The Flying Scotsman on a leisurely stroll through the countryside.

 Subject: The Flying Scotsman on a leisurely stroll through the countryside.

Nostalgia is double edged, it takes one back down memory lane to a time when our place in society was more secure, we were younger, and our perspective clearer. One of those nostalgic things in my life was standing on the railway station platform with my Dad after a train journey somewhere in the gritty and grey 1950s, looking up with awe at a  mechanical monster, hissing and belching steam whilst, on the engine platform the driver and fireman with customary cap and rag, nonchalantly  surveying the scene as the engine, metaphorically speaking, seemed to paw the ground eager to be off to the next destination. Looking at the driver, amid the steam and smell of hot oil, he seemed to command so much of a boys dreams, the power to control one of these  stand alone power plants, with connecting rods and pistons, the oiler boxes to keep things lubricated, the coal fired boiler and the sooty fireman who, with the driver were part of the human orchestra needed to keep the beast in check.

I have told the story before of being at the London Southbank Festival of Britain Exhibition in 1950 to see the latest train engine on display as part of what we as a country manufactured.  And there I was in 1964 watching the same engine pull into Melbourne Station on its last commercial journey. There were dozens of train spotting enthusiasts in Melbourne to watch and yesterday I enjoyed a smashing film of the Flying Scotsman (60103) refurbished and running at greatly reduced speed, 28mph along the single track running through the beautiful countryside of rural England. All along the way clusters of enthusiasts occupied vantage points, at road crossing and bridges, on station platforms and even out in the fields they stood and waved doffing their caps as it were to a different era. The complexity of the signalling was explained as the train was brought to a halt and the fireman jumped off his engine platform to walk up ahead to ring the signal box to find out the cause of the delay and because it was a single line each section had to acknowledge who was on the line and a large ring shaped token passed to the driver as the train passed through that section of track.

It was all so "old worldly", a period when we were changing from the horse drawn era to steam, when people could still conjecture what was going on before their very eyes and not hidden in some Taiwanese synthetic chip.

The country roads having crossed the track drifted off from the line to some village, isolated somewhere in its own identity the road ducking and diving through the hedgerows, the cows munching away as the farmer in his field plans his crop planting with ever one eye cocked at the weather.

These are elements what makes living here in the UK plausible. It contrast the self imposed stress of continually watching the tittle-tattle from our smart phones, with an ever present to the threat of war and famine and the nostalgia for me is perhaps knowing less and living in my own world which is relevant to me and my needs and interests.