Status Updates From The Pinecone: The Story of ...

"The bill giving the Lancaster & Carlisle Railway permission to build was passed in June 1844. That autumn Wordsworth, who had become poet laureate on Southey's death the previous years, began his campaign in the Morning Post to stop the branch line to windermere. Trainloads of uneducated crowds would, he feared..."

"To celebrate [1838 completion of a rail line from Carlisle to Newcastle]] the directors put on 6 early-morning trains from Carlisle & gave the guests breakfast at the Newcastle Assembly Rooms when they arrived. There was an omen for the future when some of the return trains failed to arrive back on time, shunting into Carlisle in the early hours, fiery monsters in the dark"

"The schoolmaster's cottage stood in one corner of the school field, just down the lane, & was built in the style of one the sisters had seen, & doubtless sketched, in Pompeii. No one seemed to find the idea of a Pompeiian cottage eccentric - or at least no one said so, as the local people felt great affection for the two Miss Loshes."

James Losh August 1807 at Assize ball: "The men gave themselves airs & seemed to consider dancing as too much exertion, while the ladies sat like so many animals waiting for a purchaser, this is always to me a mortifying sight, & a strong mark of the barbarism of our manners"
not quite Jane Austen