There's about 15 minutes or so of this train ride between Kings Lynn and Hunstanton ("Hunston") via Snettisham ("Snetsham") on one of the hundreds of old railway lines that disappeared under the Dr. Beeching cuts mostly in the 1960s. Doesn't he (Sir John) look young?
Betjeman (like myself) loved railways and the very best of British heritage and he, like me, was appalled at seeing the waste of infrastructure and resource when after years of building the railways, sometimes by men with shovels in hand, at a stroke they were gone. How many lines were axed that we could really do with today (2018)?
Whenever, I travel along the Lincolnshire A16 straight road between Boston and Spalding (via Sutterton roundabout with the historic-looking building beside the roadway) I mourn the day that the well-routed line from Grimsby to Peterborough (and on to London, Kings Cross) was closed and built on top of the old track bed was the boring and articulated lorry-ridden road that we suffer today when all that heavy goods material could be handled by rail with a single driver (and maybe a guard - although that'll soon be a thing of the past too). The old Algarkirk & Sutterton station buildings still survive at the roundabout.
Every time I go through St. Pancras International station I think of the man that saved it and study his wonderful statue rightly 'in residence'.
If you can't get down to London to view the station have a look at it in my next post including a YouTube video about what it's like to actually LIVE INSIDE St Pancras International station (no not the down and outs - rather the up and ins).
Comparison films of this line (2 of them):
You may be interested in viewing the following two (YouTube sourced) films of the same line but in two parts (not Betjeman this time):Part one:
Part two:
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