Railway Poetry

[Bittern]

If you've got any Railway poems you've wrote, feel free to post them.

This is one I just wrote. With slight inspiration from the famous 'Night Mail' (which may or may not show through slightly), it revolves around the journey made of a Glasgow-bound Caledonian Sleeper.

----------

Here we begin,
With the sleeper northbound.
Through tunnels and bridges,
With her scream so sound.
Her passengers out cold,
Her staff to take care,
Of the young and the old.
Up the West Coast she flies,
Finding herself blind
To all closed eyes,
Her destination north,
Is where her bed lies.

Sucking her juice from above,
She glides like a dove,
Battling up Beattock with all her might,
Yet all her coaches to her so light.
To Glasgow her eyes to see,
Past Carstairs and Motherwell,
Her passengers settling to a cofee and tea.
Thundering past Newton,
Commuters may watch,
The blue streak shimmer
Turning down her notch.

Crossing the Clyde,
One final time,
Spotters wait eagerly
To catch her glimmer and shine.
Docking herself in Platform One,
Her night became day,
As her day becomes night.
Resting herself in the morning sun.
Disembarking, the people shall recall,
They that have traveled with the best of them all.

And so, in a way to summerize,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Caledonian Sleeper has arrived.

----------

 

[43021HST]

Heres a Ryming couplet

I will never see her steam trial
Since they took her off the silver rail

My fav poem is the postal train poem by WH Auden

Night Train by W. H. Auden (1907 - 1973)

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 and 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 the 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 the bedroom gently shakes.

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

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or 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 in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, 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 at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

 

[Impatient Swad]

A Poem by my Dad, a keen train enthusiast - Impatient of Gresley

A Winters Railway Poem.​

What's happened to our railways,

with traditions so proud and so strong.

When a leaf or a snowflake descend on the track

everything seems to go wrong.

A minister soon appears on our screens

all smug and looking so hearty

The excuses and noises are all the same

no matter which political party.

It is run by accountants and lawyers

to make sure they don't make a loss.

But what about the poor passengers?

Quite frankly they don't give a toss.


We used to have spare sets of coaches

then they told us about the expense

and they scrapped the whole blooming lot.

It doesn't really make sense.

So remember when you're stuck on a platform

and you think the whole systems' in bits,

you'll be helping all those shareholders,

Especially those called Jose'and Fritz



Impatient of Gresley.​

 

[scotsman]

I can't remember it, but the tribute by one of WCRC's staff to Paul Kane was absolutely beautiful.

 

[Wyvern]

A Poem by my Dad, a keen train enthusiast - Impatient of Gresley

A Winters Railway Poem.​

Impatient of Gresley.​

[/CENTER]

I cant see that being one of the poems they post upon Belper Station !