The Blackpool Highflyer js-2

by Andrew Martin

  '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, should 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.

  ‹o›

  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, heading 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.

  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 thi
s 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.