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Friday 29 Aug 2025

Poet Laureate marks railway bicentenary with commemorative poem

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 today (29 August) 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: