Country Life and Sport
AN OLD BRADSHAW.
In the course of watching wild, birds in the Cambridgeshire Fens some years ago, I stopped for a night at a remote farm- house. On enquiry about trains at the distant station my host, who never left his own locality, offered me a Bradshaw that bore the date of 1889, so far as I remember. It was a thin and handy volume, not half the size of the ponderous edition of this year. Now some might infer that the doubling of the size of Bradshaw gives some presumptive evidence in favour of railway progress. They would be very wrong. In reference to the particular line on which some of us suffer, there were four more trains to London than there are to-day : and all the trains were quicker, most of them quite a good deal quicker. The last return train used to be 10 p.m. It is now 6.55 p.m. More than this in those old days, so the people say, the line was famous for punctuality. It is now rare for any train to be punctual, and a delay of half an hour is frequent. Though they are only 24 miles from London, the unfortunate people of to-day must take a train at 8.54. a.m. if they wish to be in time for a luncheon engagement in London. However, many of them are very grateful to the L.N.E.R. The degeneration of railway service has prevented a charming rural neighbourhood from being " developed." Instead, it loses population and the bigger houses grow empty. As a promoter of rural remoteness, the railway is beyond reproach. This virtue has not been recognized in the many letters of reproach that have recently appeared in the Times and elsewhere.
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