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Beeching, Before and After
Back when your granny was a wee lass, there was a small railway station at Ashley Hill in Bristol, just where Ashley Down meets Purdown, and in the shadow of the Muller orphanages. It looked like this:
Later, Dr Beeching (or a similar functionary, but let him stand for all, a la Judge Jeffreys) closed the station, and so it remained for many a year. The orphanages were by this time part of Brunel College, and were then converted to flats, while in their grounds had little houses built on them, in one of which I lived from 2006 until 2020. For much of that time, there was talk of re-opening the station under the name Ashley Down, and whenever it came up we were a little excited and a little nervous, but only a little because we never thought it would actually happen.
It did happen, yesterday. To celebrate the event, I took a two-minute journey from Stapleton Rd to visit the new, clean, yet untagged station. Not railway station, as in old-fashioned British English, not train station, as in US English, but "rail station". This is the shining new world we live in.
I felt a little self-conscious, I admit, photographing train things like an otaku in an anorak, but I was far from alone. The only depressing bit was this bench-cum-misericord, presumably designed like this to deter homeless people (because if only we didn't encourage them they wouldn't insist on being homeless?), but equally deterrent of passengers, I imagine.
Later, Dr Beeching (or a similar functionary, but let him stand for all, a la Judge Jeffreys) closed the station, and so it remained for many a year. The orphanages were by this time part of Brunel College, and were then converted to flats, while in their grounds had little houses built on them, in one of which I lived from 2006 until 2020. For much of that time, there was talk of re-opening the station under the name Ashley Down, and whenever it came up we were a little excited and a little nervous, but only a little because we never thought it would actually happen.
It did happen, yesterday. To celebrate the event, I took a two-minute journey from Stapleton Rd to visit the new, clean, yet untagged station. Not railway station, as in old-fashioned British English, not train station, as in US English, but "rail station". This is the shining new world we live in.
I felt a little self-conscious, I admit, photographing train things like an otaku in an anorak, but I was far from alone. The only depressing bit was this bench-cum-misericord, presumably designed like this to deter homeless people (because if only we didn't encourage them they wouldn't insist on being homeless?), but equally deterrent of passengers, I imagine.
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Congratulations! On everything but the hostile architecture. My brain will now return to its previously unscheduled earworm of the theme song to Oh, Doctor Beeching!
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It is absolutely a filk of "Oh! Mr Porter," which is why it is so catchy.
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