The Blackpool Highflyer Read online

  Clive kept looking through the spectacle glass, along the length of the high boiler, aiming the engine. I wondered whether he was looking out for Blackpool Tower, like any tripper.

  Presently, in a kind of dream of speed, I moved over to the side and forced my head out for a bit of a blow. We were between the villages of Salwick and Kirkham, flying through a simple world of grass and sky, with all signals dropped.

  There were two lines: the 'up' (which was ours), and the 'down' alongside. I yelled across to Clive - some word even I didn't know; something like the sort of cries the holiday- makers would give when stepping into the sea. Holding fast to my cap, I twisted about and looked back. All the excursionists' heads were in, and no bloody wonder.

  'Clive ...' I began. But he didn't seem to hear. 'Clive,' I said again, 'the distant for Kirkham

  No answer.

  I knew we'd have this distant signal to look out for soon, but Clive was still looking through the shaking spectacle glass, with his gloves resting on the engine brake. Not his hands, but his gloves, which he had removed. He was studying the speed, frowning over it.

  I put my head out once more but had to bring it in directly on account of not being able to breathe. I had seen sunbeams zooming along the line. Taking a gulp of breath, I tried again, looking backwards this time, and I saw, miles across the fields behind us, a train drifting and daydreaming along, or that's how it seemed compared to our speed. I knew it to be the 8.36 from Halifax Joint, the regular daily Blackpool express, which ran even on Sundays and had followed us all the way but only now come into view, the country being flat in the Fylde.

  Turning back around, I glimpsed the air over our own chimney. It was a smooth grey, steady in colour. I smiled at the sight, as befitting a true-born galloper, but something slammed right into my eye, a bug or fly that set it burning, so I pulled myself back in.

  Then there was a different kind of rushing air, and I was swaying forwards, and then came a duller roar, with the train kind of seizing up. Clive had the brake handle pushed hard over. He was mouthing to me, but with the roar of the brake I could hear nothing. I looked again out of my side and could see nothing up ahead but clear line. But something was wrong.

  I came in again, and was bounced forward once more by the braking motion: the engine wanting to go on and wanting to stop, both at the same time. We were still running at sixty or so, and the brakes had been on for a half a minute.

  I looked out again and saw an extra article ahead: not a signal, not grass, not track, but something on the track - might have been five hundred yards off, and we were fairly speeding towards it, even with the vacuum brake on at the fullest. Clive was at the whistle now, giving two sharp screams for the guard, Reuben, to screw down his brake from his van. I felt that brake come, but still the seven-foot wheels of the Highflyer wanted to go on. We'd be thrown off if we hit the obstruction, no question, and half the fucking train with us. I looked at the reversing lever and Clive was there. It was the last ditch.

  As Clive pulled the reverser, I fell, smashing backwards into the door of the cab locker, and the scream of those mighty wheels filled the blue sky. We skated, screeching for a quarter mile, and I saw through the spectacle glass a windmill not turning, a bird not flying but hanging in the sky, the whole world stalemated under this new sound. I looked through the glass at the chimney of the Flyer: the smoke was going up, and then came the sight that's lived in my dreams to this day: not only the smoke and steam, but the chimney rising too, and a horrible complicated bettering going on beneath the engine.

  When at last we came to a halt, Clive looked at me, and said: 'Wreckers.'

  He turned and jumped straight off the footplate. I followed him down, and along to the front.

  Well, it was the wrongest thing I ever saw.

  The engine had tried to make a break away from the rails. Sixty tons, and we'd taken flight. The front bogey - the front four wheels, that is - were off the rails. Its supporting frame was bent, and the iron rods that were supposed to guard the wheels had been pushed back. Underneath the buffers, like something spat out, was a grindstone about four feet across.

  Clive seemed pretty calm, though he was booting the rail twenty to the dozen and kept smoothing back his hair. 'Bastards,' he said. He knelt down next to one of the front bogey wheels. 'Flange is cracked,' he said.

  'John Ellerton told us not to break the engine,' I said. 'And now we have done.'

  Not much use, that remark, as I knew even at the time.

  Clive was now looking back along the length of the train: 'They're breaking loose,' he said.

  The Hind's Mill excursionists were climbing down from the carriages.

  'They'd have been shaken to buggery in those old rattlers,' I said.

  'Aye,' said Clive, 'we might have burst a few noses when the reverser came on.'

  The doors were opening all along the train, and some of the excursionists, seeing the six-foot drop down to the grass, stayed put, but others were pitching themselves out. I could also make out old Reuben Booth climbing down from his guard's van. What you can do with when getting off a train at seventy years old is a platform, and Reuben seemed to hang, shaking for a while before letting himself drop. It was strange to see his body fall because normally he was so slow. As he landed, a book he'd been holding spilled out of his hand.

  THE EXCURSIONISTS WERE COMING FORWARDS NOW: SUNDAY SUITS, BOATERS AND CAPS: FACES FROWNING AT HAVING STOPPED SOMEWHERE SHORT OF BLACKPOOL. THEY ALL WORE THE WHITE ROSETTES AND LOOKED LIKE SUPPORTERS OF A FOOTBALL TEAM THAT HAD NO NAME. REUBEN WAS FOLLOWING BEHIND, AND HE WAS READING A BOOK AS HE CAME.

  'WHAT'S REUBEN UP TO?' I ASKED CLIVE, STILL FEELING SHAKEN AND NOT SEEING THINGS ARIGHT. 'HE'S NEVER READING A BOOK, IS HE?'

  'LOOKS LIKE IT,' SAID CLIVE. 'I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, IT MUST BE A BLOODY GOOD ONE.'

  BUT THEN IT CAME TO ME THAT THE BOOK MUST BE HIS GUARD'S MANUAL.

  THE EXCURSIONISTS GOT TO US FIRST, HOT AND DUSTY FROM THE TRACK BALLAST. THEY ALL LOOKED AT THE GRINDSTONE FOR A WHILE.

  'Who put that there?' said one of them.

  CLIVE LOOKED AT ME AND ROLLED HIS EYES, BEFORE TURNING TO THE EXCURSIONIST. 'WRECKERS,' HE SAID.

  'YOU THE DRIVER?' SAID ANOTHER EXCURSIONIST, POINTING TO CLIVE.

  'DEPENDS,' SAID CLIVE. HE WAS REACHING INTO HIS POACHER'S POCKETS, TAKING OUT ONE OF HIS LITTLE CIGARS. 'YOU'RE NOT GOING TO START YAMMERING ON ABOUT BEING GIVEN A ROUGH RIDE, I HOPE. WE HAD ALL ON TO STOP IN TIME.'

  'DARESAY,' SAID THE FIRST EXCURSIONIST, 'BUT MR HIND'S NOT GOING TO BE BEST PLEASED.'

  JUST THEN, REUBEN CAME UP WITH HIS BOOK - IT WAS HIS GUARD'S MANUAL. 'STOPPAGE OR FAILURE OF ENGINE?' HE SAID, LOOKING UP FROM THE BOOK.

  You could tell the excursionists couldn't quite credit this, but they shuffled out of the road in any case, to let Reuben see the millstone.

  'Obstruction on the line,' I said.

  'Then it's wrong page,' said Reuben, and there was a bit of cursing at this from the excursionists. Blackpool was waiting, and they were watching an old man read a book in the middle of a meadow.

  Beyond Reuben, Martin Lowther was walking towards us in his gold coat, and behind him came the only man in the field wearing a topper. That had to be Hind himself, or was it Hind's father, for he was getting on in years.

  Reuben licked his finger and turned over a few leaves of the manual. '"Should any part of the train in which the continuous brake is not in operation -" No, that's not it.'

  There were two excursionists at my elbow. One of them was shaking his head, muttering 'Premier Line, they call themselves'. I looked him up and down: little fellow, coat over his arm. Still sweating, though.

  'No sir,' I said, 'that is the Great Northern. We are "The Business Line".'

  Well, they fell about at that for a while, but went quiet as Lowther and Hind came up: first a ticket inspector, then their governor - it could hardly have been a worse look-out for the poor buggers. But Lowther stopped twenty yards shy of us. As so
on as he saw the stone on the line, he sat down, just sat right down in the bluebells beside the track, all crumpled inside his gold lace. There would be no more ticket inspecting that day. Beyond him, the bathtub was being passed down from one of the middle carriages.

  But the mill-owner continued to approach at a steady pace. He was a big, stale-looking fellow of about sixty: the younger of the two Hinds. The excursionists shuffled down the track bank as he came near. Hind did not wear a white rosette. As he walked, the dust from the track ballast somehow did not land on his boots. His boots kicked it away, and I wondered what he'd hoped to be up to in Blackpool when all his people

  were at the dancing platforms, the grotto railways and hot- pea saloons.

  When he spoke, he sounded like the excursionists, but more used to being listened to.

  'I see we've nearly come a very nasty cropper.'

  'Nearly, sir,' said Clive. 'It was seen in good time though.'

  Hind nodded. You couldn't tell if he was angry or not. 'My father, who is ninety-nine, was pitched from one side of the compartment to another,' he said.

  'And is he quite all right?' asked Clive.

  'He suffers with his heart, but has a very strong constitution . . . which the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway has today tested to the full.'

  Even that might have been a good thing from the way he said it.

  'You'll find it hard to credit,' Hind said, 'but this is Father's first time on a train. He cannot be doing with them, but he'd decided to try the experience once.'

  I thought: Christ, we're for it now. But Hind didn't seem too put out.

  'I'm sure there's been no irregularity,' he went on, 'but I'll have both your names if you don't mind.'

  'Clive Carter,' said Clive.

  'Jim Stringer,' I said.

  'Might we get this stone shifted?' said Hind, 'And then get on? My work-people are to be served with early teas by the Tower Company. And I have most important business to conduct on the seafront at Blackpool in exactly two hours' time.'

  As he turned and walked back towards the engine, Clive said, 'Who does he think he is? King bloody Canute?'

  Reuben Booth, who was still at his book, began reading again: '"When a train is stopped by accident or obstruction, the guard, if there be only one, or the rear guard, if there be more than one ... "'

  Hind looked at Reuben for a while, then turned and walked back towards 1418. As he did so, I looked at the crocked engine. A derailment: it had happened to me. It would be in the papers. The Board of Trade would send down an inspector. I felt like the tightrope walker who has fallen off the tightrope.

  'Reuben,' I said, 'we must get the detonators down.'

  'That's it,' he said, but went straight away back to reading his manual: '"Detonators shall be placed as follows: one detonator a quarter of a mile from the train -"'

  'Is it a job for guard or fireman, Reuben?' I asked. 'What do you reckon?'

  'It says here,' said Reuben Booth: '"The detonators should be placed by the guard or any competent person.'"

  Clive looked over at me: 'You'd better do it then Jim,' he said in an under-breath, and it was hard not to laugh.

  'It's all in hand,' said Reuben, 'leave it up to me.'

  We watched as Reuben plodded back to his guard's van, climbed up, stayed up there for quite a while, climbed down with the detonators over his shoulder. They looked like belts with boot-polish tins attached. Reuben dropped one, slowly bent down and picked it up, and set off along the track back in the direction of Salwick.

  'What's that bit of kit he's got hold of?' asked a fellow from the crowd of excursionists that was by now standing about us.

  'Detonators,' I said.

  'Explosives, like?' said the first excursionist.

  I nodded.

  The excursionist thought about this for a while. 'He wants one of them up his arse,' he said.

  Clive was puffing at his cheroots.

  'He'll lay the detonators on the track,' I said, 'so that any train coming up behind us will set them off.'

  'What? And get blown to bloody Kingdom Come?' said the excursionist. 'Can we not just somehow warn it instead?'

  It was hard to believe how Hind's Mill turned out any cloth

  at all if this was the class of fellow they had working in it, and Clive was grinning so that his little cigar was at a crazy angle.

  They only give out a bang,' I said. 'But there's no need of them really because the signalman back at Salwick won't let another train in this section until the fellow at Kirkham gives him the bell to say we're clear of it.'

  'So your pal's wasting his time?' said another excursionist, and we all watched Reuben in the distance, walking like a clockwork soldier because he would stick to the track and the sleepers, instead of going along the field, which would have doubled his rate of progress.

  'I do hope he is,' I said, and then I asked Clive: 'Do you reckon we can shift the stone?'

  'We'll have a go,' he said.

  Some of the excursionists offered to give a hand, but there was only room for two to grip it. We had to graft but we got it off the rails. It wouldn't have been so hard to get it on, though, for small embankments rose up from the track just at this point. The stone could have been rolled down onto the line.

  We'd no sooner shifted the stone than the bloody motorist from before -1 was sure it was the same fellow - came skimming along through the field next to us, trailing a great cloud of dust and sand. It looked as if he was driving clean through the pasture alongside the track, but there was a road, although a pretty rough sort going by how much the motorist was chucking up behind him. I looked down at the stone.

  'It was brought here along that road,' I said.

  Clive said nothing. He was again booting the rail, looking gormless.

  A train was coming towards us on the other line, the 'down'; it was shimmering in the heat, so that the train itself looked like steam. When it came close, the driver leant out and gave us a wave, then shouted something that was drowned by his engine and gave us a couple of screams on his whistle. It was one engine pulling seven empty tenders - a water special, coming back from filling the water columns at Central.

  An excursionist called to me: 'What's he carrying?'

  'His train's empty,' I said.

  The excursionist thought about this for a while. 'What was he carrying?' he called back.

  I didn't want to talk about this. All of a sudden, I had no appetite for railway subjects. 'Water,' I said.

  'Where to?'

  'Blackpool.'

  'Don't they have enough?' said the excursionist.

  'No.'

  'You'd think they would,' he said. 'I mean, they've the sea for starters.'

  'The engines need fresh,' I said, 'and country round here dries fast in this weather.'

  Clive came up to me and we started walking back to the Highflyer, which was leaking steam and looking embarrassed at being half off the rails, and walked about by excursionists.

  Clive was saying, 'I like these mill girls in their summer toilettes.'

  About half of Hind's Mill were down on the pasture by now, and they'd taken their boxes, blankets and bottles down with them. The sun was high; it was about dinner time, and the excursionists were picnicking; either that or they were stretched out reading their penny papers, drinking ginger beer.

  I liked mill girls in their summer toilettes, when you could see a bit more of their hair, spilling out from under their bonnets (in the mills it was kept up all the time). The weavers among them could earn the big penny, even the half-timers, and they always had a lot 'off'. They would dash about Halifax, looking always on the edge of opportunity, while the men would sort of mooch along behind.

  We came up to Martin Lowther, who was still sitting by the track, sweltering in his gold coat. He would not take it off, for then he'd be somebody else. 'It goes down as "exceptional causes",' he said, in his morngy voice, looking out at the field and not in our direction. 'A train can on
ly be stopped by engine, by signals, or by exceptional causes.'

  'Did you find anyone in want of a ticket?' I asked him.

  'Not so far.'

  'It probably wouldn't do to carry on looking,' said Clive.

  Lowther sighed. He'd struck a loser with us. He'd have been better off on that Leeds train he'd been after boarding.

  We were back at 1418 by now, watching all the skylarking excursionists. A game of cricket had been got up in the shadow of the half-wrecked engine; somebody was playing a mouth organ. I asked a gang of them who were just lying about: 'Why do you all have these rosettes?'

  'It's the white rose of Yorkshire,' said an excursionist. 'It shows we're from Hind's Mill in Halifax, and that we're to be served a free tea and a parkin at the Tower when we get to Blackpool.'

  'If...' said one of the excursionists, very slowly.

  'Your governor wasn't wearing one,' said Clive.

  'Well,' said the same excursionist, 'don't think that means he won't be getting a free tea and a parkin at the Tower.'

  'Rum,' said Clive, as we walked on.

  'I wouldn't work in a mill for fortunes,' I said, and then I felt quite lost because for the first time in my life, I wasn't sure that I wanted to work on the railways.

  In the distance ahead I could see Reuben making his slow way back to the train, this time by the side of the track. He'd learnt his lesson about walking on sleepers. You could always bank on Reuben to get there in the end. My guess was that he'd be carrying the chit from the signalman that would let us move on. As I watched, he picked up one of the detonators he'd laid a few minutes before, so I swung myself back up onto the engine.