Slow Train (Flanders and Swann song)

"Slow Train" takes the form of an elegiac list song of railway stations, which has been likened to a litany.

The strength of "Slow Train" is considered to lie in its list of "achingly bucolic" names of rural halts.

[4] Although most of the stations mentioned in Flanders's song were earmarked for closure under the Beeching cuts, a number of the stations were ultimately spared closure: Chester-le-Street, Formby, Ambergate, and Arram all remain open, and Gorton and Openshaw also survives, now called Gorton.

The album begins with a rendition of "Slow Train", with the final lines changed to reflect the route of the Orient Express.

[6] English folk singer-songwriter Frank Turner included a version of the song on his 2011 compilation album The Second Three Years.

Midsomer Norton , a typical country station, whose closure was lamented by the song "Slow Train".
The song features idealised scenes such as milk churns on a railway platform.
"On the mainline and the goods siding the grass grows high": the Beeching cuts closed many rural lines, such as the Dunstable Branch Lines serving Dunstable Town .