Travel by train and wax lyrical

Train travel has it’s poets. For me, it also has its composers. In one of my favourite films, ’Sun Valley Serenade’ with the actual Glenn Miller band performing, we hear them rehearsing my favourite railway song “Chattanooga Choo Choo”.

One of the first musique concrete pieces I ever heard was Pierre Schaeffer’s “Etude aux Chemins de Fer” based on railways sounds.

A very popular piece by a train addict and composer Arthur Honegger, who was heard to say, “”I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses”, wrote a piece which sounded so much like a train that he changed the title to ‘Pacific 231’. That title helped the piece attain considerable popularity

Music in a different genre describes this journey on Canadian Pacific

And this describes a journey from Vancouver to Whistler.

Judging from these songs, people seem to like Canadian trains. Looking at the scenery in this video makes me want to travel to Canada immediately!

There are many folk songs about the railways and the people who built them, for example, ‘Paddy Works on the Railway’.

This is  Cumbrian folksong about the Settle To Carlisle Railway. Many people died building those great railways.

I have it on excellent authority that this is an Indian Independence Day song dedicated to Indian Railways.

Many great authors and poets have written about the railways. Here’s Walt Whitman’s “To a Locomotive in Winter”

and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “From a Railway Carriage”

Even T S Elliot – Yes, the chap who wrote “Four Quartets” and “The Wasteland” !!! – has contributed some of his verse to railways in the form of -“Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat”

They even have poetry competitions about the railways. Here’s a very young poet.

Here’s an older competition winner – if you can hear her above the railway noise!!

But here is a poem in words and pictures from East Lancashire.

One of the earliest innovative use of poetry, music and film was produced by the British GPO (General Post Office) in 1936. It’s interesting that the Post Office felt the need to employ film directors, poets, composers and actors to inform the public about the night mail from London to Scotland. The poet is W H Auden and the music was written by Benjamin Britten.

“Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong”

It is difficult to visualise a world where the only modes of travel were trains, water transport and horse drawn vehicles. Railway travel was by far the most comfortable means of travel until the advent of the modern design of car.

One of the greatest British contemporary poets of the railways was John Betjeman. Some of his observations about the habits and demeanours of the English can be seen in this BBC documentary which is based on his poetry. (Only the BBC dare make a film like this!!!)

He was largely responsible for preventing the demolition of St Pancras railway station. Until he began speaking of its beauty, we all thought that all those Victorian monstrosities should be pulled down. But he touched on one aspect of travel which affected me personally.

The London “tube” trains did not just run underground in the centre of London. They ran out into the suburbs and beyond to the green countryside North of London. For example, here’s the line from Rickmansworth to Amersham.

We lived in Sudbury, part of Wembley town, where the 1948 “Austerity Olympics” were held. The other side of our road was green where we used to catch newts which flourished in the numerous bomb craters. When we wanted to travel further into the countryside, we would take the Piccadilly, Bakerloo or Metropolitan Line “tube trains”.

This idea of building a “tube” line into the open countryside entranced John Betjeman. Of course, this invited people to move out into settlements near the line as this ‘Metropolitan Line’ ran directly through London into the city of London where bankers and stockbrokers worked. So Betjaman wrote about ‘Metroland’  – Ruislip, where we used to catch the train for Ruislip Lido – Rayners Lane and all stations North in a Middlesex which was mainly countryside when he wrote this poetry. “London Wall” and “Farringdon” are in the city of London and “Oxford Street” is in the City of Westminster, renowned for the post Christmas sales. Here they meet at “Bakers Street Station” – not mentioned in this section of the poem – and catch the Met’ Line whose first stop is “Willesden” and a subsequent stop at “Rayners Lane” in the county of “Middlesex”. He buys a dozen plants for their Ruislip home before meeting that “evening at six-fifteen” under the platform indicator.

And all that day in murky London Wall

The thought of Ruislip kept him warm inside

At Farringdon that lunch hour at a stall

He bought a dozen plants of London Pride;

While she, in arc-lit Oxford Street adrift,

Soared through the sales by safe hydraulic lift.

Early Electric! Maybe even here

They met that evening at six-fifteen

Beneath the hearts of this electrolier

And caught the first non-stop to Willesden Green,

Then out and on, through rural Rayner’s Lane

To autumn-scented Middlesex again.

Below he describes a journey INTO London from the “leafy lanes of Pinner”, wherein is “Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines”. The train passes “Harrow” and “Preston” stations where green fields can still be seen but “Neasden” is where the metropolis of London really makes itself evident.

Early Electric! With what radiant hope
Men formed this many-branched electrolier,
Twisted the flex around the iron rope
And let the dazzling vacuum globes hang clear,
And then with hearts the rich contrivance fill’d
Of copper, beaten by the Bromsgrove Guild.

Early Electric! Sit you down and see,
‘Mid this fine woodwork and a smell of dinner,
A stained-glass windmill and a pot of tea,
And sepia views of leafy lanes in Pinner –
Then visualize, far down the shining lines,
Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines.

Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road,
They saw the last green fields and misty sky,
At Neasden watched a workmen’s train unload,
And, with the morning villas sliding by,
They felt so sure on their electric trip
That Youth and Progress were in partnership.

I must admit that it is pleasing to read poetry about my home town of Wembley even though it is now largely a Hindu settlement with probably the funniest show on television “The Kumars at No. 42”

(Cliff Richard)

(Elis Costello mentions the song he wrote about the Hoover factory in Hangar Lane, Perivale)

(Alan Alda)

(Jennifer Saunders)

and a magnificent temple in Alperton, on the site of one of my sister’s high school, which would be on everybody’s “bucket list” if it were in India.

I used to love walking around the old stadium built for the 1924 Exhibition. There were various amazing buildings with great statues which had been converted for use by various companies. But apparently they have all now been destroyed. Here is the last building, the Palace of Industry, biting the dust.

The Met’ Line station for Wembley Stadium is “Wembley Park” and other ’stopping’ trains also serve the same station.

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.

The next section of poetry mentions “Harrow-on-the-Hill”, another favourite walk of mine. The “constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing” talks about the trolley bus route which started in Sudbury and ran into the town at Paddington. They had very large tyres and the power supply cables made the sounds he describes. He mentions other localities such as “Wealdstone” and “Perivale” where the old Hoover Factory stood.

(I can remember doing a New Year’s gig at the old Hoover factory. Elvis Costello even wrote a song about it)

Benjemann is probably comparing the sea off his favourite Cornwall coast with the suburbs of London, about which he was writing at that moment. (By the way, there is a school on top of Harrow Hill!)

Then Harrow-on-the-Hill’s a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailors’ graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing
Is the level to the Wealdstone turned to waves
And the rumble of the railway
Is the thunder of the rollers
As they gather up for 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?

Here we see a commuter arriving home by train to her house in Ruislip. “With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s”. English people are usually extremely polite. If someone steps on your foot, it is ‘de rigour’ to say “Sorry” or “Pardon”. A polite reply might invite a “Ta” or “Thank you!”. But this area really WAS “our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again”, a delight to come home to! A small suburban house with a garden was a dream realised by many people at that time. And television was improving enough to occupy people for much of the evening.

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt’s edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again.

Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Drene;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden – father’s hobby –
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.

It’s SO nice to read Betjeman waxing lyrical about Wembley and the River Brent. Here he talks about many other areas around the Metropolitan Line. I once saw an aircraft sitting on top of a house in Northolt.  He compares the city places like “Kensal Green and Highgate”, where Karl Marx in buried, “silent under soot and stone” with Perivale, “Parish of enormous hayfields” and “Greenford scent of mayfields”. This is how it was. But times have changed. We have some beautiful parks in this area of London but Middlesex is no longer the county that Betjeman knew.

Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.

Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone

Although he seemed to love a “tube” line, which still runs from the London Stock Exchange into the countryside North of London, he chose to be buried in his beloved Cornwall. (‘Port Isaac’ shown in part of this video is the setting for our favourite TV series “Doc Martin”)