LAST TRAIN THROUGH ALTON TOWER

LAST TRAIN THROUGH ALTON TOWER

There's an old man sitting on a platform chair,
And he feels the breeze as it ruffles his hair,
And he stares at the bushes and the weeds where the rails should be;
And he shields his eyes from the glint of the sun,
Off an old broken clock that showed ten past one,
Since the last smell of train back in nineteen sixty-three.

He screws his eyes round the red bricked station,
Forgotten now by most of the nation,
The flaky sills and doors with rusty locks;
And his mind goes back to the day and hour,
When he stood below that old clock tower,
'Mid the levers and the handles of his well kept signal-box.

(Chorus)... And he's back in the fifties in the days of steam,
And his body's shakin' and he hears the scream,
As the thirteen fifty-two roars down the line;
And his hands they tremble and his old body twitches,
And his mind heaves the sticks, and pulls on the switches,
And through it all I do believe I can hear him cryin'.

Now his body slumps and it starts to rain,
And I believe his soul has passed like the train,
That shovelled that smoke through his dreams of yesterday;
Then two solemn figures walked in through the gate,
Took out a pencil and they noted the date,
And they picked up the body and silently took it away.

(Words & Music by RAYMOND WRIGHT)