I wish I'd travelled by bicycle ...

I am on a railway journey.
I have booked my seat.

My seat-reservation is for coach C, seat number 29, facing the direction of travel, and conveniently next to the aisle.
I occupy my seat and, with some difficulty in the limited space, open my broadsheet newspaper.

The train departs.
Leaving behind all that urban graffiti, we cruise through delightful countryside.
Nobody has yet occupied the window-seat, number 28, so I have an uninterrupted view.

The train stops.
There are the usual public announcements –
“Take your belongings …”
“Mind the gap when alighting.”
“Passengers for Wigan must change at Timbuktu!”
Some passengers alight.
New ones get on board.

“Excuse me,” says a large lady pointing to seat number 28, “I think that’s my seat.”
I re-fold my newspaper, arise from my seat and move into the aisle.

Lady has a big suitcase. I offer to place it on the overhead rack.
“Oh, how kind!” says she.
The suitcase is very heavy!

She compacts herself into the seat by the window.
I ignore serious transverse pain in my chest.
Under the irresistible force of gravity, her generous frame, having nowhere else to go, spreads laterally.
I smile and re-occupy seat number 29.
Somehow there doesn’t seem to be quite so much room.

“Are you travelling far?” I enquire in a friendly tone.
“Oh, yes, all the way!” she responds.
I am somewhat alarmed by her broad-gauge smile.

(Did I tell you that this train is the one from Penzance to Newcastle, and we haven’t passed Newton Abbot yet?!)

I re-open my newspaper. I think I’ll settle for one of the tabloids next time, or perhaps a small paperback.

Five minutes after leaving the station the lady asks, “Is there a buffet car on the train?”
“Oh, yes,” say I, (somewhat hesitantly because I can feel what’s coming,) “I think that’s in coach D, further back.”
“Fine,” she says, “I think I’ll pay a visit.”
With my newspaper now in a state of serious disarray, I get out of my seat to allow lady access to the aisle. Lady emerges from her airline-type seat with some difficulty. She heads off towards the front of the train.
I decide to take the opportunity, while standing in the aisle, of reconstructing my newspaper.

Lady realises that coach D is in the opposite direction.
She apologises profusely as she squeezes past me once more.
Coincidentally the train lurches violently over a series of points.
Jiggerley-juggerley-dum-didderley-dum-dudderly-di-jiggerley-jug!
This onomatopoeic interlude accompanies an unforeseen entangling of limbs in order that we both manage to retain an upright posture.
Lady smiles sweetly and asks, “Is there anything you would like?”

Her voluminous bosom threatens to engulf my slender frame.

I blush.
She doesn’t!

“No, thank you!”

I tentatively sit down again, savouring the unworthy hope that there will be a very long queue at the buffet.

I search for my newspaper.
Did I lose it in her cleavage?
I don’t remember!

My earlier hope is not realised. Within minutes lady is once again at my side bearing a brown paper bag bulging with all sorts of artery-clogging goodies in one hand, and a large cup of something liquid, held at a precarious angle, in the other. Our earlier manoeuvrings are reversed. This time there is less physical contact, although some strange fluid has been spilled on my seat.

She sits.
I try to sit.
Now there’s even less room.
My bottom now feels moist.

Lady spreads the contents of her goody-bag over her own fold-down table … and half of mine.
“Would you like something?”
I politely accept ... a crisp. (Eeugh – prawn cocktail!)

To continue a description of this lady's noisy consumption of this pre-packaged repast would be unsavoury and unkind.

Anyway, I think she likes me.
I should be grateful ...
Not many people do!

I am getting irritable.
I've got a wet bum.
I am finding it difficult to breathe, though, thankfully, the chest-pain has gone.
I’d really like my newspaper back.
I daren’t look for it!

Achieving what comfort I can in a restricted space, I engage compassionate and forgiving thoughts while looking at the inside of my eyelids.
I pray for sleep to come.

My repose is soon interrupted ... “I think I need to go - err - you know where.”

Now, visualise this ...
Two fold-down tables full of detritus with nowhere to go, large person with full bladder and a 'need to go' trying to negotiate a small space ... and me ...
I stood no chance!

Once more, after scattering rubbish everywhere, we dance momentarily in the aisle.
She smiles flirtatiously again, while playfully caressing my left nipple.

While she’s away in the loo I pick up my small rucksack from under my seat, abandon all hopes of retrieving my newspaper, (wherever it may be,) and make for the ‘quiet zone’ coach.

This anecdote has a basis in historical fact.
I have made only very slight embellishments to the truth!

About gauges ...

In Victorian times there were two common gauges for the mainline railways of Britain. Most companies adopted what we, in Britain, now refer to as ‘standard gauge’: that is 4ft 8½in between the rail-faces, as above.

My engineering hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, here immortalised in bronze, was a man of big ideas.

For his Great Western Railway he insisted upon 7ft 0¼in:

Smaller industrial and rural enterprises, unconnected with main lines, used several different narrower gauges, partly because such gauges permitted tighter curves. On the Isle of Man Railway you'll find 3-foot gauge, and on Welsh mountain railways - 2'3".

Irish Railways, for some contrary reason, (keep the Brits out?) finally ended up with 5ft 3in for their main railway lines.

Brunel’s argument for adopting the broad gauge on the GWR was that it would facilitate higher speeds, improved comfort and greater load-carrying capacity. Wider wheel-based locomotives could accommodate boilers placed lower than their standard gauge counterparts. Thereby a lower centre of gravity would lead to greater stability. Cylinders could be situated between the mainframes, (inside cylinders.) Again, this might have contributed to stability, but one wonders whether reduced accessibility could have created difficulties with maintenance.
That debate: "What if … ?" continues to this day.

Some of Sir Daniel Gooch’s designs for the GWR must have been fire-breathing monsters of their time.
Here's Iron Duke:

Interestingly the permanent way for Brunel’s broad gauge railway consisted of rails supported on longitudinal sleepers, in contrast to the still-familiar transverse sleepers of the standard gauge:

Perhaps the biggest problem that signalled the demise of broad gauge was the time, labour and inconvenience involved in transhipment of passengers and freight between the rolling stock of rivalling companies:

After 1864, when the British parliament accepted advice from ‘the gauge commission’ that 4ft 8½in should be adopted nationally, there was some dalliance with mixed gauge, but 1892 saw the final demise of Brunel’s broad gauge as the last broad gauge train left Swindon:

Notice the longitudinally-sleepered broad gauge track on the right, mixed gauge with intricate point-work/crossings in the centre, and standard gauge to the left.

Isn't all that terribly interesting?

My next project will be about bridges.

The terms 'cantilever', 'suspension', 'box-girder' and 'truss' come to mind!

Tess of the D'Urbevilles and various shades of dubious green.

Did you see that?

The first episode of this recent, and otherwise excellent, BBC TV production was roundly criticised on Points of View for using the hymn How Great Thou Art. That was composed in the 1930's (?) by Carl G. Boberg and R.J. Hughes, and well after TH's Victorian setting for the story.

Then, in the final episode, why, oh why, do we find Angel Clare traversing Dorset in a train hauled by a locomotive of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway? Horror of horrors! GWR, I could forgive, but the SECR belongs in Kent!

In know that Tess is a very sad story, but this travesty brought unnecessary tears to my eyes.

I recognise the loco used in the film as the Wainwright class 01, number 65, preserved at the Bluebell Railway in East Sussex.


Isn't she lovely in Wainwright loco green?
Yes, BUT, with an 0-6-0 wheel arrangement, you would expect her to be hauling freight.

Then we saw Fenchurch, another loco preserved at the Bluebell, and originating with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. This is an example of what was known as a Brighton Terrier. Wonderful, here she is:

The livery shown here is described as umber, introduced in 1905, a bit late for Tess (published in one volume in 1892).


Mr. Stroudley (C.M.E. of the LB&SCR) had colour blindness and was famous for inventing 'improved engine GREEN' which was, in reality, an attractive shade of ochre. Here is Gladstone, so adorned:




Gladstone is a Stroudley 'B' Class 0-4-2, no 214, built in 1882 and now preserved in her resplendent so-called-green at the National Railway Museum in York. I want to take her home with me!

Dorset in Hardy's time was largely served by the London and South Western Railway, the Great Western, and the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, but never the SECR nor LB&SCR!



A more realistic passenger locomotive might have been an Adams 4-4-2T 'radial tank' of the LSWR. There was one in steam (No. 488, built in 1885) the last time I visited the Bluebell. OK, that was a long time ago, and I believe she now needs a new boiler.


Note the authentic LSWR passenger livery (described as 'apple-green') and the stove-pipe chimney, so characteristic of Adams' locomotives. The coaches, in Maunsell green, however, are the wrong colour. LSWR livery for passenger rolling stock was described as 'salmon and pink': a bizarre purplish hue (not to be confused with GWR chocolate) below the waist, and cream above, thus:

Very few LSWR coaches survived 'grouping' into the so-called 'big four' (1923) and subsequent nationalisation (1948). I have yet to discover a restored example correctly liveried. Above is somebody's commendable model of a six-wheeler.

Is my anorak showing yet? Does my bum look big in it?

Couldn't BBC producers have anticipated that fans of Thomas Hardy might be knowledgeable clergymen, who know about hymns, and sad, frustrated, aspirant engine-drivers like me, who know a little about the history of Britain's railways?

After that excursion into arboriculture (you know: 'wood', 'trees', visual impairment and all that!) I have to commend the producers of Tess. The scenes were credible and gave an authentic feel to the conditions, tribulations and moral hypocrisy of the time. The Snow it Melts the Soonest...was a charming, and probably contemporary, inclusion. Here are the lyrics as sung by Anne Briggs:

Oh the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing
And the corn it ripens fastest when the frosts are setting in
And when a young man tells me that my face he'll soon forget
Before we part, I'd better croon, he'd be fain to follow it yet

Oh the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing
And the swallow skims without a thought as long as it is Spring
But when Spring blows and Winter goes my lad and you'd be fain
With all your pride for to follow me, were it 'cross the stormy main

Oh the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing
And the bee that flew when Summer shone in Winter he won't sing
And all the flowers in all the land so brightly there they be
And the snow it melts the soonest when my true love's there for me

So never say me farewell here, no farewell I'll receive
You can meet me at the stile, you kiss and take your leave
And I'll wait it till the woodcock crows or the martin takes its leave
Since the snow it melts the soonest, when the winds begin to sing

(Courtesy of www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/anne.briggs/songs/thesnowitmeltsthesoonest.html)

After correcting the punctuation, I must learn that song.

There's something else to do in my spare moments!