A Book of Railway Journeys Page 6

  One of the feats of the train is an electric button in each compartment. Commonly an electric button is placed high on the side of the carriage as an alarm signal, and it is unlawful to push it unless one is in serious need of assistance from the guard. But these bells also rang in the dining-car, and were supposed to open negotiations for tea or whatever. A new function has been projected on an ancient custom. No genius has yet appeared to separate these two meanings. Each bell rings an alarm and a bid for tea or whatever. It is perfect in theory then that, if one rings for tea, the guard comes to interrupt the murder, and that if one is being murdered, the attendant appears with tea. At any rate, the guard was forever being called from his reports and his comfortable seat in the forward end of the luggage-van by thrilling alarms. He often prowled the length of the train with hardihood and determination, merely to meet a request for a sandwich.

  STEPHEN CRANE,

  “The Scotch Express,”

  from Men, Women and Boats

  RAILWAY NOTE

  The station roofs curve off and line is lost

  In white thick vapour. A smooth marble sun

  Hangs there. It is the sun. An ermine frost

  Edges each thorn and willow skeleton

  Beyond the ghosts of goods-yard engines. Who

  On earth will get the big expresses through?

  But these men do.

  We ride incredulous at the use and eyes

  That pierce this blankness: like a sword-fish flies

  The train with other trains ahead, behind,

  Signalled with detonation, whistle, shout;

  At the great junction stops.

  Ticket-collectors board us and fling out

  Their pleasantry as though

  They liked things so,

  Answering the talkative considerate kind,

  “Not so bad now, but it’s been bad you know.”

  EDMUND BLUNDEN

  On the Footplate:

  2. The Flying Scotsman

  Here we were on an engine of the most powerful kind in the world, attached to one of the most famous of all travelling hotels—the string of coaches called The Flying Scotsman—with its Cocktail Bar and Beauty Parlours, its dining saloons, decorated in more or less credible imitation of the salons of 18th century France, its waiters and guards and attendants of all sorts, its ventilation and heating apparatus as efficient as those of the Strand Palace Hotel, and here we were carrying on as if we were pulling a string of coal trucks.

  All the luxury and culture of the world depends ultimately upon the efforts of the labourer. This fact has often been described in books. It has often been the subject of cartoons and pictures—the sweating labourer groaning beneath the weight of all the arts and sciences, the pomps and prides of the world—but here it was in plain daily life.

  And what made it even more obvious was the complete absence of connection with the train behind us. The train was there—you could see it if you looked out when going round a bend—but that was all. And just as the passenger very seldom thinks about the men on the engine, so we thought nothing at all about the passengers. They were simply part of the load. Indeed there may not have been any passengers—we weren’t aware of any.

  And the absence of connection between engine and train was emphasized by the entirely different physical sensations which engine travelling gives you. The noise is different—you never for a moment cease to hear, and to feel, the effort of the pistons. The shriek of the whistle splits your ears, a hundred other noises drown any attempt at conversation.

  Though the engine is well sprung, there is a feeling of hard contact on the rails all the time—something like riding on an enormously heavy solid-tyred bicycle. And that rhythmic tune which you hear when travelling in the train, the rhythm of the wheels as they go over the joins in the metal (iddy UMty... iddy UMty... &c.) is entirely absent. There is simply a continuous iddyiddyiddy... there is no sensation of travelling in a train—you are travelling on an engine. You are on top of an extremely heavy sort of cart horse which is discharging its terrific pent-up energy by the innumerable outbursts of its breath. And continuously the fireman works, and continuously the driver, one hand on the throttle lever, the other ready near the brake handle (a handle no bigger than that of a bicycle and yet controlling power sufficient to pull up a train weighing 500 tons) keeps watch on the line ahead for a possible adverse signal. If the signals are down they go straight ahead, slowing down only for the sharper curves and the bigger railway junctions. You place absolute trust in the organization of the line and you know practically every yard of it by sight. You dash roaring into the small black hole of a tunnel (the impression you get is that it’s a marvel you don’t miss it sometimes) and when you’re in you can see nothing at all. Does that make you slow up? Not at all—not by a ½ m.p.h. The signal was down; there can’t be anything in the way and it’s the same at night. I came back on the engine from Grantham in the evening, simply to find out what they can see. You can see nothing but the signals—you know your whereabouts simply by memory. And as for the signals: it’s surprising how little the green lights show up compared with the red. It seemed to me that they went more by the absence of a red light (in the expected place) than by the presence of a green one. You can see the red miles away but the green only when you’re almost on it. And if it seemed a foolhardy proceeding to rush headlong into tunnels in the day time, how much more foolhardy did it seem at night to career along at 80 miles an hour in a black world with nothing to help you but your memory of the road and a lot of flickering lights-lights often almost obliterated by smoke and rain. And here’s another primitive thing: You can generally see nothing at all through the glass windows of the cab at night because the reflections of the firelight make it impossible. To see the road, to see the signals, you must put your head out at the side—weather or no. The narrow glass screen prevents your eyes from being filled with smoke and cinders, but, well, it seems a garden of Eden sort of arrangement all the same.

  ERIC GILL,

  Letters (ed. Walter Shrewing)

  NIGHT MAIL

  (Commentary for a G.P.O. Film)

  I

  This is the Night Mail crossing the Border:

  Bringing the cheque and the postal order.

  Letters for the rich, letters for the poor.

  The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

  Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:

  The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.

  Past cotton-grass and moorland border,

  Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.

  Snorting noisily, she passes

  Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

  Birds turn their heads as she approaches,

  Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

  Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course:

  They slumber on with paws across.

  In the farm she passes no one wakes,

  But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.

  II

  Dawn freshens. Her climb is done.

  Down towards Glasgow she descends,

  Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes,

  Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces

  Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.

  All Scotland waits for her:

  In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs,

  Men long for news.

  III

  Letters of thanks, letters from banks,

  Letters of joy from girl and boy,

  Receipted bills and invitations

  To inspect new stock or to visit relations,

  And applications for situations,

  And timid lovers’ declarations,

  And gossip, gossip from all the nations,

  News circumstantial, news financial,

  Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,

  Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,

  Letters from uncles, cousins and aunts,<
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  Letters to Scotland from the South of France,

  Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands,

  Written on paper of every hue,

  The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,

  The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,

  The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,

  Clever, stupid, short and long,

  The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

  IV

  Thousands are still asleep,

  Dreaming of terrifying monsters

  Or a friendly tea beside the band in Cranston’s or Crawford’s:

  Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,

  Asleep in granite Aberdeen,

  They continue their dreams,

  But shall wake soon and hope for letters,

  And none will hear the postman’s knock

  Without a quickening of the heart.

  For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

  W. H. AUDEN

  THE BOY IN THE TRAIN

  Whit wey does the engine say Toot-toot?

  Is it feart to gang in the tunnel?

  Whit wey is the furnace no pit oot

  When the rain gangs doon the funnel?

  What’ll I hae for my tea the nicht?

  A herrin’, or maybe a haddie?

  Has Gran’ma gotten electric licht?

  Is the next stop Kirkcaddy?

  “And here is a mill and there a river,

  Each a glimpse and gone forever”

  (drawing by Kate Elizabeth Oliver)

  There’s a hoodie-craw on yon turnip-raw!

  An’ sea-gulls!—sax or seeven.

  I’ll no fa’ oot o’ the windae, Maw,

  It’s sneckit, as sure as I’m leevin’.

  We’re into the tunnel! we’re a’ in the dark!

  But dinna be frichtit, Daddy,

  We’ll sune be comin’ to Beveridge Park,

  And the next stop’s Kirkcaddy!

  Is yon the mune I see in the sky?

  It’s awfu’ wee an’ curly,

  See! there’s a coo and a cauf ootbye,

  An’ a lassie pu’in’ a hurly!

  He’s chackit the tickets and gien them back,

  Sae gie me my ain yin, Daddy.

  Lift doon the bag frae the luggage rack,

  For the next stop’s Kirkcaddy!

  There’s a gey wheen boats at the harbour mou’,

  And eh! dae ye see the cruisers?

  The cinnamon drop I was sookin’ the noo

  Has tummelt an’ stuck tae ma troosers….

  I’ll sune be ringin’ ma Gran’ma’s bell,

  She’ll cry, “Come ben, my laddie,”

  For I ken mysel’ by the queer-like smell

  That the next stop’s Kirkcaddy!

  M. C. SMITH

  A journey to school

  We reached Evesham station without misadventure. All the porters from this small market town had long ago been called up. Luckily the Member of Parliament for our division happened to be travelling to London with his wife and, I think, the First Lord of the Admiralty, on the same train. Without the slightest compunction my mother organized a relay of these three august and correct personages to stagger with my domed trunks, gladstone bags, play-, tuck- and hat-boxes across the lines to the far platform. I can see now Lady Eyres-Monsell bejewelled, Ascoty and holding a pair of lorgnettes in one hand, making a token gesture with very ill grace of dragging, with the First Lord’s assistance, the tuck-box across the railway sleepers, while my mother on the far side shouted directions and warnings that the through express to Worcester was due at any moment. When our “up” train drew in the problem of how to lift the luggage into the van was far simpler. There were plenty of passengers consisting of wounded soldiers and men too old to be serving, who were more than anxious to oblige us. The Eyres-Monsells and the First Lord had mysteriously disappeared to the far end of the platform.

  This was the first time I had ever been inside a train. Excursions to my grandmother’s house in the north of the county, which were the only journeys I had yet experienced, had been made by road. I was thrilled but not a little alarmed. The prospect of arrival at Paddington, the bustle and noise of a terminus and the awful probability of there again being no porters was disturbing. Moreover I dreaded being told to button-hole the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury, and order him to lift without argument my luggage into a taxi.

  As it happened there was no need, for at Paddington the train slowly drew up alongside a phalanx of female porters of most formidable aspect. They were, I think, wearing trousers. Certainly they wore short jackets very tightly buttoned across the bust. This made them bulge in unexpected places and appear extremely unwomanly. They had fuzzy hair pulled over shiny cheeks from under workmen’s cloth caps. Even my mother was shocked and hailed them with, for her, unwonted asperity. They on their side were clearly shocked by her holiday appearance, dressed as she was in her smartest clothes—an unfair judgment considering that this was probably her first day off duty since August 1914, if taking me to school could exactly be described as a treat. My mother need not have wasted her breath, for the monstrous regiment paid no attention to her, but precipitated themselves upon the soldiers. I was surprised how indifferent the soldiers were to their attentions, and wondered why they preferred to shoulder their kit-bags when others were offering to do it for them. It was only after waiting for the Amazons’ return to our platform that we managed to bribe one of them reluctantly to fetch us a trolley.

  The impression London made upon me as we drove across it bolt upright in a high-roofed taxi with large windows is not very distinct. It seemed incredibly large and incredibly ancient. I do not suppose that the squares and crescents on our way to Euston station contained more than a dozen buildings of later date than the Regency. There was hardly any traffic and our taxi kept to the crown of the cambered, cobbled streets. I can hear to this day the soothing purr of the metal studs in the tyres as we sped along. It was however interrupted by the driver ceaselessly pressing a fat, rubber horn like a ball-cock attached to a brass serpent, which undulated over the right mudguard. The noise emitted was disappointing—the thin chirrup of an insolent sparrow. My other strong memory is of a deliciously sweet smell of petrol fumes, mingled with that of horse droppings and antirrhinums.

  The unloading of our luggage from the taxi to the train passed without incident. I rather think we obliged a postman to stagger under the load, which must have taken him at least two shifts. For my mother refused to discriminate between one uniform and another. Anyone under a peaked cap—and the more gold braid the more peremptory it made her—was a railway porter, if that is what she was wanting at the time. If she happened to be thinking of affairs of state she was apt to make a similar mistake, in reverse as it were. A year or so later I recall her addressing the hall porter at Brown’s Hotel with the words: “Well, Field Marshal, and how is the Peace Conference getting on?”

  We were soon comfortably ensconced in a first-class carriage with twenty minutes to spare before the train was scheduled to leave. By this time I had worked up a bit of an appetite. My mother thereupon took the opportunity of preparing our picnic luncheon. The contents of a basket which she had been carrying, were spread upon both seats, and a methylated spirit lamp was balanced precariously upon the empty upturned basket. This was lit and applied to a Cona coffee machine. On no account, she explained, must the lamp be allowed to burn while the train was running, or the whole apparatus might explode. Such a thing had been known to happen even when a train was stationary. As I was a nervous child the warning slightly alarmed me. Then an unfortunate thing happened. My mother got bored.

  This was by no means an unusual state of affairs with her. But I secretly wished she had not chosen this moment to leave the carriage in search of a newspaper. I was left alone with the methylated spirit lamp and a vast globe of glass, at the bottom of which a
few drops of discoloured liquid began angrily to bubble, while up a tube gushed a fountain into a steaming cylinder of coffee grounds. While I watched, fascinated and impotent, the carriage gave a lurch, and the train drew out of Euston station. I dashed to the window, vainly scanning the crowded platform for my mother. There was not a vestige of her to be seen, and we plunged into a tunnel.

  I was panic-stricken. Here I was alone for the first time in my life, on a train, bound for I knew not where. Like an idiot I had not had the curiosity or the gumption to enquire the name of the station we were booked for. As for the name of the school, that had escaped me. Going through a tunnel can at the best of times be an alarming experience. For the first time in a child’s life it can be his idea of hell. A stifling, sulphurous smoke soon filled the compartment, while outside a roar of wheels was accompanied by sparks. The carriage however was not pitch dark, for on the picnic basket the blue flame from the methylated spirit lamp was wrapping itself round the empty bowl in a perfect frenzy of rage. Clearly the explosion and an end to existence were imminent. What was to be done? I adopted the only course available to me. I lost my head and, clutching my waist and tripping over my trouser legs, ran bellowing down the corridor.

  The first thing that ought to be inculcated into children is that grown-ups of every age and every country are invariably nice to them when in extremis. They are seldom very nice to each other, and not always nice to children who have nothing the matter with them. But in order to melt the stoniest adult heart a child, howsoever unattractive and displeasing, has merely to appear slightly out of sorts. Thereupon the gruffest old maid and the most dyspeptic old colonel will instantly drop her knitting and his Times newspaper, and rush headlong to its support. I was unaware of this simple truth when I made a frightful hullabaloo in the first-class corridor of the 12:52 from Euston that day. Mercifully I soon found myself in the enormous hot bosom of a surprised lady passenger, who without hesitation administered succour and comfort. Through my tears I feebly pointed in the direction I had come from. It was as well that I did so. The lady’s companion, hearing a deafening report, dashed into my compartment where the glass bulb, having indeed exploded in a thousand fragments, had not extinguished the spirit lamp which continued to blaze merrily. With great presence of mind the heroic companion hurled it out of the window.