For me it is the ultimate expression of Anglicanism as Chester Cathedral hosts “Making Tracks,” the model railway created by musician Pete Waterman.
This is no ordinary train set like the one which lingered for decades in my childhood bedroom. This is the Real Thing, a 64-foot-long track modelled after Milton Keynes railway station. And more: visitors will be able to drive the trains using dedicated control tablets. I’ll be there.
What some people may find strange is why a cathedral? Why not a retail park or even a railway concourse? Although to be fair, Chester railway station is short on space.
The answer is simply expressed in this quote from writer Ed Beavan: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that the clergy love trains.” And I am no exception.
This past month alone I have dragged Jacqui to the Pyrenees, to ride on the remarkable “train jaune” and to Snowdonia for a return trip, steam-hauled, on the Welsh Highland railway between Caernarfon and Porthmadog.
And I am eternally grateful to the congregation of Christ Church for their birthday gift some years back of a course on how to drive a Black Five steam locomotive on the East Lancashire railway. If you need someone to drive your steam locomotive, I’m your man.
The obvious question is why? Why the relationship between Anglican clergy and railways? Think Revd W. V. Awdry who gave us “Thomas the tank engine.”
Think railway bishop Revd Eric Treacy, who as a curate in Edge Hill, Liverpool, strangely learned to drive steam locomotives. He also found time to become Suffragan Bishop of Pontefract, and later Bishop of Wakefield.
In fact, I can recall, when I served in the Chester Diocese, hearing our bishop sharing his vision for the Diocese using the train signalling system as his visual aid. We all knew what he was talking about.
One well-known answer was given by a vicar in London. “It’s the only thing in my parish that moves without me having to push it!”
We may be getting closer when an article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in 2002 categorised trainspotters, a particular subgroup of railway enthusiasts, as people with a form of (what was then called) Asperger syndrome, as they had a strong desire to order the world.
And this may be the case for clerical railway modellers, where their layout presents an opportunity to create a parallel world, where everything runs to order, and at times and in ways you dictate — unlike normal parish life.
At this point I find myself in the familiar position of not knowing where this blog is going, not least because railways don’t appear in the Bible, not even in the Message translation. I would be grateful if those of you with access to time travel could skip to my final paragraph and tell me how I did it)
If in doubt, look for a quote. Here’s one from author Khaled Hosseini: “A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.”
And that’s where railways would mirror life – they have purpose, a destination. This is in stark contrast to the belief that the universe lacks purpose, just a series of random events without direction. We are no more than the chemicals which make up our body, mainly oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus.
The apostle Paul writes of how God’s good creation has lost its way through Adam’s disobedience: “For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so.” (Romans 8:20).
And this is how so many see life as depicted in so much of our culture. So, for example, Sir Grayson Perry, recently knighted by Prince Williams, declares: “My job is to make meaning. To make meaning in a meaningless world.”
And that’s where so many of our contemporaries are situated, just wandering through life, simply rolling their dice and hoping for the best.
But the resurrection victory of Jesus, as an event in history, an event with a geographical location, gives a totally different understanding of the universe. His sacrificial death on the cross has set us free from what Paul calls our “bondage to decay.”
“Everything that God made is waiting with excitement for the time when he will show the world who his children are. The whole world wants very much for that to happen.” (Romans 8:19)
The good news is that the universe has a destination and so does each of us. It’s a case now of discovering God’s direction for our lives, his purpose for my existence. It’s as basic as that.
And more, as Paul explains, once we get our minds onto the right track, we are free to discover “what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)