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Corner Seat By Christopher Portway Hard Cover 1972
Corner Seat By Christopher Portway Hard Cover 1972 208 Pages
There lies within the breast of every Englishman an inborn love of railways. What boy, during at least one stage of his boyhood is not fascinated by trains, real and toy? What father has not, at one stage in his fatherhood, found pleasure, secret or otherwise, in the impartation of a knowledge for which probably he is not equipped?
What remains after nationalization has wiped out competition, and diesel and electric locomotion dried up the smutty tears of joy has been derided in the music hall, cursed by the clients and struck at by those it employs. Yet, though not every boy is a train spotter nor every father a subscriber to a railway preservation society, the sight of an express thundering through the countryside still does something to the male of the species.
For a great many of us the railway forms an intrinsic part of our lives. Crammed trains in the morning rush hour into London and the provinces; the great exodus in the evening. This is the very elixir of the commuter. Even his subject for conversation has changed. From the weather he now launches into a debate upon why the 8.17 is as late today as it was yesterday.
Maybe it is a result of a love-hate relationship, a mistrust of foreign railways or a notion that great mileage should be heard but not seen. but we largely ignore the most precious facet of rail travel: the long-distance journey. So instead we cross our continents by air in cramped charter aircraft with an occasional glimpse of a cloud if we've fought our way to a window and the wing doesn't get in the way. True, one gets to the destination faster and possibly in better condition-but look what one misses! From the carriage of an international express the world is your oyster. It unfolds around you, its people are with you breathing and alive. A train is your hotel. A home from home and there's no rent. Someone once said: "If more people used the world's railways in the spirit which railways alone could generate in people the world would be a happier place". And if nobody said it then I say it now.
The attractions of long-distance rail travel are not always immediately apparent. Systems and conditions differ in every country. Great Britain is not the only country where trains are sometimes late. Not by a long chalk. Similarly there are railways that are paragons of virtue and slaves of the clock. There are those that believe in a client's comfort and those that don't. There are those that believe cleanliness to he a virtue worth charging extra for and there are those that are dirt cheap-with the accent on the dirt! But variety is the spice of life. Go in the right frame of mind, and it will be an experience of a lifetime.
Recently it came to me that my own destiny is surreptitiously tied to the railway. In the war years I escaped from a prison camp by courtesy of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and suffered the most unpleasant moment of my life when machine-gunned-considerably less courteously-in a cattle-truck by the R.A.F. I became engaged to be married on a Czech railway station and have been expelled by rail from at least a couple of states. I have been bombed on the railway. I have been arrested in a train, and London Transport once sent an investigator all the way to my home to accuse me of a five-penny Tube ticket evasion.
From these brief words it will be seen that I am no disciple of the railway. Nor am I a train enthusiast rushing about with my little notebook. I am not a member of a preservation society nor an engine spotter. To me a 4-8-4 could be a calibre of bullet. But I do want to see some of the world and some of the people who live in it. And I, too, am tied to a static job with the usual restrictive practices where 'time off' is concerned. For many the route to a far destination, whether it be for business or pleasure, is just distance to be covered by the fastest and easiest method possible. "Fly and win yourself an extra day of holiday", shout the travel brochures, completely overlooking the fascination that lies hidden beneath the air routes. For me the journey is the reason for my visit to a faraway paradise. And that surely is how it should be.
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