tl;dr

Great Western trains have a livery where lots of placenames are sort of woven into a pattern running down the side. It’s a cute idea, showing the range of places you can go on their trains. Places like those in the picture for example.

I am amused by the juxtaposition of Little Slaughter and Valley of the Rocks. Clearly, Little Slaughter is a scary place to live. Not as scary as Huge Slaughter of course, but still the kind of town were some Real Bad Shit could go down at any second. Not a place to ever let your guard down, that’s for sure. If you told your co-workers casually one day that you were going to Little Slaughter on your holidays, you can bet they’d stop discussing you on their coffee breaks.

But the other place, Valley of the Rocks? “Valley of the Rocks”? Come on guys, you’re going to have to work harder than that to pull the punters in. I live in South Wales, I’ve seen a lot of valleys in my time and I assure you rock was not in short supply in any of them. Take a cue from the other guys, go for Vally of the Untimely Demises of something. Decimation Depression. Bloodbath Basin. Jazz it up a bit! That’s what people want now, a bit of local colour.

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