The Looe Valley Line

Jim Wearne copyright 2008

 

You’ve all heard songs of railroads

Mighty engines, mighty men

I’ll tell you of a famous train

Her like won’t come again.

She’s in the land of Cornwall

Famed of fisherman and mine

She’s the Cornish combination called

The Looe Valley Line.

The ice and snow, the vicious beasts

The one-in-ten decline

They don’t pose a problem on

The Looe Valley line.

Once she hauled the tin ore from

The mines down to the sea

Then she brought the coal back up

As pretty as can be.

Now she hauls the tourists down

And sends them back again

Their pockets all but emptied out

By Looe’s bold highwaymen.

The ice and snow, the vicious beasts

The one-in-ten decline

They won’t be an issue on

The Looe Valley line.

She rumbles bravely off to Coombe

Then, oddly, back again

St. Keyne is next with Holy Well

Feared by married men.

In anybody waves their hand

At Causeland she will light

Sandplace passes in a flash

As Looe heaves into sight.

The ice and snow, the vicious beasts

The one-in-ten decline

The diesel wouldn’t handle on

The Looe Valley line

She’ll take you back to Liskeard

If you should care to go

But why you’d want to leave from Looe

No one will ever know.

Shake hands with Mayor Overd

And walk the old banjo

Then stop in the Jolly Sailor

And you’ll never want to go.

The ice and snow, the vicious beasts

The one-in-ten decline

Conspicuous by their absence on

The Looe Valley line.

And I wish that I was southbound on

The Looe Valley Line.