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I am very grateful for Jerry Friedman's comments.
As regards "railway", I was aware of Paul Simon's "I'm sitting on a
railway station..." (if that's the one Jerry meant) but had discounted
that because (so legend has it) Simon wrote "Homeward Bound" on the
station platform at Widnes (Lancashire) in the early 1960's when he was
appearing at English folk clubs (and before he was famous). But I fully
accept that the word might be American anyway - I'm in no position to
disagree.
Picking up on Jerry's references to Shade's use of British English
idiom, I assume that "bloke" in line 907 is exclusively British and
that VN found it irresistible because of the rhyme with "stroke".
In British usage, the word, though not impolite, is a colloquialism
that would not normally be found in educated usage, unless perhaps when
used ironically or to achieve a particular effect - as Shade uses it to
describe the character in the TV advert.
Barrie Akin