Silent Majority

"At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We Will Remember Them"

This is Remembrancetide, in the UK- and most of the Commonwealth. It's easy to overlook that unique family of nations' part in two World Wars, as we observe this annual pause for reflection. We are asked to remember all those who have given their lives for freedom and liberty in war and conflict, both now and in the century past.

How muted those words "freedom" and "liberty" can sometimes seem these days, like the muffled bells of mourning. Yet we remind ourselves again this weekend, it was for these causes that many millions gave their lives, and we should never forget them. In a world of constant rush and chatter, the best way we can respect the precious lives cut short in too many theatres of battle, is to fall silent ourselves, even if only for 120 seconds- about as many heartbeats as each of these fit young lives once knew before the true horror of war silenced them.

For those who have never lived through a whole world at war, the post-1945 generations to which I belong, remembrance could seem an irrelevance. Some,taking a different view,even say that the red paper poppies of remembrance which adorn so many British jackets and jumpers each November are a symbol too far, glorifying rather than villifying the sad facts of war.

Yet for the majority of Britons, the poppy is worn with pride. Not the red component of a national flag being jingoistically celebrated by a nation obsessed with past glories, but a reminder of the preciousness of life itself, and the grief we should all feel that war has so often, particularly in the last hundred years, prematurely ended lives with potential- lives that might even have contributed voices of sanity and wisdom which would help to end all wars,like the "Great War" was supposed to do.

Like Lawrence Binyon's famous poem I've quoted above, poppies are for the fallen. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. Politicians can argue the rights and wrongs of many causes but often their career in democracies is brief and easily forgotten. Like the former British defence secretary described by legendary TV interviewer Robin Day as "here today, gone tomorrow". Not so the servicemen who have to defend our nations. Ordinary people- fathers, brothers, uncles, sons and nowadays female relatives too- robbed of their loved ones, are those who can never forget those they have lost.

Don't we owe it to them -always- to remember, with gratitude, yet sadness, their sacrifice? Earlier this evening, I watched with my younger brother the perpetually moving and poignant Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance. There is more information on this event, and Britain's biggest service charity, if you follow the link in the title of this post. The ceremony, which has been held for eighty years now, has at its finale thousands of poppies falling from the roof of London's Royal Albert Hall. It is a solemn time which needs no words- silence speaks volumes.

Tomorrow, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation will respectfully and collectively observe two minutes of silence, commemorating the exact moment at which the guns finally fell silent in 1918 in the armistice of the "Great" war which robbed so many of the breath of life. It is a scene which will be repeated at countless war memorials in villages and towns not just in the UK, but across the commonwealth, and most particularly in those places where the fallen lie. I intend to remember my Great Uncle Clifford, a private in the Royal West Kent regiment, who I never knew, at our local service.

Yet the bible reading at the Festival of Remembrance by His Royal Highness the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, himself a veteran of the British Navy task force in the Falklands Conflict of 25 years ago, perhaps portrays even more eloquently, in the words of Jesus Christ, the "Prince of Peace", the price that love sometimes has to pay. "Greater Love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends".
Actions speak louder than words. Jesus' actions, his whole life and death- and what followed- did that more than any ceremony at a simple cenotaph or a grand hall. May his supreme example, of triumph over evil, bring about the end to war for which we all yearn. When the majority will no longer need to be silent, for peace will prevail throughout all the earth.

This is the Page of The Train

What's the French- or indeed the Flemish- for 'Awayday', does anybody know?

Readers of a certain age should have no problem spotting in today's title the slogan of one of the most fondly remembered advertising campaigns of the 1980s for Britain's former train network, British Rail, then state-owned. Jimmy Saville, before the sovereign's sword of state bestowed on him a knighthood, abandoned the clunk-click, every trip of his equally famous campaign for car seatbelts, for the clickety clack of carriage on track to extol the marvellous possibilities of the newish InterCity 125 services, capable of traversing Britain at 125 miles per hour.

If you're in nostalgic mood, you can click on the title for a link to one of the original TV ads, courtesy of Youtube. Oh joy: a streamlined loco could bring families and loved ones together quickly and smoothly, whether you were in Aberdeen or Yeovil! Ignore for the moment the inevitable engineering works, strikes, and broken down power cars, and a railway utopia lay ahead of you, and all thanks to your cheap Awayday ticket. But your train of thought would have to be shunted back a very long way now to revisit those halcyon days of BR.

Spurred on by the Iron Lady's determination to privatise the iron rails of Britain's mass transport system, the Conservative government of John Major proceeded with the splitting up of the railway network in the mid-1990s, some years after Margaret Thatcher's premiership was de-railed, and even when many were labelling this a privatisation too far.

The Railways Act left Great Britain looking like a lawyers' dream, ruled by intricate inter-company rather than inter-city contracts, but a travellers' nightmare much of the time, with a unified railway replaced by around 25 Train Operating Companies (TOC's), three Rolling Stock Companies (Roscos) to lease out locos and carriages to the TOCs, and the ill-fated public limited company Railtrack who (theoretically) took perfect care of the infrastructure of track, signals and points, together with stations, bridges and tunnels. Their failure to do so led to the nearest Britain's now likely to come to a publicly-owned railway, with its replacement by the stakeholder-run Network Rail which now re-invests all its profits in much-needed improvements to the system.

Most railway industry professionals and analysts soon recognised the arrangements left by the Railways Act were a mess. This bureaucratic bungle might well have signalled the end of the line for Britain's claims to be a great railway-running nation, even though the UK invented the passenger train and has now lent the rest of the world BR's brilliant brand- InterCity (though sadly it's no longer liveried on this island's own trains).

Fortunately, however, more forward-thinking minds were at work, both in government and the civil engineering industry, and it now looks as though Britain actually could be at the start of a new golden age of rail travel. At a time when aircraft are starting to be seen as something of the bete noir of global warming- rightly or wrongly-, travelling by train suddenly looks more green and more appealing than causing the carbonised airways to cough and splutter even more.

Yesterday evening, Her Majesty the Queen, just a few hours after opening another session of the UK parliament in the Victorian splendour of Pugin's Palace of Westminster, opened a new era of rail travel at another gothic architectural icon, which seems set to become a palace of the permanent way: St Pancras International. London's new gateway to Europe will see High Speed 1 services beginning, appropriately, in just a week's time on the heir to the throne's birthday. I wonder if he'll be celebrating with a short 135 minute hop over to Paris: the prince of rails as well as Wales?

I was speaking to a couple of friends this week who'd had the privilege of being part of an exercise organised by the owners of St Pancras International, London and Continental Railways, who are also responsible for the British arm of the Eurostar service which has hitherto served London Waterloo international albeit at a speed more akin to British Snail this side of the channel before the full opening of HS1. From 14th November, the journey from central London to Paris might remind many of another great InterCity slogan: Eurostar becomes the journey shrinker.

My friends told me that they were absolutely awe-struck by the restoration of the train shed roof,once the biggest single-span iron structure in the world. They described it as a masterpiece of powder blue ironwork which, they said, matched the perfect blue of a cloudless autumn sky. Meanwhile, the gleaming sun shining through the hundreds of self-cleaning glass panels onto the gilded clock below, and the carpenter's craftsmanship of the parquet floors of the undercroft below the platforms, left them in no doubt that this is an achievement which ranks with the best railway architecture in the world: a stunning station. It's surely worth a visit even if you're travelling nowhere, and I agreed with them as I watched the new terminus unveiled by her majest in a life webcast yesterday evening.

Rail travel from its very beginnings has been marvellously liberating. Indeed, the great age of railway building in the mid-nineteenth century gave whole communities throughout the world a freedom of movement they could never have dreamt of previously and even gave us the first Awaydays courtesy of one Thomas Cook esquire, who started his world-famous business in July 1841 with a shilling [5 pence] a head rail excursion for a group of churchgoers from Loughborough to Leicester- towns both served by the rail franchises of 2007 from St Pancras International.

But perhaps the real liberation that a rail trip, whether for a day or a month, can bring is in the changed view of the world it gives you. Down to earth, yet inspiring wonder as you gaze upon hills and mountains, coastlines and forests, deserts and arctic wastes, rivers and streams, bustling towns or isolated villages. All these vistas are possible from a train. You could be following a journey which may lead to happy reunions and new discoveries, or you could be on your way to your chosen work in life.
It may seem like an over-romanticised portrait of the railway scene to the claustrophobic commuters struggling to find a seat on the 8.21 each morning, but I think there's an analogy in train travel to the journey which is life itself. See it for what it can be, with all its possibilities no matter which branch lines you explore along the way, and you'll perhaps have a positive view of journey's end. Jesus Christ described himself as "The Way"- and those who follow him see as the permanent way to a life of fulfilment and peace at journey's end. I wonder if this is why so many vicars love trains?