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Sorry about my absence. I have now moved to my other piano, as it were, and so can speak to Unmitigated England again. But thankyou to Only Daughter for stepping in, and Commentator Diplo for both verbal and written warnings to pull myself together. So how about this? On Saturday afternoon we raced over to Norfolk in order to get the remaining photographs for a book chapter. Without having seen a timetable, or even knowing exactly where it was, we broadsided to a halt at Holt, the terminus of the North Norfolk Railway line from Sheringham. Arriving on the platform I looked at the schedule. The trains were alternating between steam-hauled and diesel, and the next one was steam at 3.23pm. I looked at my watch. 3.23pm, honestly. And then immediately heard the screech of a whistle over the Norfolk pines. Youngest Son stared in astonishment as the black tank engine arrived with its rake of BR maroon coaches, tightening his grip on my hand as it clanked by with that heady scent of steam and oil. He's still talking about it.
Marefield is remote Leicestershire, up on the eastern approaches not far from the borders with Rutland. The Great Northern Railway opened a ten mile line from Leicester's red brick Belgrave Road station in 1882, out through Ingarsby and Lowesby until joining up with the GNR/LNWR joint track from Market Harborough to Melton Mowbray at what became known as Marefield Junction. An unadvertised daily train took workers to the dairy at John O'Gaunt (just north of this red brick viaduct) until 1957, and the last passenger traffic of summer holiday excursions from Leicester to the Lincolnshire coast finished in 1962. I must have gone over this viaduct many times, clutching an enamel bucket and spade and wondering 'are we there yet?'. We weren't. Further south from here a beautiful blue brick viaduct over the Eye Brook was detonated as a cheap source of hardcore, so I marvel even more at the continued existence of this lone survivor, admired now only by walkers and the odd cow ruminating in the field close by. Whose milk I suppose goes by road to some industrial plant far away, when once it ended up in a dairy next door that sent three or four tankers of milk to London every day.
Sorry about my absence. I have now moved to my other piano, as it were, and so can speak to Unmitigated England again. But thankyou to Only Daughter for stepping in, and Commentator Diplo for both verbal and written warnings to pull myself together. So how about this? On Saturday afternoon we raced over to Norfolk in order to get the remaining photographs for a book chapter. Without having seen a timetable, or even knowing exactly where it was, we broadsided to a halt at Holt, the terminus of the North Norfolk Railway line from Sheringham. Arriving on the platform I looked at the schedule. The trains were alternating between steam-hauled and diesel, and the next one was steam at 3.23pm. I looked at my watch. 3.23pm, honestly. And then immediately heard the screech of a whistle over the Norfolk pines. Youngest Son stared in astonishment as the black tank engine arrived with its rake of BR maroon coaches, tightening his grip on my hand as it clanked by with that heady scent of steam and oil. He's still talking about it.
