"Slow Train" is a song by British duo Flanders and Swann, written in July 1963. It laments the closure of railway stations and lines brought about by the Beeching cuts in the 1960s, and also the passing of a way of life. Written by Swann in F Major, its slow 6/8 rhythm evokes a steam train slowing and finally stopping.
Swann recalls in his preface to The Songs of Michael Flanders & Donald Swann that he originally assumed it was in 4/4 time and that it was only in 1977 when Gordon Langford made his arrangement for the King's Singers he realised "that the train runs in 6/8...and the train rolled for the first time evenly over its sleepers".
Lyrics
"Slow Train" takes the form of an elegiac list song of railway stations, which has been likened to a litany. The song is introduced by lyricist Michael Flanders in the recording of At the Drop of Another Hat recorded live at the Haymarket Theatre on 2 October 1963 thus:
Its evocation of quiet, rural stations is highly romanticised and uses imagery such as the presence of a station cat or milk churns on a platform to express a "less hurried way of life" that is about to vanish:
The appeal of "Slow Train" is considered to lie in its list of "achingly bucolic" names of rural halts. The nostalgically poetic tone of Flanders's lyrics has been likened to Edward Thomas's 1914 poem "Adlestrop", which wistfully evokes a fleeting scene of Adlestrop railway station in Gloucestershire.
Stations named in the lyrics Although most of the stations mentioned in Flanders's song were earmarked for closure under the Beeching cuts, a number of the stations were ultimately spared closure: , , and stations all remain open, and Gorton and Openshaw also survives, now renamed . and stations were not threatened by Beeching, though the line "from Selby to Goole" mentioned in the song was closed to passengers. The other line mentioned, "from St Erth to St Ives" in Cornwall stayed open.
Some stations referred to in the song have since been re-opened, notably . It had closed in January 1967, but re-opened in July 2011 as Chorlton tram stop on the Manchester Metrolink network.
, ten of the 31 stations mentioned were open, with five other closed stations located on lines that were still open.
The song mentions two stations that have never existed, treating Formby Four Crosses and Armley Moor Arram as station names. Leon Berger, archivist of the estate of Donald Swann, has said that Flanders had used an alphabetical list of stations that had been published in The Guardian, and this was the source of some of the discrepancies between the names in the songs and the historic names of the stations. Flanders mistakenly combined two pairs of consecutive names from this list, namely those of , , and .
List of stations Below are listed the stations named in "Slow Train", in the order that they appear in the lyrics. Where appropriate, the correct name of the station is shown in brackets.
StationRailwayBetweenCoordinatesGrid referenceOpenedClosed
Map of stations
Other versions
Gordon Langford arranged the song for six voices for The King's Singers and it appeared on their 1977 album Flanders and Swann and Noël Coward. Langford, a railway enthusiast, put a handwritten note on the score saying "Effigies of Dr Beeching (complete with box of pins) available upon request".
In 2004, Canadian classical quartet Quartetto Gelato released a themed album called Quartetto Gelato Travels the Orient Express, celebrating the original journey of Orient Express and featuring music from London to Istanbul. The album begins with a rendition of "Slow Train", with the final lines changed to reflect the route of the Orient Express.
A version of "The Slow Train" by the King's Singers is on electronica duo Lemon Jelly's track "'76 aka The Slow Train", combined with a cover of the Albert Hammond song "I'm a Train" also performed by the King's Singers. A live version by Stackridge was included in their 2009 DVD 4x4.
Michael Williams' book On the Slow Train takes its name from the song. It celebrates twelve of the most beautiful and historic journeys in Britain that were saved from the Beeching cuts, including famous routes such as the Settle–Carlisle line and less well-known pleasures, such as the four-hour Lancaster–Carlisle route along the remote Cumbrian coastline.
English punk and folk singer-songwriter Frank Turner included a version of the song on his 2011 compilation album The Second Three Years.
See also Abandoned railway station List of closed railway stations in Britain List of train songs
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Lyrics of "Slow Train" Flanders and Swann website Disused railway stations