The Blackpool Highflyer (5 page)

I would have gone into the Seashell and watched the show,
but I'd promised the wife I would be home before tea.

Clive had the rattlers jumping behind us now. We must have
been up to seventy miles an hour, and the engine had more to
give yet. I wanted to see how much, so even though I'd put
nearly a ton on since Halifax Joint, and my shirt was well nigh
soaked through with sweat, it was no trouble to keep going
with the shovel.

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 soon 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