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You are here: Home / History / Trains

Trains

December 6, 2019 By Allison Symes 6 Comments

I love the train. I think it is one of the best inventions and I’ve throughly enjoyed trips on them and connected to them.

The joy of steam but I love all trains
The joy of steam but I love all trains. Pixabay

Train Museum Visits

For example, I’ve visited STEAM in Swindon and the National Railway Museum in York to relish looking at old locomotives. In STEAM you can walk under a loco and have an “underside” look at things. The brass is so beautiful. I’m not technically minded but there is an art and beauty to these machines that does take my breath away. I guess beauty is where you see it but genuine works of art can be found in the most practical of things.

STEAM basically is the museum for the Great Western Railway and while, much smaller than the National Railway Museum, there is still plenty to see. There is also an excellent library at STEAM where you can sit and read all sorts of books and magazines when you want to have a break from looking at the exhibits.

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The York trip makes for a long day, using the Cross Country service to York from Southampton Airport Parkway but, appropriately enough, the museum is a short walk from the main line at York so could hardly be more conveniently placed! The museum has a huge range of exhibits and is well worth a visit. I liked seeing the replica of Stephenson’s Rocket.

Favourite Train Journeys

Favourite train journeys include the famous Fort William to Mallaig run (better known as the Harry Potter route. See Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I’ve been fortunate enough to go on this stunning route a couple of times. I’ve yet to see a flying Ford Anglia while on this run though. See the book and film for more on that!).

Whenever I’m up in Scotland, I try to take two train trips. One is up the north-east coast to Wick. It is a glorious journey and shows you so much of Scotland in one trip. There are plenty of seal colonies on the stretch between Brora and Helmsdale, which you simply wouldn’t see from the road as that is too high up.

Snow still on the mountains - on way to Wick
Snow still on the mountains – on way to Wick. Image by Allison Symes

The railway runs literally next to the beach. The trip then goes inland and crosses moors where you get a real sense of being in Wild Britain before the land changes again to farmland. You get to see plenty of mountains too. I was last on this trip back in May and there was still plenty of snow on the mountains.

The Glenfinnian Viaduct on the Fort William to Mallaig run
The Glenfinnian Viaduct on the Fort William to Mallaig run. Pixabay image.

The other Scottish train trip I take is across the country to the Kyle of Lochalsh (usually picking up the train from Dingwall). This has to be one of the most beautiful runs in the UK, especially around Plockton. The views from the train windows are amazing. (I also have to hand it to Scots Rail for a fantastic trolley service. The hot chocolate and fruit cake on their services is hard to beat!).

Chandler’s Ford Station

Much closer to home, I have enjoyed the run from our station to Salisbury. There are some fantastic views on this relatively short stretch of line. I’ve visited the Cathedral and Arundells (Sir Edward Heath’s home) many times. I also use the station as a park and ride particularly to Eastleigh, which is handy when it comes to Christmas shopping!

Chandler's Ford station
Chandler’s Ford station – image from CFT archives

And I will always have fond memories of our local station thanks to my holding a book signing for From Light to Dark and Back Again there. Many thanks to Three Rivers Rail Community Rail Partnership for their help there.

One of the best ways of explaining flash fiction is to read an example of it!
Happy memories of a happy event! Image by Janet Williams

It is a bit ironic my late mother-in-law learned to drive because Beeching closed the original Chandler’s Ford line. I use our station as a park and ride to get into Eastleigh especially.

I use the train to get to my writing highlights of the year from the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in Derbyshire to the Association of Christian Writer events in London, Birmingham and elsewhere. I’ll be on the train again shortly after this post goes out when I’ll be en route to London again for the Bridge House Publishing annual celebration. It’s a fantastic chance to catch up with friends I only see here and it will be lovely to be able to celebrate having work out in the BHP Nativity anthology and The Best of Cafelit 8.

The London Tube map is recognised as a work of art
The London Tube map is recognised as a work of art. Pixabay

I can’t remember when I first used the train, that’s far too long ago to recall, but I wouldn’t dream of using anything else for trips to the capital. The Tube is a fantastic way to cross London (you never get cold down there!).

I find the Tube useful - Pixabay
I find the Tube useful – Pixabay

I’ve also been over to the Isle of Wight steam railway at Ryde, which is charming, and just after Christmas, I’m usually on the Watercress Line for a run up from Alresford to Alton. The Hampshire countryside is lovely through here but wrap up well. I suspect this isn’t just me but platforms do seem to me to be some of the coldest places on earth and can make for excellent wind tunnels. (The one at Southampton Central is particularly “good” on that score!).

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Now there are aspects of train travel which are not fun – overcrowding (due to not enough coaches being put on – one particular company I can think of is notorious for this), the cost of season tickets, engineering works etc. It can also become almost unbearably hot down in the Underground. But I still think it is the best way of covering long distances relatively quickly. Our own local service acts as a brilliant shuttle service to Southampton, Eastleigh, and Romsey in particular. Such a service with reasonable parking is, I feel, the way to persuade people to use public transport.

The other huge advantage of train travel, of course, is never having to worry about parking the thing!

The advent of the train gave the country a standardised time system and it helped introduce the concept of weekends where people could use their day off to have train trips to the seaside. A lot of the museums I have visited have wonderful art works showing travelling by train in a bygone age and those posters etc are beautiful.

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I also use train trips to catch up with writing work I want to do. The smartphone, an appropriate word processing app on said phone, and a charging point on the train enable me to use journeys to draft blog posts and flash fiction stories. And the great joy of train journeys is if you are not writing stories, you can always be reading them!

Train journeys I would still like to do include the Carlisle to Settle line and down the line to the Cornish coast. I still see going on the train as an adventure.

So over to you. What are your favourite train journeys? How did you discover them? Which train journeys would you still like to do?

And as a PS I am delighted to share the latest event from the Three Rivers Rail Partnership Community – a mulled wine and mince pies evening at Netley Station. See the poster for more details.

Mulled wine and mince pie event at Netley Station. Image kindly supplied by Three Rivers Rail Community Partnership.

Related Posts:-

Top Ten Accomplishments

Reading Journeys

Winter Traditions

The Benefits of a Good Writing Conference

Getting Away From It All

Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.

Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.

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Tags: Chandler's Ford Railway Station, favourite train journeys, Scotland, Three Rivers Rail Partnership, trains, writing on a train journey

About Allison Symes

I'm a published flash fiction and short story writer, as well as a blogger. My fiction work has appeared in anthologies from Cafelit and Bridge House Publishing.

My first flash fiction collection, From Light to Dark and Back Again, was published by Chapeltown Books in 2017.

My follow-up, Tripping the Flash Fantastic, was published by Chapeltown Books in 2020.

I adore the works of many authors but my favourites are Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett.

I like to describe my fiction as fairytales with bite.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mike Sedgwick says

    December 6, 2019 at 4:55 am

    In days gone by I used to be taken to Filey, Yorks, for our holiday. My Grandfather and I had Rover tickets which allowed travel anywhere in Yorkshire for a week. I think my ticket cost 25p, his cost £1. We went up to Redcar and Whitby, to Scarborough and Bridlington but the best trip was to York and the Railway museum. That train was an express and reached 60 mph, I checked it by counting the number of clackety-clacks per minute and the number of telegraph poles flying by.
    Grandfather taught me a lot about trains and steam; how slide valves work, how the safety valve lets off excess pressure from the boiler and how a speed governor works.
    Now I love the Shuttle to Paris but it’s not the journey but the destination that counts.

    Reply
    • Allison Symes says

      December 6, 2019 at 9:25 am

      Many thanks, Mike. I’ve always taken great pleasure in the journey as well as the destination. Even as a kid, I saw the trip to get to wherever as the start of a holiday etc. Things have certainly changed. My other half has an app on his phone that can show us how fast our train to Wick is going! Very different from counting things…!

      Reply
  2. Doug Clews says

    December 6, 2019 at 5:35 am

    Hi Allison … Good one !
    At the time of writing you may not have been aware that ‘The Flying Scotsman’ will be visiting the Watercress Line for the first time ever, early next year on February 14 and 29, and March 1, 7 and 8.
    Tickets, I understand (according to The Hampshire Chronicle) cost £40 on a running day … to buy, go to watercressline.co.uk/flyingscotsman.

    Reply
    • Allison Symes says

      December 6, 2019 at 9:26 am

      Many thanks, Doug. Great news about The Flying Scotsman. I should imagine those tickets will fly out of the door…

      Reply
  3. Larry Leonard says

    December 6, 2019 at 9:58 am

    Some of your readers may not know that a reduced price rail card is available for anyone who wears a hearing aid. It cost £20 instead of £30,and a person accompanying the cardholder can also have the 30% reduction.

    Reply
    • Allison Symes says

      December 6, 2019 at 1:16 pm

      Many thanks for sharing this, Larry.

      Reply

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