All aboard the nostalgia train

There are many ways to travel and I like to think that I’ve experienced most of them. Each one has its own charm, best suited to different needs and situations; from the humdrum of buses to the out-of-this-world splendour of airplanes, and, for the adventurous among you, the awesome majesty of riding an ostrich to college. But there is one form that will hold a special place in my heart.

Little boys and train sets go hand in hand. Little boxes with wheels on the bottom are suddenly transformed by the magic of the imagination into the Flying Scotsman. Most boys out-grow this tryst, moving on to Action Man or football or girls, or whatever, but I never did. In the most impressionable corner of my mind, trains will always be associated with magic and wonder. Basically, I think they’re pretty cool.

Now that I’m (for want of a better word) grown-up, the games have changed but the love affair goes on. I remember first coming to London and arriving at Paddington Station. My jaw dropped as I took in the cathedral of steel and steam, built by its prophet Brunel. The trains were modern models by First Great Western but it was not too hard to paint over the grubby diesel engines with shining brass pistons. I wept.

Even when the trains are gone, the magic lingers

I have travelled from Paddington many times since, and from other grand stations, but the journey is never dull. The best form of cardio, I have found, is pelting down the platform, trying to catch the train before it leaves. Once, when I had a suitcase full of library books in tow, it was just as good for weight training as well.

And once aboard the train, I am submerged in a most divine melting pot. Surrounded by strangers from all walks of life, I must sit and interact with people I would not normally mix with. No man is an island, said John Donne. I can only assume he coined this on the 9:17 from Euston. The train is for everyone and it is where we all meet. Apart from those bastards in first class.

It goes further than that. As well as meeting all peoples on the train, we can travel to all times on the train. All times after 1825, anyway. There are small village stations out in the middle of nowhere, with tiny red brick cottages that have not changed in a hundred years. When the train occasionally deigns to stop, the whole village turns out to see it. But the age of trains is not over yet. If we look to the future, and by that I mean Japan, trains shoot across the landscape at impossible speeds, powered by magnets, gravity, faster-than-light neutrinos and other tools of science-fiction.

This all comes back to the same general idea. A train ticket is a ticket to adventure, as well as Didcot Parkway. Very rarely have I been bored with a train journey, and even then I pretended to like it as so not to hurt its feelings.

Even when the trains are gone, the magic lingers. In the woods near where I live in Cardiff, there is an old railway line. The tracks have been ripped up long ago but it still resists the encroachment of nature. For maybe a mile or more, an impossibly straight path leads through the forest, occasionally overshadowed by brickwork arches. There is a humble serenity about walking in the wake of something long passed.

And yet, I can’t help looking over my shoulder in case the 17:36 to Tongwynlais is coming.