Therapeutic fantasy: the romance of the railways

Peter Murray-Hill (centre), The Ghost Train

Will Hay  & uncredited friend, Oh Mr Porter

Mrs Peel and Steed, The Avengers

It was only as I was going through the files on my mp3 player ready to divert myself this week that I noticed how many of the films that live on there more or less permanently are set in and around railways. The Lady Vanishes is of course one of those espionage classics: like all of the films here it now creaks like an old gate. The others are Terror by Night (a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes), The Ghost Train (the film version of the rollicking story almost designed for amateur theatrics, which stars Arthur Askey. I now find him an irritating little man, but can ignore him & tune in to the story), Oh Mr Porter (I think as a child it was highly formative to my interest in folklore & the paranormal). Not on my mp3 player because it's still in copyright is an Avengers episode called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station, which again centres around an espionage-based story of a plot to blow up a Very Important Person, only with the eccentric features that one would expect from a Mrs Peel avengers episode.
I'm not sure where I get this railway thing from, except that I've never had to commute by train so associate them with holidays and days out rather than the grindstone. Certainly it's not a blokey railway fascination, which bores me to death. I'm more interested in old railway posters than rolling stock, which I think indicates that it's an escapism thing.
What trains objectively represent in our society is a major thread of the history of the Industrial Revolution: freight trains still run, and of course for many in history trains would have been associated with the unrelenting labour of laying tracks, digging tunnels, and the making of the actual stock. I am aware that I have been in some way 'taken in' by the advertising lure of the romance of the railways, since I've only ever been on the customer side of the counter.
I am actually writing this blog post on a train going to Kidderminster for the day: the trains for me are escapism, this is therapeutic for *me*. It is therapy and escape from getting out of bed to be at work at 7am yesterday morning, and this escapism into what is a world of fantasy for me is an essential part of rest and recuperation.
The essential thing to remember is precisely that this is fantasy. I must keep a handle on that fact, since where it would become dangerous would be if I build a fantasy that sees the dream as reality. The guard on this train is working just as I was yesterday. He is not leading soke fantasy paradisiacal life, but looks just as, or more, harried as me yesterday. Rather my escape is about moving from one aspect of my life to another for a time of rest, while still keeping hold of an awareness of exactly what this is. There's no harm in being able to keep several different worlds on the go at once (as long as you let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, don't lie to yourself or anyone else, and don't end up only in one world which is not based on your reality). In fact this ability is not only therapeutic and healthful, but it is an essential skill for the witch, something practised in so many of our meditations and pathworkings. This is precisely what riding the hedge means, both journeying between different worlds, and the ability to keep an eye on several worlds at once.
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