Posting on Christmas morning - for those of you who's children have woken you
early and are now playing happily with new toys ... or who are on your own over this festive season, and feeling travel withdrawal. A dozen pictures - not easy ones - for you to play the "can I identify this" game.
The background story ... Sorting through some very old papers the other day, I came across some old prints from my youth - brought up on the Southern Region in an outer London suburb as it was then, with rail travel to holiday locations around the
UK▸ .
1963 to 1971 saw me community by train to school - firstly to Sydenham Hill and then to Sevenoaks, and 1972 to 1976 saw me commuting to University and to Sandwich Course workplaces - I became very familiar with Holborn Viaduct and Charing Cross Stations, and continued my acquaintance with Sevenoaks. A move away to take up a work role slashed my rail travel to virtually zero, then snuffed it out totally when I move to the South West and became dependent on a car, living in a small village some 9 impractical miles from a station with occasional trains that didn't go where I wanted, and onto which I couldn't carry my heavy tools of trade. A move to Melksham in 1999 had nothing to do with rail - it had to do with moving to a building with room to run our own training courses, and shifting away from the home I had lived in with my first wife and to which my second wife had arrived when she moved to the UK.
Melksham's rail service in those days was poor - a morning commuter train to Swindon and an eveing service back being about the total. But come May 2001, Wessex trains started running some extras up and down using spare stock and gaps in diagrams ... our business grew, and I "came back" to life on which rail had a major influence as more and more of our customers arrived in Melksham by train. The story of a new franchisee in 2005, with a mandate to reduce amout of stock they ran, is the next phase of the story.
Why am I telling you this? To help give you some clues as to where the following pictures might have been taken. There's a dozen here, mostly scanned from prints and so of faded / poor quality and all taken by me. Many show scenes that will be now have changed out of all recognition. Can you place any? As a reward for reading all through this blurb, not the usual rules - please feel free as a Christmas bonus to guess or identify up to two each! Should a guess be marked incorrect, you're then welcome to try another.
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