Reaching out to the Past

It's official - I am obsessed! This morning I bought a 1980 Model Railway Constructor magazine that I have wanted for ages. This is not something I have bought just to please Robbie, I haven't even told him about it because he would probably tell me to buy a magazine about Deltics instead!

I have been researching my family tree for a number of years and as many of my ancestors lived in and around Northampton I have become fascinated by old photos and old maps of the town. If only we could have street view on old maps, there so many places that I would like to see as they were when my grandparents and great grandparents knew the town. I would like to see where they lived, where they worked and the places that mattered in their lives. Most of all I would like to see the three railway stations in the town as they were then.

We think the world has progressed but in terms of public transport my grandmother's horizons were much wider than my own. She could travel to many towns and villages within the county by train and if she wanted to travel further, the train would take her; and for more local journeys she could rely on the tram. 

The first of our railway stations to close was the most convenient and most beautiful of the three. It was less than a five minute walk from St John's station to the market square. Clearly customer convenience was not a high priority even then - some things never change! Saint John's Station had opened in 1872, it was the northern terminus of the Midland Railway's Bedford to Northampton line. The station was built above street level on red brick arches which carried the line across the road and out of the town on the 21 mile journey to Bedford via Piddington (which in reality was much closer to Horton), Olney and Turvey. It was closed in July 1939 as a cost cutting measure and the services were re-routed to the much less convenient Castle Station.

Now it would take Sherlock Holmes to find any clue that a station ever stood on that spot, the station seems to have been erased from local memory and there are so few photos that you could almost suspect a cover up. So my reason for buying the old magazine was that it contains plans of St Johns and with the help of maps and old photos I can perhaps imagine the station in it's glory days.

Essentials 04.01.08

I'm fed up with this 5am performance. This morning found us trundling off to Kettering again, even the birds don't get up that early. Poor old Robbie is finding the long journey time exhausting, he didn't get back to Kettering until 8pm and by the time we got home it was almost 9pm, it isn't a bundle of laughs for me either. Allegedly everything will be back to normal tomorrow, but I won't be holding my breath. If Network Rail have done the work at Rugby it is a pretty safe bet that something will go wrong when the line is back in use, but I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't done the new overhead work, they have probably had to put it back as it was just to get the line back in use and bring an end to the torrent of bad publicity. Who would have thought that they could upset so many people in so little time; perhaps they are aiming for some sort of record!

Anyway after a long and frustrating day at work you would expect Robbie to want to talk about ordinary family stuff on the way home, but that would be a bit too normal for Robbie. He gave me a detailed account of his new system for packing his briefcase! Apparently he only carries essential items with him now. Rather foolishly I asked what he included in the list of essential items and he reeled off a list that took him about ten minutes to recount. First on his list were his complete collection of quail (railway) maps, then his Platform 5 complete guide to all locomotives and coaching stock - absolutely essential obviously! He has a selection of diagrams to work on during his journeys, his ipod, spare batteries in assorted sizes, a selection of pens, pencils, erasers and a pack of spare leads, imagine being stranded with no lead in your pencil! He also takes his flask, his mobile phone, the latest issue of NME, a selection of railway magazines, a couple of notebooks, a massive selection of train keys, his laptop, the charger and assorted sundries. Thank goodness he only carries essentials, most people take less than that when they go away for a week!

Men are Better Than Women (Allegedly!!!!!) 23.05.07

I listened to a program on Radio 4 about the differences in the way men and women read maps. The theory being that men read maps by taking a sort of birds eye view approach while women orientate the map to themselves. Maybe that's true, but of the men in my life there are some very interesting strategies going on. My first husband was fairly OK at map reading, but tended not to read the instructions and navigated mainly by instinct, on many occasions this took him miles out of his way. My stepfather has to do a dummy run the day before (he is a belt and braces sort of person!). My brother in law is hopeless and he manages to get lost every time he ventures out of his home town, he can get lost equally easily with or without a map. Laura is an excellent map reader, but Emily still gets lost going to the corner shop and Sam has a very good memory and can remember routes and landmarks very clearly. Robbie can read a map but he has the attention span of a goldfish so he us not an ideal navigator when travelling by car. I tend to plan in advance for unfamiliar journeys, I usually have a look at an online route finder, check to see if it makes sense then print the map and directions, I glance through the directions but I find it easier to work from the map.

On the radio program a man and a woman were set a task to navigate from A to B in Milton Keynes. I have got lost there more than once because everything looks the same, there are few landmarks, but my first husband thought that it was simplicity itself to find his way around Milton Keynes, he liked the straight lines and the symmetry so I guess that indicates a different thought process. I had to pick Emily and her friend up from Milton Keynes after a concert, the police had made everyone walk away from the concert venue to be picked up. I asked Emily to describe the landmarks so that I could find her - she said she was standing next to a tree near a roundabout, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack!

The radio program repeated the old joke explaining that men have to produce millions of sperm per 'go' for just one to have a chance of reaching the target - because none of them are willing to ask for directions! Now that is true, men don't read instructions and they don't ask for directions.