Nicely caught, Max. I just misremembered taking the train from Christchurch south, but it was the bus -- & that was a trip of great views....
I like the quiet factualness of the descriptions....
Doug
On 2012-11-14, at 4:55 AM, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hey I once long ago went from Melbourne to Sydney by train -a log way!!!memories just a mass of stops and quick walks -I think??
> P
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bill Wootton
> Sent: 14 November 2012 11:21
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: old travel snaps
>
> Wish more trains, even steamless ones would conduct sinuous passages out Hurstbridge way, Max. Still a single line and no new trains offered in the latest 'upgrade'; in fact fewer run from the city all the way out here.
>
> Were you not allowed to byo pillow on the overnight? I took one on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry, knowing the lumps of lard offered on a previous trip.
>
> Speaking of 'stifling darkness of smoky tunnels', on our recent trip, the TGV rattled along at near 300 kph with lights blazing even in bright mid-afternoon but as soon as you hit a tunnel, out went all the lights. A smokeless experience these days at least.
>
> Bill
>
> On 14/11/2012, at 4:24 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Old travel snaps
>>
>> If travel must be postponed,
>> one may fall back on travel film
>> and photographs, recent or old.
>>
>> These have the shadowy virtue
>> of perspective in time -
>> last year's sharp bright pictures,
>>
>> last decade's perhaps yellowing,
>> last century's fading merely,
>> remotest the sepias of beyond�
>>
>> The trains I took as a child
>> steamed out of sight
>> long since, though rail
>>
>> (unpatronised except for goods)
>> still links those towns,
>> conducting still its sedate
>>
>> courtship with the sinuous
>> motorways. These old
>> NZR publicity snaps
>>
>> bring back the stifling
>> darkness of smoky tunnels,
>> dry sandwiches, thick crockery.
>>
>> Conscripts I travelled with
>> waited for the high viaducts
>> to hurl into the bush despised
>>
>> plates and saucers. A shllling
>> for a pillow at the platform
>> before boarding the Overnight!
>>
>> The spacey feeling adrift
>> in the morning at Wellington
>> Station, looking up at the
>>
>> big bronze statuary -
>> ideal Maori nobility,
>> bare chest and breasts brassy.
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Latest books:
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Swept snow, Li Po,
by dawn’s 40-watt moon
to the road that hies to office
away from home.
Lorine Niedecker
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