Great Central Railway Sheffield Victoria to Banbury

‘Unmitigated England’

    Came swinging down the line

That day the February sun

    Did crisp and crystal shine.

Dark red at Kirkby Bentinck stood

    A steeply gabled farm

’Mid ash trees and a sycamore

    In charismatic calm.

A village street—a manor house—

    A church—then, tally ho!

We pounded through a housing scheme

    With tellymasts a-row,

Where cars of parked executives

    Did regimented wait

Beside administrative blocks

    Within the factory gate.

She waved to us from Hucknall South

    As we hooted round a bend,

From a curtained front-window did

    The diesel driver’s friend.

Through cuttings deep to Nottingham

    Precariously we wound;

The swallowing tunnel made the train

    Seem London’s Underground.

Above the fields of Leicestershire

    On arches we were borne

And the rumble of the railway drowned

    The thunder of the Quorn;

And silver shone the steeples out

    Above the barren boughs;

Colts in a paddock ran from us

    But not the solid cows;

And quite where Rugby Central is

    Does only Rugby know.

We watched the empty platform wait

    And sadly saw it go.

By now the sun of afternoon

    Showed ridge and furrow shadows

And shallow unfamiliar lakes

    Stood shivering in the meadows.

Is Woodford church or Hinton church

    The one I ought to see?

Or were they both too much restored

    In 1883?

I do not know. Towards the west

    A trail of glory runs

And we leave the old Great Central line

    For Banbury and buns.