Station

“ I am writing this as best I may in a Scottish railway station; and my thoughts go back, with all the pathos of the patriot, to an English railway station. Trucks and rails may seem to lack the fine shades of variety to be felt in the trees and hills of home; but my fancy really flies to an English railway station where I once dreamed a dream. ”

“ A BUSY railroad station is a grand child's picture-book, for him who observes it. All the child has to do is to look; the leaves are turned before him. There, in all the colors of the rainbow, are countless pictures to cram himself with. And what is a rather curious fact is, that a railroad station may freely be classed among humorous picture-books. ”

“ Had my station been in a slight degree nearer the brink than it was, I should have fallen headlong into the abyss.
To meet a human creature, even on that side of the chasm which I occupied, would have been wholly adverse to my expectation. My station was accessible by no other road than that through which I had passed, and no motives were imaginable by which others could be prompted to explore this road. ”

“ For hours during the day the place slumbers, and a passenger gliding by in the express may well wonder why a station was built at all in the midst of trees and hedges without so much as a single visible house. ”

“ “I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir.”
“Station! station!—your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter.—Go.” ”

“ It was a little wayside place without even a village that I could see to justify its claim to a station at all. Nobody else got out; and as soon as the train had gone, I was left to explain my presence to what appeared to be the entire population of the district, to wit, a station-master, a porter, and a constable who carried a carbine. ”

“ We bade the Duke farewell, and our cavalcade, starting back to the station, was now made picturesque by the flaring torches and the huge paper lanterns which were carried alongside each chair and cart. Slowly the procession wound its way back over the dark plains toward the lights of the station platform and the emblems of a mechanical civilization that contrasted at every point with the life we had seen. ”

“ The station itself is a flower garden. And even in the space outside, where the motor-cars await the rich, and the wagonettes and carts await the nearly-poor, primroses and violets and cowslips and bluebells grow thick on the banks. ”

“ As you pass out of the gangway of the ticket-office at the railway station, you find yourself in front of a sacred picture with a lamp burning continually before it, and you are expected to utter a prayer before beginning your journey. ”

“ Look, we are going to have a little illumination to-night on the terrace. I think it will look rather pretty. Or will it be too like a railway station with green lights and red lights, and a large crowd having dinner in the refreshment-room, which is the loggia, and then rushing away in different directions? Basle railway station, you know, where everybody eats in a great hurry and then disperses to Germany and Switzerland and France. I rather adore railway stations; there is a sense of movement. ”

“ Suddenly appearing, briskly advancing upon the scene, walking rapidly up from the direction of the railroad station, scintillating punctuality, dispatch, succinctness, assurance, commercial agility, comes an apparition from, without manner of doubt, the hurrying ways, the collision of the busy marts of men. ”

“ Thus have perished multiform openings for public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great national tidings,—for revelations of faces and groups that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about a laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowledged one sole interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centres as there are separate carriages in the train. ”

“ Nowadays, when I ramble about the station its enchantment is enhanced by the recollection of those early adventures. And as most people, when passing through a station, are severely intent upon their own problems and little conscious of scrutiny, it is the best of places to study the great human show. ”

“ Now, the man who has been dreaming on a station platform and is obviously going by the train would wake up to look at the clock, or glance round to see how many are travelling, and generally take an interest in the bustle of the station. ”

“ As we approached the station the guide said in his whining German:
"Pay attention to me now. I shall leave you here. Go to the suburban booking-office—the entrance is in the street to the left of the station hall. Go into the first-class waiting-room and look out of the window that gives on to the station hall. There you will see some of the forces mobilized against you. There is a regular cordon of guides—like me—drawn across the entrances to the main-line platforms—unostentatiously, of course. If you look you will see plenty of plain-clothes Huns, too. ”

“ Do you belong to the station?"
"No, sir, the station belongs to me. I'm one of the gen'l public, and if the gen'l public didn't favour it, where'd the Co. be as runs the line?"
"Are you here all day?" ”

“ It pleases me to fancy that a railway strike might go on so long that people forgot the very purpose of a railway station. Railway porters would not even know that they were railway porters; and even the stationmaster would be ignorant of the mysterious secret of his mastery. Most of us have had a fancy that all society is like that strange railway station ”

“ The stationmaster notes his station as fixed in the earth. A being in the sun conceives the station as exhibiting a track in space round the sun, and the railway carriage as marking out yet another track. Thus if space be nothing but relations between material bodies, points as simple entities disappear. ”

“ If only you could travel once by one of those! Between station and station there’s scarcely a man or boy in the carriage who can keep awake; there they sit, leaning over against each other, their heads dropping forward, their eyelids that heavy they can’t hold them up. I tell you it’s one of the most miserable sights to be seen in this world. ”

“ Railway porters were standing at intervals, with lanterns and all the attaches of the station, the clerks from the ticket-office, and the young waitresses from the refreshment-rooms, were looking on in evident expectation of some event, though no one seemed to speak, and everybody looked sad at heart There were not half-a-dozen other persons in the great station: I was only admitted on explaining that I wished to go by the mail train. ”

“ At the dawn of the clear, wintry day one may already distinguish the signs of a great city. A station with magnificent buildings and a well-cared-for park stretching almost to the tracks claims our attention after the many unimpressive sights of the long road. ”

“ He book'd himself for Town;
They stopped at every station up,
Till he again got down.
Says GILPIN, "Sing, Long live the QUEEN,
And eke long life to me;
And ere I'll trust that Line again,
Myself I blest will see!"
ELEGY.
WRITTEN IN A RAIL WAY STATION.
PUNCH.
The Station clock proclaims the close of day;
The hard-worked clerks drop gladly off to tea;
The last train starts upon its dangerous way,
And leaves the place to darkness and to me. ”

“ Then the station-master, the porters, and the ticket-clerks of stations A and B hurry along the line, the staff of station A going towards station B, the staff of station B going towards station A. They hurry along, in the full light of day, in the middle of a perfectly flat plain, a plain without a river, without ridge, and without hollow. ”

“ At the country station is there a man of the district, of his sphere of life, that is more respected, or that enlists a larger amount of sympathy among all classes, than the station master? Cordial good feeling and considerate kindness are extended to every one of the persons that are subordinate to him. ”

“ At the station we found two orderlies, one with my things, the other with von Boden's luggage and fur pélisse. The platforms were now deserted save for sentries: all life at this dreary frontier station seemed to die with the passing of the mail train.
I could not help noticing, after we had left the car and were strolling up and down the platform waiting for the special, that my companion kept casting furtive glances at my feet. I looked down at my boots: they wanted brushing, certainly, but otherwise I could see nothing wrong with them. ”

“ While we are waiting for the vehicles which are to convey us to the railroad station (a long drive inland) many most picturesque groups pass the door; some walking, some riding on ox-carts, and all carrying flowers, pyramidal and gorgeously ornamented cakes, or curious implements for games, totally unknown to us moderns! ”

“ They rode in rapt silence for the rest of the little journey to the South Station, where the tactful clergyman, conscious of the sailor's hesitation when asked where the chauffeur should take him and his wife (the poor fellow had gone purple at the use of so staggering a term) immediately suggested the railroad station. ”

“ That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gazed idly up the line. ”

“ Never before had any of them been at a station, except for the purpose of catching trains—or perhaps waiting for them—and always with grown-ups in attendance, grown-ups who were not themselves interested in stations, except as places from which they wished to get away. ”

“ The sudden change from the dreary lifelessness of the veldt to the exciting crush and bustle of the station platform crowd is almost bewildering, because it is so different from what is expected in interior Africa. The station, a magnificent structure of stone and iron, presents more animated scenes whenever trains arrive than the Grand Central in New York or the Victoria in London, because every passenger is invariably met at the train by all his friends and as many of their friends as the station platform will accommodate. ”

“ On the Head of the station falls the work of the services in the station and in the nearest villages, together with the superintendence of the schools and of the cultivated land. He ought really never to leave the station for a day; he must have his eyes everywhere, and any one ought to be able to speak to him at any time. ”

“ At the little stations we pass through, the station-master in brilliant red and blue is standing erect at that point on the platform that it is his duty to occupy. On the train a woman in uniform has appeared. ”

“ Notice how little townships have grown up round the railway stations, especially on the main lines in districts near a big town. Houses spring up for the hosts of people who, like streams of human ants, hurry to the station to catch the early morning trains, and, as the afternoon wears into evening, come again from the station to snatch a few hours' rest at home. ”

“ The crowded station differs from others of its kind in this only, that there are, amongst those dignified, white-robed figures, many more than usual whose dark faces show plainly that a train is still an object of wonder if not of dread. ”

“ Crowds of them, old and young, are always assembled at the station on the arrival of every train—attracted thither by apparently the same reason that causes their brethren of the North in the cotton belt to flock to the depot when they hear the whistle of the locomotive—childlike curiosity and a desire to get the latest news at the earliest possible moment. ”

“ I begin at the railway station. I have made a rather nearer and larger photograph of the railway station, which presents a diversified and entertaining scene to the incoming visitor. Porters (out of a box of porters) career here and there with the trucks and light baggage. Quite a number of our all-too-rare civilians parade the platform: two gentlemen, a lady, and a small but evil-looking child are particularly noticeable; and there is a wooden sailor with jointed legs, in a state of intoxication as reprehensible as it is nowadays happily rare. ”

“ As he walked along, considering, his attention was caught by some red and green lights a little way off, to one side of the town, and the sound of the puffing and snorting of engines and the banging of shunted trucks fell on his ear. ‘Aha!’ he thought, ‘this is a piece of luck! A railway station is the thing I want most in the whole world at this moment ”

“ For the last twenty years the station of the Orleans railway has stood beside the old faubourg and distracted it, as it does to-day. Wherever it is placed on the borders of a capital, a railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth of a city. ”

“ There is a large station for freight in each of the terminal cities, and at reasonably regular intervals along the road there are wayside stations with stables of good size, and with quarters for the station-keeper and attendants. ”

“ You approach, reach and pass such stations as are intersected by that particular railway, and you get a view of the landscape which every other traveler shares. Having once left a station, you cannot go back to it, nor can you arrive at places further along the line before the train itself takes you there. ”