Feeling My Age

Glimpsed the old heraldic post-war BR logo on this slightly shabby line of Pullman cars, parked up at Bristol station to advertise the Cornish Riviera Express.

Red lion rampant with long blue tongue atop a coronet with oak leaf, English rose, Scottish thistle and a couple of Welsh leeks; gripping the spoked steel wheel of a steam locomotive in its blue claws. The design is imperial, timeless and triumphant: Queen Victoria would have loved it.

Alas, what actually lay in store for British Railways were massive operating losses, Dr Beeching’s axe and John Major’s cack-handed privatisation which still costs taxpayers an arm and a leg to this day..