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00:00On September 1st, 1939, the planet Earth was plunged into a Second World War.
00:07The world had been on a free ride for 21 years, ever since the Great War in Europe,
00:12in which so many men had died in order to end all wars forever.
00:17Americans had plunged heavily into the stock market,
00:20buying, buying, and never selling.
00:23The price of stocks soared, way above their actual value,
00:27yet people kept on buying.
00:29Women shortened their hair and their skirts.
00:32The waltz went out and hot jazz came in.
00:35You couldn't buy a bottle of whiskey legally,
00:38but you could buy it illegally on every streetcomer.
00:41Men plastered their hair down like Rudy Valentino
00:44and called themselves Sheiks and their dancing partners Shebas.
00:49Everybody was having a wonderful time,
00:51doing the Charleston on the brink of a volcano.
00:55Then the volcano erupted on October 24th, 1929.
01:00Overnight, fortunes were wiped out, men and women thrown out of work,
01:04factories shut down.
01:06Everybody stopped singing,
01:08boop, boop, bee, doop,
01:10and started singing,
01:11Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
01:13The Great Depression, or the Great Slump, as it was known in England, set in.
01:18Stockbrokers jumped out of their office windows.
01:21Men without work went on the bum and lived in hobo jungles.
01:25Other men sold apples, too, for a nickel on streetcomers.
01:29Veterans, who had been promised a bonus that never materialized in cash,
01:34marched on Washington to protest
01:36and were shot at by General Douglas MacArthur and his troops.
01:40Times were hard, but things were quickly looking up
01:43thanks to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal.
01:47There were no more soup kitchens, no more bread lines,
01:50only work and a worker's pay.
01:53America and England began to cheer up.
01:56They sang,
01:57Just around the comer there's a rainbow in the sky,
02:00so let's have another cup of coffee and let's have another piece of pie.
02:05They sang,
02:06Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
02:08And they meant the Depression, which was starting to lift a little.
02:12By 1939, things were pretty much back to normal.
02:16But in the midst of all this,
02:18another volcano was erupting in the heart of Europe.
02:21That volcano was Germany, England, and America's most hated enemy.
02:26Germany was so bitter over losing the war
02:29that they did what any German would do, find a scapegoat.
02:33Within a few days, Kaiser Wilhelm II, stripped of his title,
02:37was sent into exile in the Netherlands,
02:40and anti-Semitism was reaching an all-time high.
02:43One Austrian, a former painter turned social leader Adolf Hitler,
02:47promised to avenge Germany's defeat by starting his own government,
02:51known to the English tongue as the Nazi Party.
02:55The Germans, or at least those who had great respect for Hitler,
02:59began to cheer up when they saw Jews, Africans,
03:03people with disabilities, homosexuals, Catholics, Romanies, leftists,
03:09members of Jehovah's Witness and too many others to count,
03:14relocated from the cities and into concentration camps
03:17where they would be put under hard labor or killed in the deadly gas chambers.
03:23Some were executed by firing squads.
03:26The rest of Europe was so sick of Hitler's ideals
03:30that they all wanted to stand up to him and fight his forces head-on.
03:34By August of 1939, Germany had conquered half of Europe,
03:39but it was the invasion of Poland that broke the last straw for everyone.
03:44The British government issued an ultimatum to Germany
03:47for the withdrawal of the troops from Poland,
03:50but Hitler was quick to reject it.
03:53Two days later, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister,
03:56gave a solemn speech to the people of his country.
04:00It began like this.
04:02This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin
04:05handed the German government a final note,
04:08stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock
04:11that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland,
04:15a state of war would exist between us.
04:18I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received
04:22and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.
04:27England did its part by sending 400,000 men,
04:31which together formed the British Expeditionary Force over to France,
04:35but they were no match for the Germans
04:37and quickly retreated back home via Dunkirk, Calais, Cherbourg
04:42and other French ports.
04:44By June of 1940, 40,000 French and English troops
04:48were all that remained of the great Allied armies.
04:51Many men went to find work elsewhere, some menial like railway guards.
04:55It was no secret that the son of one of these guards,
04:59specifically a member of the London Midland and Scottish Railway Police
05:03by the name of Johnny Morris, had a very high opinion of trains.
05:08Every morning to afternoon when he was not in school,
05:11he would go to St. Pancras Station to watch the trains coming and going.
05:16He was ten years old, with dark chocolate hair, lime green eyes,
05:21Caucasian skin and a remotely thin body.
05:25Johnny and his father lived in the nearby district of Bloomsbury,
05:29not too far from the house where J.M. Barrie wrote the story of Peter Pan
05:33nearly 35 years ago,
05:35in a brownstone that the two had once shared with his later mother, Bettina,
05:39who had gotten sick from a respiratory tract infection
05:42during a foggy day and died two years ago.
05:45Now it was just the two of them and his father, Willie,
05:49was working his hardest to provide an income to support themselves.
05:53Hopefully, they would save up enough money to see the American trains
05:57at the New York World's Fair across the pond, but it was not meant to be.
06:02The war was making life harder for everyone.
06:05With the British Expeditionary Force deactivated,
06:08England seemed to be on the brink of Nazi invasion.
06:11But through it all, Johnny and Willie had a very loving relationship.
06:15On weekends, they would eat in the station's fancy restaurant
06:19or bought cheaper meals from the stalls.
06:21On holidays, they would go and visit the southern parts of England
06:25as well as the Isle of Wight.
06:27On other days, they would play train-related games,
06:30share drinks and secrets, and go take walks in the parks.
06:34In fact, their love was so strong
06:37that not even war could separate them.
06:40On September 6, 1940, the worst was yet to come,
06:44but neither of them were aware of it.
06:46Johnny started the day as normal,
06:48going to school at Argyle Primary
06:50and spending his lunch in the courtyard.
06:53His schoolmates came over and asked,
06:55''Want to play ball with us?
06:57Why not we watch trains go by instead?''
07:00''That's boring,'' said a boy named Hamish,
07:02who was three years Johnny's senior.
07:04''They're just trains.''
07:06''They're more than just trains,'' protested Johnny.
07:09''I like them.''
07:11''See if we care,'' grumbled Hamish,
07:13and he and the other children left.
07:16Johnny was used to it.
07:18Some of his schoolmates and his teachers
07:20thought he was going round the bend with this obsession
07:23that would have others identify him as a railway enthusiast.
07:27Some would tease him about it and make engine noises
07:30that they thought would make him feel comfortable,
07:33but Johnny thought they were being rude
07:35and would turn them away.
07:37One hobby of his that he used to distract himself
07:40after his mother died
07:41was drawing steam engines and carriages
07:43down to the last detail he could find.
07:46Some of them were dismissed as being crude,
07:49and some of them were appreciated by his teachers.
07:52It was earlier that day in class when one of his teachers,
07:55a woman of French descent named Mrs. Farthingham,
07:58gave a positive comment on his latest drawing of an Elner J.50.
08:03''Is that a tank engine?'' she asked.
08:06''Yes,'' replied Johnny.
08:09''It looks good,'' the teacher replied.
08:12''I like it.''
08:13''Thank you,'' smiled Johnny.
08:16When school was over, Johnny went to St. Pancras for a while
08:19to watch the trains arriving and leaving.
08:22He sat on a bench, watching a passenger train leaving
08:25with a small complement of children
08:27bound for safer pastures in the countryside.
08:30Johnny did not care.
08:32He liked living in the city.
08:34Bigger cities meant more trains,
08:36and more trains meant more for him to do.
08:39On other days, he would go to the station wall
08:42to watch trucks being shunted into sidings
08:45and sometimes he and his father would tick off locomotives.
08:49This hobby was called ''train spotting.''
08:52Johnny figured that his father would be nearby,
08:55and sure enough, there he was,
08:57coming back from ending his shift.
08:59Johnny gave him a hug and showed him the drawing.
09:02''Daddy, what do you think of this picture?''
09:05''It looks nice,'' said Willie.
09:07''Like a drawing done by your me when I was a child.''
09:10He searched another memory in his head.
09:13''It always seemed to draw some railway that existed in my mind
09:16when I was much younger than you, Johnny,
09:18but I never can remember that far.''
09:20''You probably don't even remember what it was like to my age,''
09:24Johnny said solemnly.
09:26Willie tried to cheer his son up.
09:28''Why not we get some rations and head home for dinner?''
09:31Johnny smiled and together they walked back home.
09:35After buying their rations,
09:37Johnny and Willie headed back to their modest home.
09:40Inside was a world of walls painted dull white
09:44with curtains depicting vines of vegetables
09:47and all brown furniture with colorful cushions on the seats.
09:51They ate in silence, talking about how their days went,
09:54and that was when Johnny brought up his liking for trains.
09:58''Everyone seems to think I'm odd,'' he explained.
10:03''Not for you to worry,'' smiled Willie as he ate.
10:06''Not everyone's into trains.
10:08They're more into planes and tanks nowadays.''
10:11Of course, Johnny liked planes as well,
10:14but not the kind of ones that dropped bombs or shot at people.
10:17Willie looked into his rations, adding,
10:20''You know what? I think we should have a real dinner tomorrow.''
10:24Johnny liked that very much.
10:27His thoughts of being a school outcast were alleviated
10:30when he and his dad went into their workshop
10:32where they built model trains.
10:35Already they had built a large but simple train set
10:38that went round a lake and had a siding with a shed
10:41for the engine and coaches and a station.
10:44In addition to the controls and tools to build and fix the train,
10:48there were only two other items on the table,
10:51a timetable that Johnny and Willie made up
10:53to give their toy train a proper time for arriving and departing
10:56at places among their little set,
10:58and an interesting photograph of a London, Brighton,
11:01and South Coast Railway E-2 tank engine
11:04with its back to the camera.
11:06Johnny often wondered what it was,
11:08but his father was quick to say,
11:10''It's just an engine.
11:12I don't really remember where I took it.''
11:14Johnny picked up the handy little timetable
11:17and looked at the time for the engine to leave the station
11:20and looked up at the clock.
11:22It was seven minutes behind.
11:24''Think we should take our train out?'' he asked Willie.
11:27''Not if it's late.''
11:29But better late than never?
11:31A true railway runs on time,
11:33and as much as I can't stand the Germans and their Nazi party,
11:36at least their trains run on time.
11:39Besides, I think our little engine needs an inspection first.
11:43Willie picked up the engine, an LMS Fowler 3F,
11:46jinty to them,
11:48and looked over its undercarriage for any signs of problems.
11:51He saw a loose screw on the right middle wheel and tightened it.
11:55After putting down the timetable,
11:57Johnny perused a stack of newspapers
11:59announcing the events leading up to the war,
12:02the invasion of Poland last year that brought them into the conflict,
12:06the annexation of Austria,
12:08the Hindenburg disaster that signalled a funeral dirge for airship travel,
12:12and even one famous headline of Edward VIII,
12:15the Duke of Windsor, and his wife, Mrs. Wallis Simpson.
12:19Their affair set off a chain of diplomatic events
12:22that triggered a constitutional crisis in the House of Windsor.
12:26There was also a headline mentioning the stock market crash of 1929,
12:31a Meccano magazine clipping of one of the Elna's famous steam locomotives flying Scotsman,
12:36and finally, the stack ended with a newspaper announcing the end of World War I.
12:42Setting the newspapers down,
12:44Johnny yawned and excused himself to go to bed.
12:47His bedroom was perhaps the most colourful out of everything else,
12:51with tiger lily wallpaper,
12:53yellow lamps, and dark green boards for his bed.
12:57He changed into his pyjamas,
12:59gave a silent goodnight to both of his parents,
13:02alive and dead, and snuggled up into the covers.
13:06Sometimes, Willie would tell him bedtime stories of trains
13:10that braved all odds to carry important loads up hills and mountains,
13:15but Johnny figured that growing up meant he was old enough
13:18to tell bedtime stories to himself.
13:21He tried to think of one,
13:23but he was so tired that he fell asleep at once.