Railways in the arts

Books, Plays, Films

• "Anorak of Fire" (BBC)
• 'Fairy Tale - A True Story'.
  The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway was the location for all the railway scenes in the film.
• "From a Railway Carriage" Robert Louis Stevenson (poem)
• "Adlestrop" Edward Thomas (poem)
• "The Bridge Over the Silv'ry Tay" William McGonigal (poem)
• "The Railway Children" Edith Nesbit (novel)
• "The Great Railway Bazaar" Paul Theroux (travel) (Hamilton, 1975/Penguin, 1977. ISBN 0140042350)
• "Kingdom by the Sea" Paul Theroux (travel)
• "Brief Encounter" Noel Coward (play)
• "Starlight Express"
• "Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat" T.S. Elliot (poem) (later set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber in Cats)
• "Ghost Train" Arnold Ridley (play, later made into a film)
• "Train Wreck" Jeremiah Jack (publ. Manor, 1975)
• "Imperial Express" James Bellah (Jove, 1982. ISBN 0515054496)
• "The Man on the Train" W.J. Chaput (Worldwide/Harlequin, 1988. ISBN 0373970641)
• "Chaos" William K. Wells (Doherty, 1987. ISBN 0812510453)
• "The Great Train Robbery" Michael Crichton (Cape, 1975/Panther, 1976) This was later made into a film.
• "The Great Railway Adventure" Christopher Portway (Coronet, 1983. ISBN 0340369345)
• "The Great Railway Bazaar" Paul Theroux (Hamilton, 1975/Penguin, 1977. ISBN 0140042350)
• "Von Ryan's Express" David Westheimer (Pan, 1965) Later made into a film.
• "The Green Train" Herbert Lieberman (Arrow, 1987. ISBN 0099526905)
• "A-Train" Roger Williams (W.H. Allen, 1985. ISBN 0352313048) (This one is about a British train carrying nuclear waste which is sabotaged)
• "Electric Train" David Beaty (Coronet, 1977. ISBN 0340218207)
• "Transcontinental" Gary McCarthy (PaperJacks, 1987. ISBN 0770106889)
• "Train to Hell" Alexei Sayle (Methuen, 1984/Mandarin, 1991). ISBN 074930801X) A comedy/mystery about a British football special to Italy for the World Cup
• "The Railway-Lover's Companion", Ed. Bryan Morgan, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963, includes 29 verse items and 8 items of fictional prose - all railway-related.
• The thriller "The Magnet" had a long sequence filmed on the Liverpool Overhead Railway not long before it closed.
• Some years ago there was a series on children's BBC called "God's Wonderful Railway", set on the Severn Valley Line. The early episodes were set mostly at Highley, the later ones at Arley.
• "La Bete Humaine" A French book by Emile Zola first published in 1890. There is an English translation in the Penguin Classics series.It is a good account of the operation of the Paris to Le Havre line in the 1870s woven into an account of sexual infidelity and murder. It has been made into a film three times. In 1938 under the original title; in 1954 as Human Desire (transposed to contemporary US locations); and the 1995 TV-movie called Cruel Train (transposed to WW2 era Britain
  Sue McNaughton writes:

  I taped this, and lent the tape to a gricing friend with the comment "Two topless women, two messy murders and plenty of 'Sir Lamiel'. His face lit up. "Naked women and steam!" he said, "what more could a man want?" I can't help feeling Zola is meant to be more ....._cultural_ than this.

• The BBC produced a play in the mid 80's called 'Song of Experience'.
  Set in West Yorkshire, 1960, it follows the exploits of three young trainspotters on a day out at the main line station. These are a stereotypical mix of "bad lad" (into rock'n'roll, women and "don't tell me mates what my hobby is") "good lad" ("should we be doing this lads"), and a stereotype (sickly child, wearing school uniform -shorts, cap, satchel - who knew all the shed allocations of by heart, etc).
  The plot develops into a shed sneaking session, where the sickly one gets caught by the BT policeman who turns out to be a paedophile and trys to interefere with him. Strong stuff from the beeb! It was filmed on the Keighley & Worth Valley and Severn Valley for train travel scenes and at Carnforth(?) for shed scenes and the filming was very realistically done. A highly risque drama but a hugely enjoyable one.
• Several Sherlock Holmes stories (Arthur Conan Doyle) feature railways, including one where Holmes estimates the speed of the train from observing the telegraph poles.
  In "The Bruce Partington Plans", the Metropolitan Railway plays a significant part. Also, in the final story of the third collection, where Holmes escapes from London to the Continent. It includes an account of a railway chase.
  Doyle's "Round the Fire" stories include one concerning the total disappearance of a train and its illustrious occupant. That was "The Lost Special" which would have been huge fun to make a film of. A short special was hired at short notice in Liverpool to go to London, and somewhere along the route totally vanished. Eventually inspection of the signalmen's logs isolated the section it had disappeared in, but there were no junctions, only a number of closed colliery branches with the connecting track lifted. The dénouement was years later in the form of a confession (the film would have to change that). The baddies knew a special was likely and had a gang of men large enough to rush a piece of curved track into place between trains. The special was diverted down one of the disused colliery lines and the main line immediately replaced. Accomplices on the train tied the crew up and slowed the train enough to jump off a few hundred yards from a large shaft to which the track had been moved. The entire train was swallowed up with a tremendous crash and that was that. Nowadays, you'd have to tidy up a bit more carefully than Conan Doyle did - what about the marks on the branch rails ? And the steam rising from the shaft ? Tch, tch.
• There was also the "*Seven*-per-cent Solution", a Sherlock Holmes novel written by Nicholas Meyer. Included a train chase filmed on the SVR.
• Agatha Christie also wrote stories featuring railways, the most famous of all (indeed, perhaps the most famous detective story of all time) being "Murder on the Orient Express", also a major film.
• Charles Dickens often wrote stories including railway travel: too many to list here.
• Some famous artists include Joseph Mallord William Turner, Claude Monet, Hamilton Ellis, and of course, perhaps best known of all among railway lovers, the late, great Terence Cuneo.
• Visit A.Boodoo site to see some railway poems.
• Trainspotting for having no trains in it, apart from a sole SuperSprinter!

Music inspired by railways

• The day we caught the train (Ocean Colour Scene, 1996)
• Long train running (Doobie Brothers, 1973) Lots of American locos in the video
• Something about you (Level 42, 1985), which seems to have been filmed in a Mk 1 coach.
• "Princess of the Night" by Saxon (heavy metal rock group):

  She used to be an iron horse
  Twenty years ago
  Used to bring the mail to me
  Through the ice and snow
  I sat alone and watched her
  Steaming through the night
  Ninety tons of thunder
  Lighting up the sky
  She was the princess of the night......

• Chant des chemins de fer (Railway Song) by Hector Berlioz
• Vergnuegungszug (Excursion Train) by Johann Strauss jnr
• Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin was inspired by a train ride
• Pacific 231 by Honeger (231 is French notation for a Pacific 4-6-2)
• There are two CDs called Lovomotiv-Musik, A Musical Train Ride vols I and II.
  They are released on the Marco Polo label (catalog nos. 8.223470 and 8.223471) and distributed by HNH International.
• Coronation Scot
• Little Train of the Capira
• Antonin Dvorak was a great railway enthusiast, and indeed a gricer. On one occasion, he was too busy to pop down to the local equivalent of the Cross, so he asked his future son-in-law to go and get the loco number. The young man foolishly returned with the tender number, and Dvorak's comment to his daughter was "So this is the sort of man you intend to marry!" Would that more of our famous people had that attitude :-)
• Isn't Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture supposed to have some sort of railway connection?
• On a similar subject, buskers may often be heard around the London Underground, and indeed on occasions on the trains themselves. There is indeed a fine for this, but a blind eye is often turned unless the buskers are making a nuisance of themselves. Indeed, some of the players are of a professional standard, and are possibly practising & making some cash at the same time.
  However, did you know that in Italy, a law introduced in 1980 bans people from playing or singing, on pain of a 30-90,000 lira fine (for soloists) or 500,000 lira (for choral efforts). Orchestras or pop groups can attract a 2 month prison sentence.

  Mark Brader:

  On the other hand, on the Toronto transit system, they *audition* and licence buskers, and mark off locations where they can operate without unduly impeding passenger flow. Given that a lot of people seem to like the music (heck, I even like it myself sometimes), I think this is a fine idea. The same system is also in use on the Metro in Paris.

Talking of pop songs, there are many modern/traditional songs directly about trains or railway journeys (particularly Country & Western). Can anyone add to this list?

• Morningtown Ride (Seekers)
• She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain (Trad)
• Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
• Canadian Pacific (George Hamilton) (IMHO one of the best musical stories of a train journey)
• Rock Island Line (Johnny Cash) (not a great song, but the changing rhythm has be heard to believed!)
• City Of New Orleans (Johnny Cash)
• Underneath The Arches (Trad) (well, it mentions the trains rattling by...!)
• On Ilkley Moor Baht 'At (Trad) (well, it has railway connotations in that the title is the rhythm traditionally used by express drivers on the horn!)
• Blur's album "Modern Life Is Rubbish" features a painting of an A4 on the cover: as I do not follow them, I do not understand the connection, maybe someone will enlighten me?
• The Slow Train (Flanders and Swann) In the preamble to live performance, Michael Flanders used to say "if God had meant us to fly, he would never have given us the railways"
• And no anthology would be complete without Abba's Waterloo...
  (ISTR someone once made out that Abba were 50 fans: what were the other connections in their other songs?)
• This Train is Bound for Glory (Trad Gospel)
• Casey Jones (if anyone has the lyrics to this, I would be most grateful if they could send them!)
• The Gambler (Kenny Rogers)
• Homeward Bound (Simon & Garfunkel)
• The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
• Marakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
• Chattanooga Choo Choo (Glenn Miller)
• Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
• Last Train to Clarkesville (The Monkees)
• Last Train to London (Electric Light Orchestra)
• Train Leaves Tonight (The Eagles)
• 9 to 5 (Morning Train) (Sheena Easton)
• Wabash Cannonball
• Orange Blossom Special
• The Wreck of Old '97
• The Train I'm On
• Ticket to Ryde (Lennon/McCartney)
• Freight Train (Nancy Whisky, c.1959? - genre=Skiffle (?))
  
  Peter McCormack contacted me regarding this one:
  
  In the interests of accuracy, the version of this song that Nancy Whisky sang on (http://www.chasmcdevitt.co.uk/Discography.htm) was actually a cover of the original, written by Elizabeth Cotten who recorded it in 1955 in the USA (http://www.folkways.si.edu/40009.htm).

  Apparently, this lady wrote the song in about 1907 (when she was 12) but the session in 1955 was the first time she had recorded it (I'm in a pedantic mood today ;-) and, as was very common in the fifties, the song was covered in the UK by home-grown artistes.

• The Runaway Train (Burl Ives?)
• The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
• There was also a "House-that-Jack-built" type of poem called "The train to Glasgow".
  Written by Cilla Fisher, I think. Certainly recorded by the Singing Kettle.

  Alan Howes writes, with additions by Bill Bedford & Firefly:

  I could well have missed it, but has anyone yet come up with "The Ballad of John Axon", by ? Parker & Euan McColl, broadcast on BBC radio around 1960 (?) as part of a series of radio ballads? About a freight train wreck on the line from Stockport -

  "On the road to Chapel-en-le-Frith His steam brake pipe did blow"

  Still remember a lot of it, and it still gives me goose pimples. Hopefully available on a BBC tape somewhere. Highly recommended. John Axon was posthumously awarded the G.C. for staying in his cab to try to stop the train, to avert an accident involving a runaway 8F somewhere at Chapel-en-le-Frith. His fireman jumped. John Axon is commemmorated 86261 "Driver John Axon GC".

  Mark Brader writes:

  Axon asked him to jump and try to pin down some handbrakes, but the train was moving too fast and he couldn't manage it. The full story is told in "Obstruction Danger" by Vaughan. (I have the full reference for this book somewhere, but not at hand.)

• The video clip of Breakthru by Queen was filmed on a train, a steam locomotive hauling a single flat car with the band on it. It was filmed on the Nene Valley line (Peterborough to Wansford) .

Back to the Menu