Posted by Peter Ceresole on January 10, 2012 at 08:12:33 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Great Aunt posted by Alan Hakim on January 10, 2012 at 07:07:04:
I forgot - you were asking about the outward journey.
Alan; a lovely detailed reply. Transports me to another time and place.
Mind you, nostalgia for bygone train journeys is easily overdone. When I was a nipper we made a lot of train journeys from London across France to Geneva (from one family settlement to another). And yes, there were wonderfully exciting details that have stuck in my mind; starting in 1946, the French stations were seriously damaged. In Dieppe, if I remember right, the tracks had been laid on the street, as the main line had been duffed up during the pre-D-Day interdiction campaign. That was a real thrill- the train rolling over the top of the cobbles. Bridges were out too; you'd roll past miles of burnt out rolling stock and red rusted engines, then the track would divert down a temporary ramp to ground level and onto an Army engineers' girder bridge just a metre or two above the water. I was the perfect Rogerish age, never forgot it all... And whenever we stopped in a station, you could hear the Westinghouse compressor on the side of the engine, at the front, panting away as it kept the air for the brakes topped up. I have to say that even now, 65 years on, a train stopped in a station brings back that noise- yesterday I took the electric train from Victoria home to Peckham Rye, and Victoria still has some of the features I remember from that first rail journey. The Westinghouse compressor noise has of course been replaced by the purr of the modern rotary job, but the train is miraculously smooth and quick... I was, oddly, thinking back to that journey to France in '46.
Of course in those days there were also the copious smuts that got everywhere, and the express train would do maybe 30 mph, on a good day. And on arrival in Paris, the porter collected our luggage and hauled it across to my aunt's house on a wooden cart. Streets full of Jeeps and MPs with white helmets. It was a hell of a long trip, but a wonderful experience.
That was 1946; three years later I had to choose a book for a form prize and I asked for S&A, which my mum read with me. My copy of S&A still has the form prize sticker in it, proving that there was a time when I was a Good Boy.