Image via WikipediaIt is alleged that on a match day, when Blues were defending that end, and coming under pressure from the opposition then an urgent phone call would be made from St. Andrews to British Rail and a steam train would be sent to emit clouds of smoke which would roll over the pitch. This unsighted the opposition, who had no clear view of our goal, and sent the home fans into ecstasy with the unique smell of that heady mixture of steam and smoke and the satisfaction that the opposition, at least temporarily, had been thwarted. I have been there on too many occasions to state that it was nothing other than fact and not some urban myth that has been passed down through time.
When I was a boy I used to spend hours on Wootton Bassett railway station transfixed by the KINGs, Castles, Halls and Granges of the Great Western that used to pass through and occasionally stop. On rare occasions, the engine driver of a goods train would invite us on board the footplate and sometimes would take us a mile or two down the track to Dauntsy before dropping us off for the long but elated walk home. Can you imagine what the helth and sefty police would make of that these days.
Then along came Doctor Beeching with his Tory axe and tore the heart out of the rural railway system and Wootton Bassett railway station was no more. This was surely the greatest act of folly that was committed against the British transport system in the last century and has left us with a terrible legacy of choking roads and pollutted air. Business as usual looking for a short term fix at the cost of enormous long term problems both socially and financially.
Steam, unfortunatey has also passed away, but this man's father used to hitch a free ride on or in a train as he journeyed through America and wrote some legendary music along the way. Arlo Guthrie, however, carries on the tradition:-
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