I came across the video above on YouTube this week. It was taken on Thursday, 30th May, 1985, and records the view from the cab of a class 86 locomotive (86257 ‘Snowdon’) hauling a morning express from London Euston station to Liverpool Lime Street. It is a nice opportunity to see the West Coast Main Line before the modernisation of 2004–2008, and also the ‘old’ (1902) Crewe station only days before most of it was levelled for complete remodelling, not to mention the electrified catenary whose installation my grandfather had a hand in overseeing in the 1960s. I was a little taken aback by the blasé attitude to safety on the part of the permanent-way gangs, ambling around in the four-foot, right in the path of trains bearing down on them from various directions — see for instance the departure from Watford Junction! — but it is otherwise rather a relaxing way to spend the best part of three hours.
It is enjoyable to see so much of the old British Rail traction out and about that is almost all now long withdrawn and scrapped, though I believe a few class 86s survive on freights. It is good, too, to see the line so busy with trains and the stations with passengers, for in many ways the railways were in the doldrums in the mid-1980s. The Beeching Axe had dealt its mortal blows to a third of the network only twenty years before, the motor-car’s supremacy was uncontested, and British Rail, being a nationalised industry, was scraping by on grudging Government subsidies. The revival of the new millennium was still a good way off.
As well as the view ahead, I also found the conversation of the three men in the cab thoroughly absorbing — especially the running commentary provided by Traction Inspector Peter Crawley with the sort of articulate, measured voice that is seldom heard these days. As well as being able to explain the ingenious solutions to the intricate puzzle of running a railway, he clearly knows and loves the line itself, the southern half especially, and is able to point out many interesting sights — everything from the Norman castle at Berkhamsted to the M25 motorway under construction at Kings Langley, from the reputed hauntedness of the slow lines’ tunnel at Watford to the factory of Armitage Shanks, renowned manufacturer of bathroom fittings! There are the three spires of Lichfield Cathedral, Izaak Walton’s cottage just north of Stafford, the majestic crossing of the Mersey at Runcorn, and the dramatic final descent through the hewn tunnels into Lime Street. We even encounter the Royal Train near Hartford in Cheshire. On the approach to Crewe, Inspector Crawley points out how alarmingly near the station the Coronation Scot had got when it reached its record speed of 114mph in 1938, and therefore just how late the driver left it to slam on the brakes (too late, in fact, for the crockery in the dining car).
These days YouTube abounds with oodles of excellent modern-day cab-ride videos, many with highly informative captions: some of the best for British routes are supplied by Don Coffey, Ben Elias, ‘emmo999’ and Richard Griffin, who is one of the group maintaining the preserved ‘Hastings Diesel’ multiple unit. But there is also something highly satisfying about this older, comparatively rudimentary film and the spontaneity and immediacy of the commentary. It is almost as if Peter Crawley is reciting an old, familiar tale: for him the railway is no mere ‘transport artery’, but a corridor of associations and memories and jokes, with lore lying around every curve. The film would be simply a non-stop miscellany of facts and trivia, if it were not held together by the thin bright narrative threads of the twin steel rails.
Railways are romantic because they tell stories as they go; they cannot help turning the landscape into the setting for a grand epic poem. Whereas a motorway tramples amply wherever it will, railways are mindful of their surroundings as they weave their way ahead — regardless of their respective engineers’ intentions, good or ill, this is how it seems to be. This is why, on long rail journeys, I often find myself putting my book aside in favour of the other, wordless narrative unfolding outside the window. I find myself watching it all unfold, trying to learn England, so that it will become for me, as for Peter Crawley, a known and beloved land, full of fond sights; a gift to be passed on to others.
