the relatively austere GWR livery, but apparently the late owner of the line detested the nationalised railway and didn't want his line to reflect any aspect of it.

The line was closed down for the duration of WW2, so probably not.

It was meant to be the original livery of the Vale of Rheidol company before it was absorbed by the Cambrian. I think at the time, the official story was still that No.9 was a rebuild of the orginal Davies & Metcalfe Prince of Wales. This has now generally acknowledged to be a fiction for accountancy purposes and that No 9 was a brand new engine constructed largely from spare parts manufactured for the other two new locos.

It's not been the Industrial Museum for a good many years. It was redeveloped as a museum of general Bristolian culture under the name of "M Shed". Not an improvement in my opinion.

But note that on the OS map extract shown, there were two lines running along the quayside; I guess that it was only the one nearer the quayside (the one straddled by cranes) that was prohibited to locos. Also, I think the name Wapping Wharf applies only to the western end of the waterfront - the part not backed by warehouses. The eastern part is known as Princes Wharf.