On the Slow Train Read Online Free PDF

country. But the unfortunate Sharland did not live to see his work completed. He died at the age of twenty-six, his health broken by his efforts.
    The young surveyor might have been proud though to see the spruce little wayside stations built in ‘Derby Gothic’ style by the architect I H Saunders. We nearly lost them, but thankfully they were reopened in 1986 after a closure of sixteen years when the threat to the line was finally lifted. Armathwaite, Langwathby, Lazonby and Kirkoswald – you almost have to pronounce their names with a Cumbrian lilt as we climb the valley of the Eden, with the river full and fast flowing, never far from our side. On our left are Long Meg and her daughters, an ancient circle dating back 4,500 years – the original sixty-six daughters having been turned to stone after sacrilegious acts on the sabbath, becoming what is now the second-largest stone circle in Britain. The skyline for miles to the left is dominated by Cross Fell, the highest point in the Pennines at 2,930 feet. The white dome on the top of Great Dun Fell, the summit of the Pennine Way, is as sinister as it actually looks, since if we ever scramble our nuclear deterrent, the button will be pushed as a result of an early warning from here. The distant fells on the horizon to the right, looking like a giant iced cake, are those of Ullswater in the Lake District.
    I know all this because I have been joined on my journey south from Carlisle by a retired pharmacist called Tony Iles, a volunteer Friend of the Settle and Carlisle, who spends his days riding the trains pointing out the sights to anyone who is interested. There’s clearly nobody more passionate about the line than Tony, who wears a maroon S & C jumper, and along with the rest of the Friends fought British Rail and successive transport ministers between 1984 and 1989 to save it from closure. He tells me,
    It was a devious strategy they deployed on all the lines they wanted to shut. You reduce the trains, cut back on the maintenance, drive away the passengers, and then concoct some story about repairs, claiming the line is not worth keeping open. After we finally beat them, it turned out the cost of repairing Ribblehead Viaduct was nothing like what BR claimed. And passenger numbers shot up from 98,000 a year to half a million.
    These days Network Rail is spending more than £100 million on the line – not to improve its passenger services, which are still a mere five through trains a day – but, ironically, because of the decline of another traditional industry – coal. Much of the fuel for Britain’s coal-fired power stations is imported in massive container ships through the port of Hunterston on the west coast of Scotland. It is routed south in vast 1,250-tonne trains over the S & C, securing the line’s future for the foreseeable future. But you can’t please everybody. ‘The enthusiasts complain that the track is
too
smooth and the
tiddly-tat
of the old fashioned line has been eliminated,’ says Tony. ‘And now they’re moaning that the old semaphore signals are going to be replaced by modern colour-light ones! You can’t have it both ways. A lot of people think we’re privately owned by a preservation society. I tell you, no heritage buffs could afford the investment to run something like this.’
    We break off as we halt at a station rather more splendid than the rest. This is Appleby, the only staffed station on the line between Carlisle and Settle. No better spot to break your journey than this unspoilt medieval farming town, watched over by its castle, the little cafes and shops on the high street as far away as it is possible to get from modern corporate Britain. The mock-Gothic brick station with its mullioned windows and paintwork on the ornate bargeboards, newly painted in the crimson colours of the Midland Railway, is immaculate in the unweathered fashion of a Hornby toy train