Well, as one can see, trains and railways are an integral part of british experience.
Our 'village' was only referred to in such a french manner after the railway yards occupying the low part of the village were pulled up; prior to that, we were a fully fledged English town, and photos from the first half of the twentieth century show as much. In fact, it's hard to recognize it as the same place.
After the cull, we were left with two tracks serving a greater circuit which covered east and south lancs. Eventually, the second track was pulled up, leaving us with a limited reach. Of course, by that point, the internal combustion engine was the prince of the day and pandered to accordingly.
Nowadays, the train-track is given over to the nasty tram, transporting it's scum about and born of similarly scummy folk who purposely ran the local areas into the ground in order to gain funding from national and eu bodies, and pocketing cash in the process.....not that I'm biased.
The next village down (which is geographically north, but topographically down, but still sounds paradoxical) has the transpennine line.
The neat thing about that line is that it highlights the heights; that is, the express train to scumchester flies down, largely under gravity, whilst the trains from scumchester labour their way uphill.
Back when we still had the working line, the freight trains used to rumble through, mostly at night, and, as our house is on a hillside overlooking-but-not-with-sight of the tracks, I used to mark the end of my day by the sound of the rumbling wagons.
My dad used to be a fireman
For the kids, that's not what it sounds like: a fireman on a steam engine tends the fire, both in what it burns and what it's burned.
My grandad (mum's dad) was also a stoker (more or less another name for fireman) on ships and then mills (after WW2 submarine service, which must've seemed like paradise) and I've often wondered if my dad and my grandad having similar work helped soften the blow to my mum's mum for mum having married a Protestant?
