If you should ask what brings a tear to this grown man's jaundiced eye

It's the grateful memory of a boyhood spent watching trains go by.

Waiting on the platform of an unattended village station,

Learning early on in life about patience and determination.

Gazing towards the nobly porticoed entrance of the hidden funnel

That marks the mile long measure of Brunel's brilliant Box Tunnel,

Blowing at intervals on small hands that threaten to turn blue,

In excited expectation of what is shortly due in view.

Suddenly - with an approaching ear-piercing whistle shriek -

Appears the swaying thundering beast a boy is there to seek,

Followed by a billowing halo of vanilla coloured steam,

And a train of attendant carriages of delicious chocolate and cream,

With a headboard and three numbers that brought unbridled joy

To the distant devout disciple that was contained within that boy.

Behold! they said, and mark me well, I hurry from East to West,

Non-stop between great ports of old - note well my noble crest.

And sixty years on that memory can still dampen an old man's eye.....

A long-gone lad on a lonely platform watching THE BRISTOLIAN rush by!

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