The magic of a tram stop …….. sixty five years on

 It is of course a given that places as well as things can trigger memories, and it’s why I like St Werburgh’s Metro stop on the tram route to East Didsbury.

To be specific it must be the platform on a hot sunny day, and I must be alone.

Get the moment right and I could be back on a suburban railway station in Surrey on a day in August 1959.

Back then many adventures consisted of turning up at our local railway station in Peckham and finding a destination which could be reached for the price of a return ticket costing just under two shillings.

This was almost all my week’s pocket money with just enough left over for some essential supplies.

And on that day the return ticket and the adventure took me to Epsom Downs railway station.

Armed with a bottle of warm lemonade we arrived around midday and the place was deserted.  The morning commuter rush for London Bridge and Waterloo was long over, and the commuters return was not for another six hours, so it was just us sitting on the grass.

Nothing stirred and the moment was only interrupted by the lazy drone of bees and the occasional hum from the telegraph wires which mingled with the mix of smells coming from the oil impregnated wooden sleepers gently cooking in the midday heat.

It was a near perfect moment and one that has stuck with me for over sixty years.

As you grew up you get “busy”, things get in the way and sometimes those things become more important than they should be.

But aged ten its different.  

We were on an adventure, had found somewhere new and were savouring the moment.  It helped that it was hot, and we were alone even if the lemonade was warm.

That said even a ten-year-old can only “live the moment” for a while and so bored with the scene and unsure of what lay beyond the station building we eventually caught the train backhome.

I doubt my companion ever thought back to that day and set against our trips on the Red Rover bus ticket which offered up unlimited travel for a day on London Transport, our few hours on the grass at the end of the platform was tame.

But I remember it, more fondly than the day we took the advice of the railway booking clerk and ended up in Bermondsey on a wet cool day beside the canal .

And that is why I will take myself to St Werburgh’s and sit on the down platform with views of the Fallowfield Loop walkway on sunny days.

True, it isn’t Epsom Downs, and I am not ten again but when there is no one else around the combination of the sun with the trees and bushes directly opposite take me back to that moment.

Not that this is any foolish nostalgic indulgence.  Epsom Downs Railway Station was closed in 1989 and the station platforms with their grass bits where we sat is now an estate of new houses.

Nostalgia is not a substitute for remembering our past and so rather than wallow in that lost moment I went looking for the place.

It took some time and along the way I almost doubted my memory but eventually found it on that wonderful site Disused Railway Stations* which offered up a fascinating history and more importantly pictures of where we sat. **

So, that is it. 

Location; St Weburgh’s tram stop, 2025, and Epsom Downs Railway Station, 1959

Pictures; St Weburgh’s tram stop, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Disused Railway Stations, http://disused-stations.org.uk/

**Epsom Downs, Disused Railway Stations,  http://disused-stations.org.uk/e/epsom_downs/index1.shtml