Memorials etc.

I was over in Liverpool last week. The last few miles of the railway before entering the city are quite uninteresting except for one ‘blink and you’ll miss it moment’. The Huskisson monument stands by the track and commemorates the politician who had the ill luck to be the world’s first railway fatality. It occurred during the opening of the Liverpool-Manchester railway. Huskisson’s train had stopped; he and others were at the trackside when Stephenson’s Rocket came from the other direction. Huskisson was hit by the locomotive. Incidentally you can take the train from there up to York where the locomotive herself is on display.

In Liverpool I was on my way to the Artists Club and being a little early went along Dale Street. A couple of blocks away, dwarfed by all the modern buildings, still stands Alabama House once the embassy of the Confederate States of America. The building is in good repair too.