Comments on: Images of Elsewhere

By: David Mounce

David Mounce — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 16:24:32 +0000

Now, where the heck did I put my long-neglected copy? Thanks for the reminder!
D

By: David Coxell

David Coxell — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 22:57:04 +0000

Brilliant book. Reading it now!

By: Eric Hayman

Eric Hayman — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:27:54 +0000

: “Far away is near at hand in images of elsewhere” was made much of by Peter Simple (Michael Wharton) of The Daily Telegraph. He attributed it to “The Sage of Paddington”, and greatly mourned its destruction – akin to the removal of the Elgin Marbles.

I came across your website only because I was checking on the exact graffito before sending it to someone who has written a book set mainly in Nepal. She had often gazed from her house in Rajapur at what she thought were the Himalayas, but what she was seeing were just “near at hand” snow-capped ridges.

As a railway enthusiast and photographer, I too have memories of the old Paddington. One job I had was delivering building materials to where a water tank situated in the rof space above the station offices was being lined with some heavy material to make it watertight. I saw the third name plate of the Castle class loco Isambard Kingdom Brunel over a passage doorway, and looked out over all the platforms, alas with only HSTs and DMUs in view. Sic transit gloria trains.

By: Tom Bowden

Tom Bowden — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 11:56:48 +0000

A brilliant website.

I worked for BR from 1974 to 1993 and in that time I travelled over 500,000 miles by rail as I was a keen photographer and rail enthusiast.

I too saw the graffitti at Raneleagh Bridge Fuelling Point ” Far away is near at hand in images of elsewhere” and it took me nearly 40 years to work out what the artist meant. With your list of comments, the GWR used names for different types of wagons and a code book was published which listed them all. This was used purely for telegraphic purposes. For example a Shark was a brakevan, a Grampus a ballast wagon. Whales or Sealions were larger ballast wagons and so on.

Keep up the good work.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 09:04:34 +0000

Thank you for explaining the background of the book.

I bought a second hand copy in an Oxfam shop in Cambridge, having never heard of it, and have been puzzling my way through it. I imagine that I only pick up about 50% of the allusions in it – not only do you need to know the names of all the stations between Paddington and Oxford but also classical mythology, the works of T.S. Eliot (I spotted several sections which are pastiche of The Waste Land) and doubtless many more authors I do not recognise.

By: All Cornwall is latent and the remoter west at Blog My Wiki!

All Cornwall is latent and the remoter west at Blog My Wiki! — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:32:31 +0000

[...] I read this fine passage from E M Forster today, on the train appropriately enough, and wished I’d spotted it in time to add it to my essay on train travel between Paddington and Slough. Somehow it is made even more poignant by the fact that Mark Speight apparently killed himself so close to Paddington station because it reminded him of trips to the West Country with his girlfriend. Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo […] And he is a chilly Londoner who does not endow his stations with some personality, and extend to them, however shyly, the emotions of fear and love. [...]

By: blogmywiki

blogmywiki — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:00:18 +0000

Hi Peter – generous indeed!

It was kind of like blogging before blogging I suppose…

By: Peter Groves

Peter Groves — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:57:23 +0000

One of my favourite books. A colleague – a supremely generous colleague – gave me his copy: as a daily commuter from Didcot to Paddington, I needed it … and it encouraged me to blog my own, inferior, notes from overground.

By: blogmywiki

blogmywiki — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:05:19 +0000

Thank you Bob – will check those out.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:06:04 +0000

One of my all-time favourite books. As a trainspotter, formerly a commuter, and an arts graduate (this aids appreciation of Roger Green’s literary allusions, although he leaves me standing with the Classics), and with a warped sense of humour, I am probably the ideal reader for this book. I.e. it helps if you’re fairly sad!

[Other books include "Hydra and the Bananas of Leonard Cohen" (?I thought everyone gave him up in the 60s as too depressing) and "Wolvercote Dreaming" (which again sounds suspiciously Oxonian)]

As he says, “Man is born free, but is everywhere in trains”

Try also:

Platform Souls – Nicholas Whittaker
Parallel Lines – Ian Marchant
Anorak of Fire – Stephen Dinsdale