tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6471329571766916686.post795461067021851981..comments2024-03-29T03:11:39.045+00:00Comments on Turnip Rail: ‘No Imagination can Conceive of the Ruin' - Dickens and the Staplehurst AccidentDavid Turnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01017077771376316618noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6471329571766916686.post-19925299819680756392011-07-15T15:17:17.303+01:002011-07-15T15:17:17.303+01:00Came across a vaguely related Dickens and railway ...Came across a vaguely related Dickens and railway reference yesterday, from Molly Hughes's 'A London Home in the 1890s'. Nowhere near as serious a campaigning matter, but it caught my eye because of your post - there's clearly a lot to be said about Dickens and railways.<br /><br />She's in North America, travelling by train from Montreal to Boston:<br /><br />"A fifteen minutes' stop at a wayside halt doesn't sound pleasant. There was no town near, nor anything. But I have never come across such a dream of a refreshment-room. The bar was loaded with freshly cut sandwiches (not deadly similar within), new buns, an enticing variety of cakes, huge pears, oranges and jugs of creamy milk. I compared it with our English refreshment-rooms, usually so stale, dirty, and graceless. I understood Dickens's description of the American at Mugby Junction: 'I la'af. I dew. I la'af at yewer fixins, solid and liquid.' More than forty years have passed since I had that wayside meal, and yet an American would still laugh at our rock cakes and coffee essence and other miseries. Dickens's satire had no success in this direction." <br />(The book was published in 1946)Marynoreply@blogger.com