Songs about trains

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

 

 

[BillyAnchor]

4 hours ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

Although Dundonians may feel left out

McGonagall had the copyright for that region

[scottsdad]

 

[BillyAnchor]

 

[Lurkst]

On 21/02/2022 at 23:08, BillyAnchor said:

So I vaguely remember this poem in a BR advert way back in the 80s. Apparently the poem was part of the inspiration for Fisherman's Blues by The Waterboys one of my fav songs.

 

Night Mail by WH Auden

 

This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.


Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.


Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:

Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

 

On 22/02/2022 at 11:23, Frosty said:

 

The monotone Received Pronunciation actually suits it.

There was also a great Postman Plod Night Mail parody that featured in Viz once - usual premise of Plod stealing anything of value from his sack and getting pissed rather than working all done with a tab hanging out his mouth and a stream of swear words being directed at anyone he came across. Actually not so much a parody more a real life documentary on the Royal Mail.

 

[kennie makevin]

On 09/12/2021 at 21:11, Paul Kersey said:

 

The original Chigley 'Time Flies By' of my childhood, if you don't mind , not that unfunny sub Cheech & Chong carnage.

 

[kennie makevin]

Just now, kennie makevin said:

The original Chigley 'Time Flies By' of my childhood, if you don't mind , not that unfunny sub Cheech & Chong carnage.

 

and, indeed, carbage !