Angolan regime tightens its grip – NRK

I am not a particularly large train fanatic, but believe me – they are plentiful here in the UK anyway.

People, preferably men, standing at the tip of the platforms to photograph the different train types passing. Especially on the major London stations like Paddington, Waterloo, Victoria, Clapham Junction and a number of others, you will see the so-called “train pot holders” who are ready with their cameras to get a few more images to a probably already rich collection.

On the other hand, I love to travel by train.

It’s easy to work on board, it’s a quick way to travel most places here in the islands and there is also a the perfect way to unwind at the unlikely should be an opening for the kind.

I have no idea how many platforms I have traveled to and from the UK in my adult life, but it is many. Very many.

And most remain just one platform, such as platform 5 from home station Wimbledon which is never anything other than the platform into the city center.

Or platforms 1, 2, 3 and 4 at Waterloo when I’m going back home.

Perrongen 0 and 9 ^3.4

Then there are those who have something extra. For example platform “0″ in both Cardiff and London’s “King’s Cross”.

Though the latter is perhaps more famous for its fictional Platform 9 ^3.4 of stories about Harry Potter .

Yet surfaced recently addressed a very different, seemingly plain and boring platform that burned stuck – platform 7 at Liverpool Lime Street station.

This is where the train London goes from Liverpool. By virtually accident has occurred as a symbol of desperation, for sorrow, for joy, for the pursuit of happiness and heartbreak.

From this very platform, on just this line between these two towns there have been many a famous in spe, lack an anonymous man driven to their utmost in desperation as well as the ordinary people you never get to hear the history of.

It was such an ordinary story made platform 7 would become a platform out of the ordinary.

Platform 9:03 / 4 at King’s Cross is known from the Harry Potter books.

Photo: AKIRA Suemori / AP

Liverpool and some Norwegian stew

A good English friend from college joined as an assistant on a TV job I should do in Liverpool.

He is well traveled and is an itinerant wellspring of anecdotes and stories about most places in the UK – A dream companion for a correspondent.

When we this particular morning arrived Liverpool Lime Street, and step out of the train was there as always with a good feeling. The spacious dome roof in glass and steel over head allows light and air, and Liverpool is certainly one of the nicest towns I know about.

I realize I usually say about quite a few British cities.

My friend pointed to the end of the platform, where the station hall begins, and said briefly that it was his old scouser-girlfriend used to meet him in a bygone era, when he came hopeful and certainly yearning from London.

Norwegian dish which has been nickname of people from Liverpool, Scousers. They also called ‘Liverpudlians’

Photo: Kathrine Kromker / NRK

“Scouser” by the way the name of the one who speaks the Liverpool accent. Funny enough, the word from the Norwegian stew – as were the poor people ate because it was cheap.

But back to love and my friend. This platform and this railway line was that bound their love together – and as for him still had a symbolic value.

And when we were going down the stairs from the station tumbled into my head all the others claimed platform seven or railway line to London as one of life’s important places.

It began to rumble into faces, known and unknown who had stood on the same platform, to meet someone, or maybe to travel from Liverpool and London. Where they heard that everything was possible – but where oh so many dreams died and was buried.

The journey between London and Liverpool have not always gone in 2 hours and 4 minutes.

Photo: NRK

179 years on rails

Today is the multi-billionaire Richard Branon company “Virgin” that operates between London Liverpool.

Modern and fast train which covers the over 300 km stretch between Liverpool Lime Street and London Euston in two hours and four minutes on the fastest.

Today it Richar Branson that sails the route between Liverpool and London.

Photo: PAUL ELLIS / AFP

It has obviously not always been, in the 179 years that have passed since the drive was first opened to the public and when the first memories of it to leave here was created.

Located on the northwest coast of England, was the port city Liverpool quickly a gateway for the many migrants who arrived in boats and ships from Ireland during the Great Famine in the second half of the 1840s.

When the potato crop in Ireland were destroyed by disease, forced hungry very many Irishmen to travel, and Liverpool was thus one of the first places they stopped, they came in hundreds of thousands.

Almost one million Irishmen to have left their home country for five or six years. In the early 1850s, a quarter of Liverpool’s residents have been born in just Ireland. But many went further, not least to London in the hope of a better life. They traveled with two from Liverpool Lime Street, and struggled to find both work and housing in London.

They were the Irishmen, and stood not at a premium. “The niggers of Europe” as some once said.

And which emotion was traveling well not elapsed between London and Liverpool after Titanic shipwreck in 1912? Although the ship never visited the port city, lying namely the head office of the company here.

Symbol of hope

Liverpool has for centuries been a city with high immigration, both from Europe but also from the old British colonies. The old shipyards and other industries meant work.

But it also meant mass unemployment when the economy is not going so well. As during the Great Depression of the 1930s when unemployment reached 30%. Again going platform against London symbolize hope for those who wanted and had to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Hungry, dirty and desperate resolve the ticket with train via steam locomotive would be dragged into the capital.

At the current platform 7 there is little reminiscent of how it could have been.

From 1964 continued Paul McCartney (left) to commute from Liverpool and London for recordings and other chores. The three others had already moved to the capital

Photo: Dan Grossi / AP

Certainly, it’s a somewhat inefficient queuing there, letting in all at once, just before departure, and you can imagine the smell of men who stood with their suitcases, where they escaped from hunger and poverty and to the great uncertainty.

Where coal dust from the locomotives lying everywhere. The last steam locomotive in Britain, had incidentally Liverpool Lime Street as its final destination on 11 August 1968.

A Prime Minister and four beetles

One who knew the route Liverpool-London well at that time was Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He represented namely constituency Huyton, just outside the city limits of Liverpool.

Harold Wilson was prime minister for two terms, first from 1964 to 1970 and then from 1974 to 1976. He was known to take 8-train from Liverpool, and loved to work on board while he listened to BBC radio on the way into Euston station.

Though it was probably someone else Scouser who took a lot of attention in his first prime period.

Four young men who also took the train from Liverpool Lime Street to London. They named George, Ringo, Paul and John. Just when they took the first train journey to London is uncertain, but that there were many important trips to both gigs, recordings and meetings there is little doubt.

And for those who are concerned with such; Harold Wilson was the also sung by the Beatles, albeit not exactly in a tribute, in the song “Taxman.”

Both the Beatles and former Prime Minister Harold Wilson is well acquainted with the station Liverpool Lime Street.

Photo: Ap

In their footsteps, or railroad tracks, has of course many bands followed suit, the list is huge. Everything from contemporary Gerry & amp; The Pacemakers and Cilla Black Echo & amp; The Bunneymen, Dead Or Alive, Frankie Goes Go Hollywood and today The Wombats. They all stood even on the same platform with a ticket to London in his hand and no idea they were going to succeed ahead with the career that had started so well in his hometown.

It is also difficult to avoid football when we talk about Liverpool and the thousands and thousands who have traveled to or from platform 7 to see Liverpool a thrashing or being clobbered – not least amount Norwegians.

The taxi driver who drove me to the station during my previous visit could tell that I was the third man in the north his car the week. It was a Thursday. Which happiness emotions and the disappointment has not speed past just here.

Footprints The echoes

And here I am now sitting on an icy modern bench under this lofty ceiling, on this little anonymous platform an ATM, a travel center and a few cafes as neighbors, here I sit with a bit of hot coffee, and a tad too dry baguette with mozzarella, I try to hear the echoes of all the footprints of all those who have made the same journey before me , the trip to London.

Here the Irish immigrants went through, here the unemployed Scousers with tar thick accent discussed among themselves prior to departure, here a young George Harrison probably kept some extra good in the guitar case before the first trip to capital, here where a younger version of my friend once got off the train ready for proposal to his girlfriend.

Here he traveled back from the same day when he never got performed the planned proposal because she broke up.

Here at platform 7.