Memories of Steam Trains

In late October, the BBC ran a series of programs about the demise of steam locomotives in England which were killed off by the Minister of Transport of the time, Beeching. These nostalgic programs brought back some memories of when I was a little girl. The closest train track was about a 2 mile walk from our house – down the road, down the lane, across the main road, down another road which also turned into a lane, across a field, over a style then across another field to that magical place – the bridge over the railway line. My brother Mick and I often used to escape the constant beatings handed out by the woman who called herself our mother, by walking to “our” railway bridge. There, we would just lie on the grass, staring up at the sky and waiting for the sound of a train. Then we’d jump over to the bridge, take a deep breath, lean over the bridge, shut our eyes and felt the tingle of
glowing soot particles on our faces as the train passed beneath us. Then we’d breathe in again and then soon there would be the silence again, broken only by the sound of skylarks hovering in the sky. It was a great thrill for us if the driver saw us and the train whistled for us.

Another time, we were still very small, we heard that the legendary streamlined, “Class A4″ locomotive, Mallard would be coming to our nearest big station pulling the coaches of the Seaside Express. Fortunately it was a fine day, so off we set for the 5 mile walk to the town to see the Mallard. We didn’t have any money for bus fare, but our Nan had given us 1 penny each for Platform Tickets (you needed a ticket to go onto the platform back then). As it turned out, we were allowed onto the platform for free by the very kind guard, and he told to not to get too close to the edge, when I told him we wanted to see the Mallard.

Even thinking back to it, I get teary-eyed. Here we were, two little kiddies, all on our own like something out of a Dickens novel staring open-mouthed in awe, as this stunningly beautiful blue and black locomotive slowed down and chugged its regal way past us. I wanted to touch it, because it looked like something from another world. But I didn’t have the nerve. Mallard is now in the National Railway Museum in York, NE England and one day I will go and see it, and I will touch it.

But until then I can re-live those days of steam thanks to an excellent website which has not only pictures, but sound files to listen to, or to download. The website is http://www.fleetsteam.co.uk and if you want to hear a real train whistle, listen to the Oliver Cromwell whistle as it thunders towards the site owner, David.

 http://www.fleetsteam.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/70013_farnboroughdown620_140908.mp3

David has been extremely kind and has sent me a short version of the whistle and train, so I can hopefully put it as a ring tone on my mobile phone.

Other sounds of steam locomotives can also be found on

http://www.steamsounds.org.uk/

Cancelling online memberships and accounts

I am currently in the midst of having the sad duty of cancelling various online membership accounts of my dear sister-in-law, recently deceased. Like most internet users, she had an account with various online stores, she used Skpe until she was too ill to do so, she bought books from Amazon, used ebay, etc. I had all her passwords so I was able to access all these accounts and attempted to use them to cancel her accounts and memberships.

You will NOT believe how difficult it is, to have accounts of some of these places shut down. The information and photocopies which some of them demand before they are willing to cancel a membership and stop their email advertising is not only personal, insulting and intrusive, but also very upsetting.

Official Swiss institutions such as the Post Office, Swiss Rail, Swisscom were very fast, efficient and caring.

A “bonus point” collecting scheme by the Jelmoli department store was very bad – they needed – according to a man on the phone - a copy of the death certificate, a copy of my Power of Attourney, her credit card number and even her security code (!). I did not give them any of these and sent them a very angry email of complaint.

Ebay was by FAR the worst so far. A week after I started all this, I thought the account was closed, but then the ebay advertising started rolling in to her email account. I checked, and the account hadn’t been closed at all.  I filled out the form again and received an email from ebay Switzerland asking me to send a copy of the death certificate and a covering letter to a fax number in Germany. I did that and received an email on Nov. 13th saying that the account was being closed. A week later yet more advertising came in.

I checked the ebay account and sure enough it was still open. I then sent another fax to Germany asking what was going on and on the 18th November I received another email, saying it was being closed down. 6 days later yet more advertising for “Christmas gifts on ebay” came in and by now I was REALLY angry. I sent a furious fax to the number in Germany and demanded that they shut down the account IMMEDIATELY. Their reply was that they would “initiate” the closing of the account from the 24th.  And so it goes. Today is the 9th December and the account is still open. It is an absolutely intolerable  and distressing situation.

Amazon have what looks like (but really isn’t) a link somewhere on their website (you have to hunt for it) to cancel an Amazon account. Via numerous corners and clicking, you can eventually send them a message asking for an account to be cancelled. I got an email back saying that they needed the account name / email address (which I had already entered into the online message form). Replies to the email address that they sent it from bounce back as invalid, so you need to either use their online message system or to call them by phone in Germany.  I did both and explained the situation yet again, giving her account no, email address etc. They also demanded various photocopies per fax. (I really do not know where online shops find the impertinence to demand copies of death certificates). Anyway I sent the faxes to Amazon.de as requested and received an email saying that the account had been cancelled. A week later yet more Amazon advertising appeared in her inbox. I was absolutely furious and sent them an email demanding the cancellation of her account according to Swiss Data Protection Laws and saying that, at the same time they can cancel my own account because I am not prepared to support a company which breaks Data Protection Laws by obviously avoiding cancelling accounts on written request. The account was closed a week later.

The Swiss online supermarket LeShop was very quick and understanding.

 

Skype sent an automatic email saying that the money she had as credit for calls to normal telephone numbers was now “forfeited” (!) and that they would be booking the next “payment” from her credit card again. I think I managed to stop that by hunting around the Skype website trying to discover where to cancel automatic debiting.

Lottery24 (“Euromillions”) had also been taking money from her credit card every week. It looks like I was successful in cancelling that, online on their website.

Some newspapers and magazines also seem to be unwilling to end subscriptions. One, (“Haus & Garten“)  was very nice and said I could throw the renewal invoice away, despite it being 3 weeks overdue. Another newspaper has sent a renewal reminder since I cancelled the subscription…

There are others – I could go on all day. So my advice to everyone is, don’t be too quick to sign up for online companies. Don’t be too quick to allow money to be booked off your credit card automatically. Memberships and automatic debiting are not as easy to stop as you may think.