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Terminates Here

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Poet Lemn Sissay retraces the route taken by the mail train in WH Auden's famous poem Night Mail

logo for Terminates Here - Alone
Terminates Here - Alone

Arriving at the busy interchange at Crewe, Lemn talks to the people who catch and dispatch the trains. Some are in love, some are in therapy and some are in drag.

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logo for Terminates Here - Beginnings
Terminates Here - Beginnings

Lemn boards the Caledonian Sleeper, leaving London at the same time as Auden's Down Special mail train would have departed.

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logo for Terminates Here - Endings
Terminates Here - Endings

Lemn's journey is complete, but will a dawn arrival at Glasgow help him finish his poem?

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logo for Terminates Here - Love
Terminates Here - Love

In the GPO's Night Mail film, the train picks up mail at Carnforth Station in Lancashire. Ten years later, the same station provided the backdrop for the film Brief Encounter.

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logo for Terminates Here - Memories
Terminates Here - Memories

Lemn meets a man who spent 30 years working on the travelling post offices, on which the freezing conditions and the long hours were not as poetic as Auden suggests.

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