Ten minutes after 10am, amid clouds of steam and smoke and a cacophony of thrusting pistons, the Cambrian Coast Express began to pull out of Paddington Station.
Over the next five and a half hours and 235 miles it would rattle through some of the most beautiful scenery in Britain — the Chilterns and Shakespeare Country, on to historic Shrewsbury, then west through the remoteness of Mid Wales to the seaside town of Aberystwyth. It wasn’t hard to sell the charms of the long-established daily service.
This, though, was 1959 and the age of steam was almost over, as were another legacy of Victorian times — those strict Christian values held so dear by the train’s most notable passenger that morning.
In an era increasingly defined by rock’n’roll and the Sputnik satellite, George Thomas, the 50-year-old bachelor Labour MP for Cardiff West, was something of a throwback.
A Methodist lay preacher, he had risen from a childhood of abject poverty in the Welsh Valleys to a seat in Parliament.
There, he would counsel the wider world to live life according to his beloved Scripture. ‘I was nurtured in a nonconformist home and we regard gambling as a sin,’ he told the House of Commons that same year, warning that the proposed licensing of betting shops was indicative of a wider national malaise. Full story...
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Over the next five and a half hours and 235 miles it would rattle through some of the most beautiful scenery in Britain — the Chilterns and Shakespeare Country, on to historic Shrewsbury, then west through the remoteness of Mid Wales to the seaside town of Aberystwyth. It wasn’t hard to sell the charms of the long-established daily service.
This, though, was 1959 and the age of steam was almost over, as were another legacy of Victorian times — those strict Christian values held so dear by the train’s most notable passenger that morning.
In an era increasingly defined by rock’n’roll and the Sputnik satellite, George Thomas, the 50-year-old bachelor Labour MP for Cardiff West, was something of a throwback.
A Methodist lay preacher, he had risen from a childhood of abject poverty in the Welsh Valleys to a seat in Parliament.
There, he would counsel the wider world to live life according to his beloved Scripture. ‘I was nurtured in a nonconformist home and we regard gambling as a sin,’ he told the House of Commons that same year, warning that the proposed licensing of betting shops was indicative of a wider national malaise. Full story...
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