Long ago and far away, once or twice a year, my parents… well my mother (and sometimes my grandparents)… used to drag us down to the docks in Cardiff where we’d board what I thought at the time was a huge ship. It would take us to Saundersfoot and similar utterly pointless seaside resorts where we’d play in the mud… walk up and down bleak promenades eat ice cream… then get back on the ship and go home.
Sounds awful eh?? Yet I loved it and still look back on those trips as magic times. Not because we actually *went* somewhere… but because of how we got there.
We’d set off by train… one of the old steam trains with the old ‘individual carriages’ . No corridors… no connectors. With sash windows that slid open and were held by strips of thick cloth. Great old things were the steam trains. You’d stick your head out of the window (it was still allowed then) and inhale great lungfuls of steam filled with soot and all sorts of other carcinogens and often as not get smacked in the eye by particles of soot that hurt like hell. Loads of fun 🙂
We’d arrive at Bute Street Station and wander down through streets as yet ‘unimproved’… i.e. wrecked… past the ladies of ill-repute etc and make our way to the ship. Wow!!!
The first sight of the ship always impressed me. It sat there… squatting in the water… like some untamed beast ready to leap into the waves ramming its way through where *it* wanted to go and to hell with nature! Of course in retrospect they were incredibly inefficient mechanically and though obviously seaworthy were no match for modern technology. Yet in motion they were exceptional as they hacked their way through the waves
Like most of the large machines in those days they were coal fired… so there were huge funnels belching smoke and sparks when they were well underway… God they were wonderful. I suppose one of the things that made the greatest impression was the sight of the power room.
In those pre-insurance-paranoia-days we had far more freedom of movement than we’d get today and we actually allowed to wander almost within reach of the huge engines. I can honestly say *nothing* has impressed me as much as those engine rooms. Despite being coal fired and lubricated witih oil (of course) the rooms were always spotless and shining. The engineers loved those machines and cared for them as if they were their children. The sight of those pistons chundering up and down… the smell of fresh paint… the glistening oil… the polished copper and brass… ooooh… magic.
No point to the story really… just reminiscing. 😀
The Eclectic Interweb 