The Blackpool Highflyer

by Andrew Martin

  We were tolerably quick through the little town of Hebden Bridge, and on the climb up towards Todmorden, which was a slog with many an engine, the Highflyer had us fretting about the speed restriction. Here a lot of churches went racing past, and for some reason I had it in mind to lean out and look for the church-tower clock that had the gaslit face at night. Clive banged open the fire door and grinned at me: his way of saying that if I had quite finished daydreaming he wanted a bit more on. Chillier sorts would have done it very differently, but Clive would put a fellow straight in a mannerly way.

  'What's up?' he shouted, as I caught up the shovel once again.

  'Looking out for a clock!' I called back.

  'It's coming up to quarter to!' shouted Clive.

  Like all fellows of the right sort he never wore a watch and always knew the time.

  'I just wanted to see it!' I said. 'It's lit by gas.'

  'Advertising, that is!' said Clive. He was notching up once more, and things were getting pretty lively now. We were running down to Rose Grove, and I had to move about just to keep still, if you take my meaning.

  'Sometimes,' I shouted, throwing coal and feeling the sweat start to spring out of me, 'you can see more at night than you can by day!'

  What Clive made of this bit of philosophy I don't know because he was too busy finding his own feet and looking at his reflection in the engine-brake handle, trying to make out whether the hair restorer was working. I took off my jacket and laid it on the sandbox.

  We were galloping past the black house that always had birds flying over it. That meant we'd crossed over from Yorkshire to Lancashire. Next came the schoolhouse on the hill, the one that always had the big cot in the window, which I didn't like to see because it made the place more like a gaol.

  I looked at the sandbox, and saw that my coat had been shaken off by the motion of the Highflyer. This was the engine's famous roll.

  Clive suddenly stood back and started moving his hands as if he was turning a wheel, and then bang - Clive had seen it before me - a motorcar was alongside of us on the road to Accrington. Clive was laughing. He opened 1418 up a bit more, but this motor was keeping up all right, though it looked to me like a giant baby-carriage. Just then the road snatched the car right up and away, but it came back hard alongside, and I saw the motorist - he might have been laughing, too, behind his goggles.

  But then he started to get smaller.

  'Eh up,' said Clive.

  The car was jumping; the road went out and in again, and this time the motor was left behind us, still moving but only just, and shrinking by the second.

  'What's up?' I yelled.

  'He's changing gear!' shouted Clive.

  Number 1418 steamed like a witch, but our exertions had made the fire a little thin in the middle, so I began patching, calling out: 'How's he doing now?'

  'Picking up the pace again,' yelled Clive, who was still hanging out the side, 'only trouble is . . . the bugger's on fire!'

  We went into a cutting - a quick up and down - and when we came out we were beginning to lose the road. I put down my shovel and leant out to see the motorist and his smoking car spinning away backwards. Clive gave a happy shout and two screams on the whistle. He knew about motorcars but did not like them. He thought they wrecked all the fruit gardens of Halifax with their fumes. I told him I'd never seen a fruit garden in Halifax, wrecked or not.

  Clive was still peering backwards along the length of the rattlers. 'They're falling out the windows!'

  Folk would do that on an excursion - lean right out, and their hats would go flying. But with excitement at fever heat they never minded. Green and gold light was flashing about in our cab as we rattled around the Padiham Loop. It was a great lark, but 1418 was wearing me out - not from the amount of coal wanted, but from the need to keep braced against its rolling.

  Clive turned to me and gave a big grin. He was a dapper dog. Nice necktie just crossed over, so you could never work out how it kept in place; coat not new but perfectly built. . . and the poacher's pockets. 'It pays a man to dress smart,' he would say; 'shabbiness is a false economy.' He once told me the best thing you can do with a pair of boots was not wear them.

  We came through Blackburn and down the old East Lanes line into Preston station, which was all newly painted green and red and gold, like a Christmas tree in summer. A splash on the brakes, and here we came to a stand while waiting for a local goods to leave.

  I heard a door bang from somewhere behind, and Lowther was climbing down to the platform, moving from one rattler to another in search of those without tickets, for he wanted to see those folk most particularly.

  After checking the water level, I climbed down with the oil feeder in my hands, and put a jot in each of the links and glands, wiping away the tiniest little spillages, this being the Highflyer.

  When I climbed up again, Reuben was on the footplate beside Clive. 'You two lads,' he said, in his shaky voice; 'You do know what we have on here ... Don't you?'

  Your mind would race as Reuben spoke. I was thinking: well, what do we have on at the end? A red lamp. That would be the usual thing.

  'There's one First on,' said Reuben.

  'A First?' said Clive, 'on an excursion?'

  Excursions were all Thirds as a rule.

  'And there's only two in it,' said Reuben.

  'Two in the whole carriage?' said Clive.

  Reuben nodded.

  'But they'd have about, what, thirty seats each?' said Clive.

  There was a bit of delay here, while Reuben thought it out: number of seats divided by number of passengers.

  'That's what it tots up to,' he said, after a while.

  'Who are these gentry?' I said.

  'Owner of Hind's Mill,' said Reuben, 'and his old man.'

  That was queer. Mill owners didn't go on mill excursions as a rule. I climbed down and ran along the platform for a look. The excursionists were leaning out of the six third-class rattlers, and some gave a cheer when they saw me, but it was nothing to what Clive would have got with his poacher's pockets and high-class necktie. When the Thirds ran out, I naturally slowed, for I had struck the luxury of space - four doors on the First, not eight, and wider windows, and those windows had curtains, not blinds, and every one of those curtains was closed, like four little theatres at which the performances had finished.

  As I looked back towards the engine, I saw, beyond it, the starter signal go off. With many shouts of encouragement from the excursionists, I ran back, passing a small old lady on the platform whose black dress was out at the sides. I touched my cap to her as I ran and she smiled and said, 'They'll all see the sea today.'

  But the old lady was wrong over that.

  Chapter Three

  Two hundred and twenty tons we had on, as Reuben Booth had said, and five hundred and twelve souls: Whit Sunday Excursion to Blackpool, booked by a mill - Hind's Mill. It was nothing out of the common as far as excursions went, except that the mill owners were riding with us and our engine was the Highflyer.

  The boards went off at Preston, and we began to be in motion again. I watched Clive standing with one hand lightly on the regulator, thoughtful, like.

  The mighty crunch of the exhaust beats filled the station like something that, though not over-keen to be started, is going to be the devil of a job to finish. Because of our delay in Preston we had time to make up if our five hundred and twelve souls were not to be late for the beach.

  As we came out of Preston station we were running against the County Hall, which was like a red-brick cliff face with twelve flags on top: two crosses of St George and ten red roses of Lancashire, although I knew it had been the other way about when the King had come to open the new docks. Beyond this we were put on the fast road, and Clive really opened up the regulator, and I had to find my sea legs all over again while firing. The engine was a beautiful steamer, but it would dance on the rails, and it seemed to me that sixty tons of iron, flying along at sixty miles an hour, sh
ould not be set dancing.

  Clive was suddenly hanging across my bows, and the smell of hair tonic was in my face as he looked out my side. 'The bloody lunatic,' he said.

  It was the motorcar again - going along the street that was hard by the line for a short while.

  'Well,' I said, 'he's only driving along the road.'

  'He should be locked up,' said Clive.

  'Is it the same bloke as before?'

  'It had bloody better not be’ said Clive, notching up for the first increase in speed.

  'Reckon he's following us?' I asked Clive, but just then the motorist passed us, and for a while he was fastest man in Preston. Clive said, 'Bloody sauce,' and gave a jerk on the regulator so that we re-passed the man, but no sooner had we done it than the spire of the parish church shot in and wedged itself between the road and line, like an axe splitting wood, and we were rocking away left onto the Blackpool line with an almighty clattering.

  There was now a bit of a dip in the fire, which I set about filling, but as we swung down the line to Lea Green, I had to keep interrupting myself to hold on. I could never seem to get right on this high-stepping engine.

  Clive looked at me, and grinned. He was at the reverser again, putting us into the highest gear. 'Not up to much, is she?'

  'How do you mean?'

  'Too shaky,' he said. 'Boiler's set too high.'

  So that was Mr Aspinall put in his box.

  'It's fun though,' he said, and he opened the regulator a little more before standing back, taking off his gloves, and smartly straightening all the many flaps of his many poacher's pockets.

  We were coming up to the signal box at Lea Road, and I put my hand to Harry Walker who was the usual fellow in there, but this wave couldn't come off when attempted at speed. The signal box just seemed to whirl once in a circle as we went by, giving me a sight of blank, shining glass. After Lea Road, we were onto the flat lands of the Fylde - the fields before Blackpool. The first of the windmills was coming into view. When the wind was up and they were really working, they put me in mind of fast bowlers in cricket. I put my head out and tried to hold it still in the hot wind as I thought back to my first trip to Blackpool, nigh on two months before, and how, the moment I'd opened the door of the dining rooms on the Prom, the wind had come in with me, and all the tablecloths had moved towards the tables, putting me in mind of ladies protecting their honour.

 

  The waitress had given me a big grin, crashed the door shut behind me, and shouted to another waitress: 'Eve, have you got a "one" for this gentleman?'

  The other waitress hadn't heard, so I'd been left sort of dangling.

  My waitress might have been Yorkshire, and she might have been Lancashire. Even though I suppose I was quite broad myself I couldn't always tell the difference. I sometimes had the notion that Lancashire folk had lower, darker voices that bent like liquorice. They would say 'Lankeysheyore', or 'Black- pewel', putting as many curves as possible into a word. What the two had in common was loudness about the mouth.

  'Eve!' the serving girl had yelled across again, 'have we got a one for this gent?' Then she'd whispered, 'He's come in by his sen!', and I'd been minded to say that I was a married man, and not just some funny bit of goods that couldn't be fitted into an eating house. And not only that, but a fellow freshly promoted too.

  I'd wanted to see Blackpool because, after a short time on goods, I'd been put up to the excursion link at Sowerby Bridge Shed, and Blackpool was the excursion magnet. It was the great demand for holiday trains that had left the Lanky short of firemen, and, seeing my chance to return to my home county I'd snatched at it, after all the complications I'd struck while firing for the London and South Western.

  'Eve!' the serving girl had bawled, 'for crying out loud!'

  That had done the trick, and I'd been led to the table near the window that I'd had my eye on all along.

  I'd ordered six oysters, bread and butter, bottle of Bass.

  Then I'd asked for salt and pepper, and the waitress had said, 'Condiments ha'penny extra.'

  'Ha'penny extra?' I'd said. 'It never is ... is it?'

  But that was Blackpool all over: the wildness of the waitresses, salt and pepper a ha'penny extra - and Worcester sauce and a slice of lemon another ha'penny on top of that.

  I hadn't minded, though. I was on velvet: going forward in my work (firing at present but with the job of driver in my sights), and happy at Sowerby Bridge Shed, which was just a mile outside Halifax.

  I was newly wed, settled in Back Hill Street, Halifax, with three rooms for me and the wife, and a room upstairs to let, all ready and waiting with bed turned down and a spirit stove for making tea. Marriage suited me very well, in a roundabout sort of way. I liked being with the wife, and I also liked being away from her, for a little while at least.

  My oysters had arrived and I set to. A woman at the next table leant across to give me the news that she 'could sit by this window, supping tea all day long'.

  'Same here!' I said, turning to look out again at a paddle steamer going between the piers. Of course, I thought, they're not real sailors out there, the ones that meddle with wind and wild sea and darkness, but they were coping with quite a swell, for all the brightness of the day.

  I then took from my pocket my Railway Magazine, to read of high dividends on the Furness Railway, new wagons on the North Staffs; and, after calling for the bill, I fell to marvelling for the umpteenth time at my Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway footplate pass.

  The Lanky was run from Manchester. Fifth by size of the railway companies, its territory stretched from Liverpool in the west to Goole in the east, but the millions in between made it number one in population per mile. Every new engine was painted black for weeks on end, and that was because it was going to go to work. The Lanky was 'The Business Line' - cotton, wool and coal - but a lot of northern towns now had their own 'wakes' or holiday week, and the Lanky was all for that, because then people wanted to pack up, and they wanted to be off.

  It was the johnnies in Central Timing in Manchester who planned most of the excursions. They would sit over graphs that looked like sketches of long grass bending in the wind: these were train movements, and the fellows would be squinting along the lines looking to see where the holiday specials could be slotted in alongside the ordinary trains, and if they could be they would be. Many of the excursions were put up by the Lanky itself but a good many more were dreamed up by clubs and societies, who would ask for a train to be laid on, and usually found the Lanky out to oblige, for it was all money in the bank.

  One queer thing about wakes was that it was mainly a Lancashire tradition, but Halifax had its wakes. Halifax was honorary Lancashire really - a mill town like so many in Lancashire, and close to the county boundary. It was one of the things that made it foreign-seeming even to those, like myself, from other parts of Yorkshire.

  Stepping out of the dining rooms I didn't bother to look at the top of the Tower, knowing it would crick my neck. I continued along a row of shooting galleries and oyster places, coming to a yard with swinging boats. The swings were on frames with scissor legs. There were four going, each with two ladies in. They all swung at the same rate, and I stood there thinking of them as governors, regulating the mighty engine of Blackpool.

  There were plenty about on that Sunday, the last in April, but the Ferris wheel hadn't yet been set turning, and the twenty-three excursion platforms of Blackpool Central - the busiest station in Europe, come summertime - were sleeping in the sun.

  Further along, on the seaward side of the Prom, I struck a weird-looking building: like a great brick pudding with fancy white icing into which were carved in curly letters the words 'The Seashell'. It was a music hall of sorts. There were three lots of revolving doors and beside each one a potted palm dancing about in the breeze. How they kept them going in that windy spot was anybody's guess.

  As I watched, a little fellow walked up, carrying a carpet bag and a long stepladder, he
ading for the middle door. I thought: now what's his programme for getting those ladders through those doors? But instead he set the ladder down between two of the doors and climbed it, bag in hand. He was the man who changed the bills, and there was a whole alphabet in his bag. I was quite a one for music hall - I had seen Little Titch at the Tivoli just before quitting London - so I hung about to watch.

  The fellow with the ladder had just taken down the letters spelling out the bill-topping turn 'Three Jinks in a Jungle', when I spotted a little bloke watching alongside me: dirty boater and hardly any teeth.

  'How do,' he said.

  'How do,' I said back. Then: 'What's "Three Jinks in a Jungle"?'

  'Concertina band,' he said.

  A tram went past just then, making a noise of a piano, kettle drum and a baby screaming.

  'Where does the jungle come in?' I asked, and the man shook his head, as if to say: Blowed if I know. But it hardly mattered, since the Jinks were coming off anyway.

  Then I watched with the toothless fellow as the new ones went up. First came an M, then O, N, S ...

  'Exciting this,' the fellow said.

  Next came I, E, U and R, and the man on the ladder climbed down, being able to reach no further across. As he moved his ladder, Toothless tapped me on the shoulder.

  'French,' he said, and I nodded. 'Glorious day,' I said, and the fellow nodded back.

  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.