A Book of Railway Journeys

by Ludovic Kennedy

  At four o’clock, or thereabouts, the train moved out of the station; I still had the compartment to myself. We passed under the bricks and mortar of Manchester, through a Nibelheim of clanking noises; then we emerged into the sunshine of May day, yellow slanting gleams piercing the miasma of smoke and grime. Looking down through the window in my solitude I saw from the height of a bridge—I saw like one of God’s spies—the Manchester that had nurtured me since I was born; rows and rows of dismal houses, with back yards full of old cans and bedsteads and torn oilcloth; long vistas of streets with lamp-posts and corner shops. I saw a council school with an asphalt playground and spiked railings. I was leaving it all; to-night I would sleep out of Manchester, not in a house in one of those endless streets that stretched away in a static lean dreary hopelessness. I was on the way to Shrewsbury, an old town with a marketplace in it.

  Out of Manchester into Cheshire ambled the train, and my anxiety about this new life was shot through and through with a sensation strange to me: I was shaking myself free of habit: I didn’t know what was about to happen to me. I did not know exactly what setting awaited me in Shrewsbury; I had not even seen a photograph of the place. My life had been bounded by an eggshell; except for a few week-end rambles in Derbyshire, my twenty-one years had been spent within a radius of three and a half miles of bricks and mortar; for the first time in my life I was able in physical fact to run alongside my imagination.

  The evening light fell on cows standing still in the meadows. The train came to a halt with an escape of steam, then silence. I stuck my head out of the window and saw the gleaming railway lines, the immaculate tidiness of the permanent way as it stretched and pointed to a distance of green and wooded futurity. I was journeying not the mere fifty miles or so that divide Manchester from Shrewsbury; I was shedding a skin.

  When the train reached Crewe I left my compartment and from an unobserved point of vantage watched the porters hauling bags and cases and crates and noisy milk-cans out of the luggage van; I was afraid my old tin trunk might be mixed up with them and lost for ever, even though I had stuck addressed labels on it. Several boys were sitting in the carriage when I returned. They were on the way to Shrewsbury. The new term began next day. They disconcerted me as I sat in my corner pretending to read; I feared they would penetrate to my secret, that I also was travelling to Shrewsbury and was the new “pro.” I was aware that I did not look the part at all; I lacked the expected masculinity. I was the thinnest professional cricketer that ever lived, and I fancy I must have resembled Traddles. The charming accents of the speech of these boys gave me my first taste of the good days to come.

  NEVILLE CARDUS.

  Autobiography

  ADLESTROP

  Yes. I remember Adlestrop—

  The name, because one afternoon

  Of heat the express-train drew up there

  Unwontedly. It was late June.

  The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

  No one left and no one came

  On the bare platform. What I saw

  Was Adlestrop—only the name

  And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

  And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

  No whit less still and lonely fair

  Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

  And for that minute a blackbird sang

  Close by, and round him, mistier,

  Farther and farther, all the birds

  Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

  EDWARD THOMAS

  MR. DOMBEY

  The whistle blows. The train moves.

  Thank God I am pulling away from the conversation

  I had on the platform through the hissing of steam

  With that man who dares to wear crape for the death of my son.

  But I forget. He is coming with us.

  He is always ahead of us stoking the engine.

  I depend on him to convey me

  With my food and my drink and my wraps and my reading material

  To my first holiday since grief mastered me.

  He is the one with the view in front of him

  The ash in his whiskers, the speed in his hair.

  He is richer now. He refused my tip.

  Death and money roll round and round

  In my head with the wheels.

  I know what a skeleton looks like.

  I never think of my dead son

  In this connection. I think of wealth.

  The railway is like a skeleton,

  Alive in a prosperous body,

  Reaching up to grasp Yorkshire and Lancashire

  Kicking Devon and Kent

  Squatting on London.

  A diagram of growth

  A midwinter leaf.

  I am a merchant

  With fantasies like all merchants.

  Gold, carpets, handsome women come to me

  Out of the sea, along these tracks.

  I am as rich as England,

  As solid as a town hall.

  PATRICIA BEER

  On the Footplate:

  1. The Scotch Express

  In 1897, the American author of The Red Badge of Courage visited Britain and rode on the footplate of the London to Glasgow express.

  Against the masonry of a platform, under the vaulted arch of the train-house, lay a long string of coaches. They were painted white on the bulging part, which led halfway down from the top, and the bodies were a deep bottle-green. There was a group of porters placing luggage in the van, and a great many others were busy with the affairs of passengers, tossing smaller bits of luggage into the racks over the seats, and bustling here and there on short quests. The guard of the train, a tall man who resembled one of the first Napoleon’s veterans, was caring for the distribution of passengers into the various bins. There were no second-class compartments; they were all third and first-class.

  The train was at this time engineless, but presently a railway “flier,” painted a glowing vermilion, slid modestly down and took its place at the head. The guard walked along the platform, and decisively closed each door. He wore a dark blue uniform thoroughly decorated with silver braid in the guise of leaves. The way of him gave to this business the importance of a ceremony. Meanwhile the fireman had climbed down from the cab and raised his hand, ready to transfer a signal to the driver, who stood looking at his watch. In the interval there had something progressed in the large signal box that stands guard at Euston. This high house contains many levers, standing in thick, shining ranks. It perfectly resembles an organ in some great church, if it were not that these rows of numbered and indexed handles typify something more acutely human than does a keyboard. It requires four men to play this organ-like thing, and the strains never cease. Night and day, day and night, these four men are walking to and fro, from this lever to that lever, and under their hands the great machine raises its endless hymn of a world at work, the fall and rise of signals and the clicking swing of switches.

  And so as the vermilion engine stood waiting and looking from the shadow of the curved-roofed station, a man in the signal house had played the notes that informed the engine of its freedom. The driver saw the fall of those proper semaphores which gave him liberty to speak to his steel friend. A certain combination in the economy of the London and Northwestern Railway, a combination which had spread from the men who sweep out the carriages through innumerable minds to the general manager himself, had resulted in the law that the vermilion engine, with its long string of white and bottle-green coaches, was to start forthwith toward Scotland.

  Presently the fireman, standing with his face toward the rear, let fall his hand. “All right,” he said. The driver turned a wheel, and as the fireman slipped back, the train moved along the platform at the pace of a mouse. To those in the tranquil carriages this starting was probably as easy as the sliding of one’s hand over a greased surface, but in the engine there was more to it. The monster roared suddenly and loudly, and sprang forward impetuously. A wrong-
headed or maddened draft-horse will plunge in its collar sometimes when going up a hill. But this load of burdened carriages followed imperturbably at the gait of turtles. They were not to be stirred from their way of dignified exit by the impatient engine. The crowd of porters and transient people stood respectful. They looked with the indefinite wonder of the railway-station sight-seer upon the faces at the windows of the passing coaches. This train was off for Scotland. It had started from the home of one accent to the home of another accent. It was going from manner to manner, from habit to habit, and in the minds of these London spectators there surely floated dim images of the traditional kilts, the burring speech, the grouse, the canniness, the oat-meal, all the elements of a romantic Scotland.

  There had been no fog in London, but here on the edge of the city a heavy wind was blowing, and the driver leaned aside and yelled that it was a very bad day for travelling on an engine. The engine-cabs of England, as of all Europe, are seldom made for the comfort of the men. One finds very often this apparent disregard for the man who does the work—this indifference to the man who occupies a position which for the exercise of temperance, of courage, of honesty, has no equal at the altitude of prime ministers. The American engineer is the gilded occupant of a salon in comparison with his brother in Europe. The man who was guiding this five-hundred-ton bolt, aimed by the officials of the railway at Scotland, could not have been as comfortable as a shrill gibbering boatman of the Orient. The narrow and bare bench at his side of the cab was not directly intended for his use, because it was so low that he would be prevented by it from looking out of the ship’s port-hole which served him as a window. The fireman, on his side, had other difficulties. His legs would have had to straggle over some pipes at the only spot where there was a prospect, and the builders had also strategically placed a large steel bolt. Of course it is plain that the companies consistently believe that the men will do their work better if they are kept standing. The roof of the cab was not altogether a roof. It was merely a projection of two feet of metal from the bulkhead which formed the front of the cab. There were practically no sides to it, and the large cinders from the soft coal whirled around in sheets. From time to time the driver took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his blinking eyes.

  In this flight toward Scotland one seldom encountered a grade crossing. In nine cases out of ten there was either a bridge or a tunnel. The platforms of even the remote country stations were all of ponderous masonry in contrast to our constructions of planking. There was always to be seen, as we thundered toward a station of this kind, a number of porters in uniform, who requested the retreat of any one who had not the wit to give us plenty of room. And then, as the shrill warning of the whistle pierced even the uproar that was about us, came the wild joy of the rush past a station. It was something in the nature of a triumphal procession conducted at thrilling speed. Perhaps there was a curve of infinite grace, a sudden hollow explosive effect made by the passing of a signal-box that was close to the track, and then the deadly lunge to shave the edge of a long platform. There were always a number of people standing afar, with their eyes riveted upon this projectile, and to be on the engine was to feel their interest and admiration in the terror and grandeur of this sweep. A boy allowed to ride with the driver of the band-wagon as a circus parade winds through one of our village streets could not exceed for egotism the temper of a new man in the cab of a train like this one. This valkyric journey on the back of the vermilion engine, with the shouting of the wind, the deep, mighty panting of the steed, the gray blur at the track-side, the flowing quicksilver ribbon of the other rails, the sudden clash as a switch intersects, all the din and fury of this ride, was of a splendor that caused one to look abroad at the quiet, green landscape and believe that it was of a phlegm quiet beyond patience. It should have been dark, rain-shot, and windy thunder should have rolled across its sky.

  It seemed, somehow, that if the driver should for a moment take his hands from his engine, it might swerve from the track as a horse from the road. Once, indeed, as he stood wiping his fingers on a bit of waste, there must have been something ludicrous in the way the solitary passenger regarded him. Without those finely firm hands on the bridle the engine might rear and bolt for the pleasant farms lying in the sunshine at either side.

  This driver was worth contemplation. He was simply a quiet, middle-aged man, bearded, and with the little wrinkles of habitual geniality and kindliness spreading from the eyes toward the temple, who stood at his post always gazing out through his round window, while, from time to time, his hands went from here to there over his levers. He seldom changed either attitude or expression. There surely is no engine-driver who does not feel the beauty of the business but the emotion lies deep, and mainly inarticulate, as it does in the mind of a man who has experienced a good and beautiful wife for many years. This driver’s face displayed nothing but the cool sanity of a man whose thought was buried intelligently in his business. If there was any fierce drama in it, there was no sign upon him. He was so lost in dreams of speed and signals and steam, that one speculated if the wonder of his tempestuous charge and its career over England touched him, this impassive rider of a fiery thing.

  There may be a popular idea that the fireman’s principal function is to hang his head out of the cab and sight interesting objects in the landscape. As a matter of fact, he is always at work. The dragon is insatiate. The fireman is continually swinging open the furnace-door, whereat a red shine flows out upon the floor of the cab, and shoveling in immense mouthfuls of coal to a fire that is almost diabolic in its madness. The feeding, feeding, feeding goes on until it appears as if it is the muscles of the fireman’s arms that are speeding the long train. An engine running over sixty-five miles an hour, with 500 tons to drag, has an appetite in proportion to this task.

  View of the clear-shining English scenery is often interrupted between London and Crewe by long and short tunnels. The first one was disconcerting. Suddenly one knew that the train was shooting toward a black mouth in the hills. It swiftly yawned wider, and then in a moment the engine dived into a place inhabitated by every demon of wind and noise. The speed had not been checked, and the uproar was so great that in effect one was simply standing at the center of a vast, black-walled sphere. The tubular construction which one’s reason proclaimed had no meaning at all. It was a black sphere, alive with shrieks. But then on the surface of it there was to be seen a little needlepoint of light, and this widened to a detail of unreal landscape. It was the world; the train was going to escape from this cauldron, this abyss of howling darkness. If a man looks through the brilliant water of a tropical pool, he can sometimes see coloring the marvels at the bottom the blue that was on the sky and the green that was on the foliage of this detail. And the picture shimmered in the heat-rays of a new and remarkable sun. It was when the train bolted out into the open air that one knew that it was his own earth.

  Once train met train in a tunnel. Upon the painting in the perfectly circular frame formed by the mouth there appeared a black square with sparks bursting from it. This square expanded until it hid everything, and a moment later came the crash of the passing. It was enough to make a man lose his sense of balance. It was a momentary inferno when the fireman opened the furnace door and was bathed in blood-red light as he fed the fires.

  The effect of a tunnel varied when there was a curve in it. One was merely whirling then heels over head, apparently in the dark, echoing bowels of the earth. There was no needle-point of light to which one’s eyes clung as to a star.

  From London to Crewe the stern arm of the semaphore never made the train pause even for an instant. There was always a clear track. It was great to see, far in the distance, a goods train whooping smokily for the north of England on one of the four tracks. The overtaking of such a train was a thing of magnificent nothing for the long-strided engine, and as the flying express passed its weaker brother, one heard one or two feeble and immature puffs from the other engine, saw the fireman
wave his hand to his luckier fellow, saw a string of foolish, clanking flat-cars, their freights covered with tarpaulins, and then the train was lost to the rear.

  There is a five-minute stop at Crewe. A tandem of engines slip up, and buckled fast to the train for the journey to Carlisle. In the meantime, all the regulation items of peace and comfort had happened on the train itself. The dining-car was in the center of the train. It was divided into two parts, the one being a dining-room for first-class passengers, and the other a dining-room for the third-class passengers. They were separated by the kitchens and the larder. The engine, with all its rioting and roaring, had dragged to Crewe a car in which numbers of passengers were lunching in a tranquility that was almost domestic, on an average menu of a chop and potatoes, a salad, cheese, and a bottle of beer. Betimes they watched through the windows the great chimney-marked towns of northern England. They were waited upon by a young man of London, who was supported by a lad who resembled an American bell-boy. The rather elaborate menu and service of the Pullman dining-car is not known in England or on the Continent. Warmed roast beef is the exact symbol of a European dinner, when one is traveling on a railway.

  To Brighton and Back for 3s 6d: fourth class on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, c. 1860 (Charles Rossiter)

  This express is named, both by the public and the company, the “Corridor Train,” because a coach with a corridor is an unusual thing in England, and so the title has a distinctive meaning. Of course, in America, where there is no car which has not what we call an aisle, it would define nothing. The corridors are all at one side of the car. Doors open thence to little compartments made to seat four, or perhaps six, persons. The first-class carriages are very comfortable indeed, being heavily upholstered in dark, hard-wearing stuffs, with a bulging rest for the head. The third-class accommodations on this train are almost as comfortable as the first-class, and attract a kind of people that are not usually seen traveling third-class in Europe. Many people sacrifice their habit, in the matter of this train, to the fine conditions of the lower fare.