On the luxury of an unoccupied compartment

And a sprinkling of serendipity

When I was still at junior school, they renovated the disused rail tracks and station a few villages away to re open them as a heritage line.

Our own didn’t fare so well; the dilapidated goods sheds and rusting footbridge, the elegant Victorian station building were left to fall into dereliction and were later pulled down, the land eventually redeveloped. It was just another casualty of Beeching’s branch line cull - the final train left Helmshore to great ceremony (with a brass band present) in December 1966.