End of a lost era of railway romanticism for UK's longest journey
'No one departs, no one arrives,' sang Flanders and Swann on their 1963 lament over the destruction of the old ways of rail travel. Slow Train, their nostalgic ditty, decried the Beeching cuts that laid waste to hundreds of branch lines and rural stations. These routes had seen years of declining passengers, yet something romantic was lost in the disappearance of long days on the railways.
One of the most picturesque routes that survived was the epic 14-hour journey from Aberdeen to Penzance, which sadly was completed for the last time on Friday. Since 1921, this service from the north east of Scotland to the south west of England has departed at 8.20am. Covering 36 stops across 785 miles, it included two hours for disembarking.
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