The 200th anniversary of the modern railway has been celebrated with a commemorative poem from Poet Laureate Simon Armitage CBE.
Titled ‘The Longest Train In The World’, the poem is published as part of Railway 200, a national celebration of the past, present and future of the railway, exploring how this British invention has shaped our lives and livelihoods.
Rail’s bicentenary is inspired by the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway on 27 September 1825, a journey that changed the world forever.
The Longest Train In The World
We stood in a northern field and witnessed it
rocketing past, barrelled and chimneyed,
towing an open-top truck, kicking up dust
and chucking out sparks as it cantered
the metal road. We gasped and it gasped back.
It kept coming: we sat with our legs dangling
over a stone bridge as it steamed along,
cheeks and chest puffed out, lungs heaving,
hauling the golden age and ragging a blue sky
with silver clouds. We saluted – it hooted back.
It kept on coming: from steep embankments
and country platforms we whistled and flagged,
tried to peek inside the upholstered Pullmans
and catch the eye of important someones
riding on plush cushions; we waved,
hoping a gloved hand might wave back.
It kept on coming: we clapped like mad
when its diesel engines went like the clappers,
gawped from city streets and apartments,
smiled at hundreds of faces, as if the carriages
whooshed entire towns of passengers station
to station. It kept on coming, tunnelling
under mountain ranges then vaulting ravines
and canyons. When sleepwalking coaches
shushed through curtained suburbs at night
we wished them sweet dreams; when freight containers
trundled and rumbled down branching branch lines
we nodded a knowing wink to the rolling stock
and it winked back. It just kept on coming:
we fist-bumped and high-fived the sleek machines
of the future, some bulleting here to there,
some gliding on air. And we waited to clock
the last guard’s van swinging its red lantern,
but that didn’t happen: rounding the globe
coupled nose to tail to nose to tail that train
was two centuries long and still counting.
Copyright 2025: Simon Armitage
The poem is also conveyed in this reading by Simon Armitage, which was filmed in Marsden, West Yorkshire, where Simon grew up, see video: