Railway journeys alone

are on my mind - but not in quite the way you might think. 

Something popped up on Facebook yesterday. I don't know how I came to get it but it was about the tiny spur line near one of the places we lived in when I was a mere kitten. 

I know I have mentioned it before but someone was talking about the excitement of using it to go fishing from the jetty at the end of the road. I had not forgotten seeing the boys (they were always boys) with their fishing lines. I remember seeing them on the train. They would go on to the stop at the far end of the road, across the Esplanade and on to the jetty. Brother Cat always wanted to go with them but was considered too young. Still, there were boys of nine or ten among them, little older than he was.

I also remember something else. What I had forgotten was how many times I must have done it. I went on the train alone. I started to do this at age seven. This must seem extraordinary now. If I was going to see my "other" grandmother "Nana" then my mother or my grandmother "Grandma" would take me to the station. I would pedal my tricycle and it would be "parked" in the station master's little office (where it must have been in the way of his duties). A ticket would be bought and I would wait sitting on the seat for the train to come. 

When the train arrived the station master would help me on to the train and inform the guard I was going "all the way". "Nana" would meet me in the city and we would catch another train to her home which was just behind another train station. (We would climb through the back fence to get to her house.) 

When it was time for me to go home in the afternoon it would all happen in reverse except that the station master at my home station would simply see me off down the street to my own home. I would cross three small streets on my tricycle alone. I must have done that journey several dozen times. Nothing ever went wrong that I remember. 

It is something you would not even consider allowing a child to do now, particularly a child who had problems getting on and off the train. (The guards used to lift me on and off because I was not steady enough on my feet to get off alone.)

I liked those train journeys. It wasn't because I was going to visit "Nana" - something I didn't actually enjoy at all - but because I liked to watch out the window or read a book. I knew I wasn't supposed to talk to strangers, particularly strange men, but no man ever bothered me. There were always people on the train going into the city. On the way home there were not as many but there was always someone, often someone I knew. They often knew the guard too. 

It was always considered safe for me to do it. I wonder at that now. I also wonder that there are children now who have never been on a bus or a train. They have always travelled in cars and even planes. They would have no idea about how to pay for a bus or train journey but I knew. I was the one who asked for my ticket and paid the money. Now, I can't even do that because I just validate my plastic card.

I'd like to do it just once more, do it the old fashioned way with a station master, a guard and a little cardboard ticket.