'The railway was the first shock spearhead experience, which, like oil on water, spread and spreaded until today we have no spatial experience. We live in the dust of it, in terms of the explosion of the thing - the explosion of the locomotive in an Arcadian idyllic world.'
-Wolfgang Schivelbusch, interviewed for Vapourtrain
VAPOURTRAIN
Produced by Neil McCarthy
Written and presented by Harry Willis Fleming
With the voices of fellow travellers:
Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Cultural historian and author of 'The Railway Journey'
and
Michael Freeman
Author of 'Railways & the Victorian Imagination'
Paul Farley
Poet
John McGoldrick
Curator of Railways at the National Railway Museum
Bill Mitchell
Writer, and President of the Yorkshire Dales Society
Gerald Tyler
Writer
Colin Wilson
Writer and philosopher.
With thanks to Gregory Whitehead.
With sounds recorded on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway (with thanks to the Isle of Wight Railway Co. Ltd.); and on the Yorkshire Coronation to Scarborough (4/4/09) with 46233 Duchess of Sutherland (with thanks to the Princess Royal Class Locomotive Trust).
BBC Radio 3 Programmes - Between the Ears, Vapourtrain