Mind The Gap #2

The train pulls in...the tannoy message booms out,
"Mind the gap between the train and the platform edge!"
People get off...people get on...The train pulls out.
Its a process that's taking place at every station along the journey.


The Train of Thought

The railway and the train has not yet been with us two hundred years, and yet it has become the vehicle for a enormous array of common phrases, puns, metaphors and other linguistic artifices, that fill our lives at every turn.
From a very young age I've been captivated by railways, trains, and everything around and associated with the whole domain. This spills over from the external realities of this mode of travel, the people encountered along the way, right down to all the atmospheric, internal, metaphorical and other worldly stuff that abounds around railways and everything therein and thereof.

In terms of examples - where to begin?
OK - coaching and learning is about trainers, being trained and being a trainee. We have a station in Life, living on the wrong side of the tracks, we've reached the end of the line, we get sidetracked, letting off steam, there are buffer zones, we go off the rails, on completely the wrong track, we're on the wagon, just chugging along, get up a head of steam, have tunnel vision, changing tracks, stepping up to the plate, that's just the ticket, passing through the barrier, staying on track, being railroaded into something, he has a one-track mind, a whistle-stop tour, jump the train, going over the points, the permanent way, there's light at the end of the tunnel...

There are oblique hypnotic references like arriving through the station entrance, things around being transported, a transport of delight, rails resting on sleepers, going into a deep tunnel...

and that hypnotically ambiguous one that has inspired this set of blogs -
Mind The Gap

In literature, poetry or song, trains keep appearing.
Whether from the rhythm of W.H.Auden's 'Night Mail' :-
"This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order..."

to the timeless moments captured in Edward Thomas' 'Adlestrop':-
"Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
The name because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June..."

From "Last Train to Clarksville", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Morningtown Ride", "Take the A Train", "Night Train", "City of New Orleans", "Rock Island Line", "Midnight Train to Georgia" and many others through to Flanders and Swann's 'The Slow Train', a wonderfully wistful piece of nostalgia:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6OHD2uCpfU

or the hugely romantic notion of Finchley Central:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvMYHbN5baw

Agatha Christie was particularly fond of trains as settings for some of her mysteries - "Murder on the Orient Express", "4.50 from Paddington", "The Mystery of the Blue Train".

In film, there's a catalogue of examples where trains play a major role - Murder on the Orient Express (again), Brief Encounter, Strangers on a Train, Dr Zhivago, From Russia with Love, Back to the Future 3, Von Ryan's Express, Throw Momma from the Train, The Taking of Pelham 123, Under Siege 2, right back to Buster Keaton's legendary "The General".

There's also some oblique examples of trains as metaphors as we can hear with Elton John's changes in his subject's life:-
"I used to be the main express, all steam and whistles heading west..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO0x8pW-ATY

So where am I going to with all this? Into a siding, off on a branch line, or non-stop into the terminus?
It's for you to decide what the meanings are here for you. Trains and railways - even if we don't travel on them physically - have quite a significance in our lives. Perhaps it's to do with the route of life the rails are marking out, perhaps it's to do with the resigned air of captivity around the passengers being shipped from A to B through a station called NOW, or perhaps it circles around the metaphor of trains of thought.
I can only say that physically travelling on trains with my curiously charged mindset often leads me to interesting experiences and conclusions.

All I will say in this conclusion here, is -
Take a 4 minute trip from London to Brighton...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Ll96VNuSc&feature=related