As you look ahead from your dining-car seat, your train takes a sweeping left curve south through Banbury.
The platform ahead is crowded with commuters who shrink back as the now-unfamiliar steam loco shrieks a warning whistle and roars through the station at 82mph, followed by 700 tons of speeding metal. The stunned bystanders are left shrouded in a cloud of steam and that nostalgic whiff of coal smoke. They had a glimpse of a sooty-faced driver in blue overalls peering intently ahead, the intense glow of the firebox, glinting silverware on white tablecloths, and uniformed attendants; so different from the commuter train to Reading they’d expected.
You take another bite of Yorkshire pudding from your roast dinner, a sip of excellent merlot, and happily keep a look-out down this heavenly valley for Oxford. This isn’t a rose-tinted fantasy of how Britain’s railways once were. There are excursion trains and preserved lines you can ride today. Here are a few favourites…
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