The Ten-Fifty to Newcastle: Clergy and the Railways

It's every schoolboy's dream, at least it was when I was that age - living by a railway. A few years ago we retired to Haydon Bridge, a village in South Tynedale midway between the North Sea and the Irish. In the 1830s, the first east-west railway line in Britain was constructed between Newcastle and Carlisle and brought trains into the valley. On 28 June 1836 Haydon Bridge station was opened. It is still open (unstaffed) and we are lucky enough to live opposite, near the level crossing. The original station-master's house survives as a private home.

You will have heard a lot about Northern Rail in the past few months. It runs a service every hour or so in each direction. Two-coach sprinters, or if you are unlucky, cordially disliked Pacer trains, get you to either end of the line in about three-quarters of an hour. There are even a few direct services that will take you to exotic destinations like Dumfries, Glasgow (thanks to Scotrail), Middlesbrough or Whitby. The railway passes through lovely valley and upland landscapes and runs close to the Roman Wall for most of its length (so it’s now marketed as the Hadrian's Wall Line).

Sometimes the East Coast or West Coast Main Lines through Newcastle or Carlisle are closed for engineering work, and then Inter-City 125s power along our railway, and even East Coast electrics ignominiously hauled by diesels. Steam specials bring sightseers and photographers to the lineside. When Flying Scotsman and Tornado (above) came through, the platforms were as thronged as a tube station in rush hour. The last train to stop at Haydon Bridge every weekday is the 22.50 to Newcastle. The roar of the Pacer as it sets out eastwards can clearly be heard from our house. That’s my signal for bedtime. It’s strangely reassuring to hear freight trains rumble through at night.

I blogged about the Line in 2017 so I won't repeat myself. What prompts me to write now is an assignment that is coming up next month. I have to speak to a local railway circle about why the clergy, or many of us, are famously fascinated by railways. It's been debated in church circles from time to time. "What draws clerics to railways?" asked David Self in the Church Times ten years ago or so. He discusses Bishop Eric Treacy, the distinguished railway photographer who died in 1978 on Appleby station photographing a steam special on the Settle to Carlisle line. I've yet to discover if the Bishop ever spoke or wrote about why he loved railways. I'd be surprised if he hadn't reflected on it.

The Reverend Wilbert Vere Audrey features of course, the begetter of Thomas the Tank Engine et al. I've got to know these stories all over again as a granddad, not just from the books but now from hundreds of YouTube videos. I have just read his biography by Brian Sibley. He draws attention to the moral world presided over by the Fat Controller where right and wrong are clearly delineated. Unlike our world, on the Island of Sodor there are no grey areas. On the last page he records a conversation with the author in which he asks how far these stories about railway engines are a statement of his personal philosophy. He quotes Audrey's reply. "This world is God's world. He makes the rules. We have a free choice, we can obey him or disobey him, but we cannot choose to disobey him and live happily our way....Like us humans, they go their own way and inevitably come to a sticky end. Then the offender has to show that he is sorry and accept his punishment. But the point is they are punished but they are NEVER scrapped." Sibley adds that "in the world depicted in the Railway Series, there is always redemption and forgiveness, another opportunity to try harder to become a Really Useful Engine". So Pelagianism is avoided. Just.

David Self's article is kind enough to see off the assumption that rail-loving clergy are necessarily anoraks, pedants, juvenile fantasists or just plain cranks (moi?). He does think that railways represent an ordered world that runs to schedule, and this appeals to clergy whose daily experience of the parish is of  setting where little if anything is predictable. And if railway modelling is their thing, as it was for The Reverend Teddy Boston, a friend of Audrey whose remarkable garden railway is described in Font to Footplate, then the satisfaction of creating and presiding over such an environment no doubt reflects a theology of creation. This theme is explored by Canon Bill Vanstone in his book Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense where precisely because of the infinite care the Creator invests in his creation, he becomes vulnerable to anything that would damage or spoil it. I well recall that feeling from childhood. Our oversized cat (Jupiter by name) trampled all over my beloved OOO layout and left a trail of destruction across my handiwork. I must have been ten or eleven and wept copiously.

I'm not sure I've yet answered the question of clergy and railways to my satisfaction. It's true that a proud moment in my time as Dean of Durham was when an East Coast Class 91 Electric was named Durham Cathedral. In its latest incarnation, 91114 still has my name on the driver door. But why should that bring immense pleasure? Perhaps the big railway stations are a bit like cathedrals. Yes, they are of course grand, imposing and often beautiful. St Pancras, King's Cross, Paddington, Liverpool Street, Bristol Temple Meads, York, Newcastle are among the great stations of England, cathedrals of the industrial era. I recall Euston being the best of them all until it was ignominiously demolished by wicked modernisers in the 1960s.

But architecture isn't all. It's what goes on in railway stations from the grandest to the humblest where the analogies are perhaps strongest. Stations are places of comings and goings, journeys begun, journeys ended, journeys that are still in progress. They are points of connection. They are liminal - locations where temporary communities come into being and thresholds are crossed. Here, people have to wait, surrender themselves to forms of control beyond themselves, embark on or conclude journeys that may bring them to unknown places or new experiences. They are places where the “other” is inchoate in the here and now, whether anticipated, hoped for or feared. That makes them suggestive of transcendence.

And they are also places of ceremony where rituals of greeting and farewell take place, where trains arrive and depart in accordance with well rehearsed rules and passengers (a much more suggestive word theologically than customers) understand the rules of engagement in relation to the rituals of buying tickets, negotiating barriers, locating the correct platform and time to catch a train. All this, I think, appeals to people who inhabit ceremonial worlds as clergy do when we preside at the liturgy and at the occasional offices, those rites of passage that mark the human journey and offer it to God.

Perhaps too, power comes into things. One of my tutors at theological college, Dr Jim Packer, a west country man, loved his native GWR and cheerfully joined in praise of "God's Wonderful Railway". My protestations in defence of the North Eastern Railway, its successor the LNER, Flying Scotsman and Mallard fell on deaf ears. I once heard him say that a steam locomotive was the quintessential expression of how enormous power is put to work through the discipline of its own engineering and of the rails that constrain it. Power that is purposeful was to him a way of speaking about God, an eloquent image of teleology, that which has direction and strives toward a clear end or telos. He put it more subtly than that, but you get the point.

I suspect that the precision with which railways have to operate carries an eschatological message for those who think in such ways. Divine order in which everything knows its place is what people of faith look for in the new creation that the gospel proclaims. A well-run railway could, perhaps, be a metaphor of what humanity longs for as the goal of creation. Could we call it the kingdom of God? I'm not talking about cold perfection, a chiselled, mechanised (and now digitised) but impersonal efficiency that cares nothing for flesh and blood. Rather, I mean that because railways at their best are a demonstration of how human beings flourish in a symbiotic relationship with their environment, they seem to epitomise a state of order that is both elegant and humane - beautiful even.

These analogies are far from perfect. But maybe they are worth exploring in a playful kind of way. Playfulness is a good quality to cultivate when we do theology. "The kingdom of heaven is like...the happiness of passengers when the trains run on time." Amen. Amen.

A Cruise on the Rhine Part 5

Friday
Our final day on the Rhine. Brilliant sunshine once again. We take the bus to Cologne. We were due to moor there but because a berth wasn't available our ship was forced to remain at Bonn. (We had a letter about this before we sailed. It is a tremendous pity. To have arrived by river and be berthed in this great city, to be able to walk from the ship to the Cathedral and round the old town, all this would have been unforgettable. And convenient.)

Köln is Omummy's city, my grandmother. She was born here in the 1890s (nobody is quite sure exactly when) and only moved to Düsseldorf when she married my grandfather. I recall that she spoke proudly of her home town, even though by that time it had been flattened by allied bombing. (Memorable quip from a fellow cruiser later on: "Yes, the Cathedral's very fine, but there's not much else to see or do in Cologne: Bomber Harris saw to that!") I think she regarded it as a cut above Düsseldorf (Cologne being a Roman town, a centre of the Holy Roman Empire, the seat of catholic Germany and all that). She may even have thought of it as "trade" though it was precisely a successful upper middle class trade family she had married into (Otto Leyser owned a factory that made leather goods).

The Cathedral is a huge black apparition which, when you have once set eyes on it, you can never forget. It dominates the skyline for miles around, these two enormous spires fingering the sky. Although it suffered in the war, Bomber Harris deliberately spared it, not out of love for medieval gothic architecture but because it was such a useful landmark on the river in guiding his air crews to their destinations. I doubt if the stonework will ever be cleaned up (though the sculptures are being conserved): the blackness of Cologne Cathedral is part of what gives it its emblematic quality. I had not realised that it was only completed in the nineteenth century, after a pause in building operations of a full four hundred years. The medieval crane remained in position on the unfinished north tower throughout those centuries, and there was discontent among citizens when this endearing icon of their cathedral was finally removed when the towers were being finished.

Crowds swirl about inside, but unlike at Strasbourg you can sit quietly in the nave to take in the immensity of this building. It is extraordinary as a masterpiece of soaring gothic. The light streams through the clerestory windows picking out people sitting in nave and imparting to them a transcendent beauty (or maybe I mean binging out the beauty they already have as human beings). Artists have long noticed how human hair acquires a striking delicate translucency when lit by direct light against a dark background.

There is so much to notice and admire: the sculptures on the piers, not only exquisite in their own right, but positioned at exactly the right height to accentuate the scale; the altars; the tombs, the glass, the paintings, the shrines, the stalls in the quire. The shrine to the Magi behind the high altar is a rare treasure. There is an exceptionally beautiful fifteenth century sculpture of the Blessed Virgin on one of the piers that you could spend hours contemplating as you recite the Glorious Mysteries and sing Regina Coeli. Everything here is magnificent, nothing shoddy or second rate. It ranks with the very finest of the gothic cathedrals of northern France. Indeed, modelled as it is on Amiens, you could say that Cologne is an outlier of that great French tradition, as Westminster Abbey is.

Then we visit the treasury. This is one of the most important cathedral treasuries in Europe, like Sens, and it should not be missed. It is built into the Roman and medieval fabric that lies underneath the cathedral, not only its own foundations but the Wall of the Roman city as well. That already makes it a remarkable space in its own right, two entire levels beautifully yielded up by the substrata to create a museum that it would be hard to equal among cathedrals. In it there are vestments, episcopal insignia, sacred vessels, shrines, monstrances, stones, sculptures and manuscripts. I suppose that if you didn't know what all these artefacts were for, you might find it a trifle perplexing, but even so, there is exquisite beauty everywhere and it would be a dull soul who was not inspired by it.

We go back into the Cathedral. Stewards are clearing the nave because a midday prayer service is about to begin. The announcement tells us that we do not need to leave if we wish to join the service. I am sensitive about how people are handled when religion and tourism collide. It is not managed badly here, though it's a pity that a thousand people all leave just when a service is about to begin. I wish we didn't have to be among them. But we have a bus to catch back to the ship. We walk round the outside of this great building. Rounding the east end we come across the railway station with its beautiful wrought iron train shed and the great Victorian girder bridge that carries the railway across the Rhine. This exciting proximity of a great station and a great cathedral, the intersection of the technologies of different eras is hard to parallel anywhere else (though Newcastle is another example, and I suppose St Pancras is also an attempt romantically to imagine medievalism in the context of a railway). I remember that I once changed trains here on my way to Bavaria. I only had an hour and recall how I wished I could have gone inside the Cathedral to have a look. Now I have, and it has made a memorable climax to the cruise.

 

After lunch I walk along the river to Bonn's "Museum Mile". The Museum of the History of Federal Germany where I am first headed is closed. So I go on to the fabulous Museum of Modern Art. Before I even step foot inside the place I know this is going to be a great experience. It is housed in a building of real quality and power designed by Axel Schultes and completed in 1992. It's a beautiful succession of spaces and artfully placed stairways and corridors that create a real sense of unity in diversity. The interplay of light and shade is wonderfully managed as the different rooms flow into one another; and on this sunny day, the effects are especially magical. I just can't stop photographing this building (which is allowed without flash).

 

There are hardly any visitors. Museum staff in uniform stand to attention as soon as I come into a room, and follow me round at a discreet distance. There is no eye contact: in this silent, quasi-sacred space, visitors are regarded as contemplatives who must be left to themselves to experience the museum in our own way. There is something quaint about their studied but watchful politeness, their wish not to get in the way while at the same time being aware of each visitor's every move. Maybe all Museum attendants, like cathedral vergers, are educated in this art, but I've not seen it done to such perfection before. One man looks for all the world like Einstein with his hair cut. I long to photograph him but it would be obtrusive.

 

So I concentrate on the art instead. The top floor is avant garde, much of it interesting and enjoyable, but it isn't where my heart lies. That is on the first floor where there is an impressive survey of Rhineland expressionism, including a large body of paintings by August Macke. He was the leading light of Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider) movement, a friend of Kandinsky, Klee and Marc who lived much of his life in Bonn. He was killed at the front in 1914 at the tender age of 27. Such a loss - what might he have produced if he had lived another 50 years?

We enjoy our last supper and start saying farewells. We spend an hour on deck as the sun sinks. A Victorian brick church on the opposite bank glows fiery in the Pentecostal light. The river is ultramarine. Upstream the tall twentieth century buildings belonging to Bonn's era as capital of the German Bundesrepublik throw a reflected light on to the wine dark Rhine. Youngsters throng the promenade enjoying a Friday night out. A breeze stirs and the air is suddenly cool. We are not as young as all these teenagers. It is time for bed.

 

Saturday

Up at dawn and ready to disembark at 7 o'clock. We get to Brussels with over two hours to spare. We check in, go through security and sit down for a coffee and a final chat with some of the people we have got to know on the cruise. Soon our train is rushing towards England. The sun continues to shine.