1968 was the last year of the regular use of steam locomotives on the standard-gauge lines of British Railways, and virtually all the remaining ‘steamers’ were concentrated in the north-west of England. They were a pretty woebegone lot by this time. They suffered from little maintenance and less cleaning, but the steam locomotive is a rugged machine and somehow they maintained a certain dignity even in their last gasps. They may have been run-down but they were still fascinating machines to watch, and many people were only too aware that their removal from the scene represented a historic watershed. They were a direct link with the Industrial Revolution and the coal, iron and heavy manufacturing industries which had been so dominant when Britain was ‘the workshop of the world’. De-industrialisation was changing the face of the country and the lives of the people, and not everyone was sure that it was for the good. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of railway enthusiasts descended on the north-west of England to see steam playing out its last painful months.
In the mid-1960s a Liverpool man used to take his son to Walton Junction to watch the few remaining steam trains. For the young lad, excitement at the prospect of seeing a ‘steamer’ was tempered by the horrible feelings of fear he always got when reaching a certain point on the path beside the railway line. He always felt that something malevolent was watching him, but he was afraid to tell his dad. In 1975 he returned to Walton Junction and walked along the self-same path, this time with two friends. During the intervening years it had become rather more unkempt and the young man, for that is what he now was, remembered the past but thought that the fear he had always encountered was perhaps nothing more than a childish whimsy. He told them nothing of the feelings he used to experience at this spot and was amazed when both his friends said they felt something nasty in the place. They said it was as if they were being watched by someone or something evil. Shortly afterwards the three young men returned, this time with a girl making up the party. They told her nothing, but likewise she said that she felt something dangerous and couldn’t wait to get away.
When the man had children of his own, he made yet another return to Walton Junction and he walked the familiar footpath, now even more ramshackle, with them. They didn’t seem to sense anything untoward, but he realised that he was marshalling them along the footpath as quickly as possible and constantly looking over his shoulder – for what? Close to the station was a row of cottages that once used to house railway workers and their families. Occupied the last time he had been there, they were now a sad and derelict eyesore. Unwanted and empty, they were waiting for the demolition men. With the children he stood and gazed at the cottages for a moment when suddenly there was a loud bang from the back of one of them, a bang as if someone had slammed a door using excessive force. Now he had an awful reprise of his childish feelings of horror. Gathering the children together, he hurried away with no backward glances. He hasn’t been back to Walton Junction since then but he often wonders what it is that spooks the place. He only has to think ‘Walton Junction’ and the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
This station, now called Walton (Merseyside), used to be called Walton Junction, which is odd because it never was a junction.
NORFOLK
Abbey and West Dereham
East Anglia had several extremely rustic branch lines. ‘Twigs’ rather than branches might have been a more appropriate word. One such was the line from Denver to Stoke Ferry. Although it was built by the obscure Downham & Stoke Ferry Railway Co., the line was always operated by the Great Eastern Railway and fully absorbed by it on 1 January 1898. It had opened in 1882 and was built primarily to serve the farming community. The line lost its meagre passenger service in 1930. Freight traffic ceased in the mid-1960s, and the line was soon ripped up.
A couple who lived at West Dereham had a strange experience in the 1950s. By this time freight trains ran only ‘as required’, which wasn’t very often, and so they were surprised to be woken up by the sound of a train in the middle of the night. To their amazement, they could see that it was a passenger train composed of a steam locomotive and two carriages with their compartments lit up. It was 3.00 in the morning. Even in its heyday, and it never really had one, no passenger trains ran on the line at that hour and, anyway, passenger services had been withdrawn about twenty-five years previously. As the sound of the train petered out into the distance, they scratched and pinched themselves and asked whether they had been seeing things. None the wiser for their ruminations, they eventually returned to bed and sleep. The man told his workmates about the train the next morning and they just laughed. By now seriously confused, the couple went down to the railway that evening. Weeds were growing on the track; a signal post leant at a crazy angle; everything looked semi-derelict. What is more, there was a thick coating of rust on the rails. It was obvious that no train had passed for weeks. What did the couple see that night from their window in West Dereham?
The rather stylish frontage of Norwich Station was built in 1886. This station used to be called Norwich (Thorpe) to distinguish it from three other stations that used to serve the city. There is no sign of the Norwich Station horror.
NORTH YORKSHIRE
Middlesborough
Middlesborough owes its existence to the railway. The Stockton & Darlington Railway was opened in 1825 with the purpose of conveying coal from the pits of south-west Durham to the River Tees at Stockton. The river at Stockton proved difficult to navigate for the large collier vessels and so what would now be called a ‘greenfield site’, located by deeper water, was chosen, and the S&D was extended to it in 1830. This was the origin of Middlesborough. The town grew with extraordinary rapidity as it became a major industrial centre with iron and steel-making and extensive docks. In 1831 the population was 383; in 1841 5,709; 1881 56,000 and in 1911 109,000.
All the lines in the Middlesborough area came under the control of the North Eastern Railway, who rebuilt the station in 1877 in the then fashionable neo-Gothic style. In a town not noted for buildings of particular architectural merit, it is one of the best, and it looked even more distinctive when it still had its fine overall-roof.
Walking to start his shift one afternoon in the 1950s, a young railwayman saw a figure approaching and as he got closer he recognised him as a signalman with whom he was on friendly terms. He was about 20 yards away and just about to utter some kind of greeting when the signalman vanished. There was no cover or anything he could have hidden behind. The signalman was simply there one moment and gone the next. The younger man went on his way feeling confused and puzzled. Imagine how these feelings intensified when his workmates told him there had been a tragedy earlier in the day. A signalman had been run down by a train and killed. The signalman was the same man who had walked towards him and then vanished only a few minutes previously.
Middlesborough’s Victorian Gothic station interior.
Middlesborough Station at platform level. Making up in height for what it lacks in beauty is the overall roof, which was destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War.
The line through Middlesborough is still operational.
Sandsend
The line from Whitby to Loftus was authorised in 1866 and construction work by the Whitby, Redcar & Middlesborough Union Railway started in 1871. A host of problems afflicted the construction of the line and it did not open until 1884. It was absorbed by the North Eastern Railway in 1889 and closed in 1958. It offered superb views of the coast, especially at Staithes, Kettleness and Sandsend. The line had to cross the valleys carved by streams rising on the moors to the west just before they tumbled into the sea, and it did so by means of spectacular iron viaducts, the largest of which was at Staithes. The exposed nature of this particular viaduct caused it to be fitted with a wind gauge, and when gusts reached a certain speed, a bell rang in the signal box at Staithes and trains would not be allowed over the viaduct until the winds abated.
The railway in Sandsend, running from Whitby to Loftus along the cliff top behind th
e houses on the left, crossed the beck on a lofty viaduct and plunged into the tunnel in the cliffs in the distance. This was one of Britain’s most scenic lines.
The tunnel at Sandsend is 1,652 yards long and has gained the reputation of being haunted. Phenomena that have allegedly been seen include white lights, figures of people who seem to be able to melt away through the wall when approached, footsteps without anyone to make them and the whistle of a steam train.
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
Burton Joyce
In 1844 the Midland Railway was created from a merger of the Midland Counties, the North Midland and the Birmingham & Derby Junction railway companies. The Midland became a major player on the national railway scene. The merger was the brainchild of the energetic, ambitious and ruthless George Hudson, one of the first, and later one of the most infamous, of the Victorian railway moguls. He built spheres of influence like the territories of an empire. He feared that what he considered as part of his fiefdom, the control of the two existing routes from York to London via Derby, was threatened by proposals to build one or more direct lines from York to London by routes considerably further east. Trying to pre-empt such a development, unsuccessfully as it happened, he built a long cross-country line from Nottingham to Lincoln via Newark-on-Trent. This line opened in 1846 and Burton Joyce, a few miles east of Nottingham, was one of the small wayside stations.
Burton Joyce Station is on the southern extremity of the village, very close to the River Trent. About thirty years ago a signalman at Burton Joyce found many of his shifts disturbed by the sound of footsteps coming along the track and then ascending the steps to his small signal box. Whenever he looked out of the box or went to the door and opened it, he never managed to see who or what it was that was making the sounds. Understandably, he felt very uneasy about these disconcerting experiences and could not decide whether to have a chat with his fellow signalmen about it or tell the inspector who appeared at the box from time to time. After all it was not a good idea for a signalman to suggest by word or act that he was seeing things – not if he wanted to keep his job, that is. Fortunately he never did the ten at night to six in the morning shift, but he was considering asking for a transfer when, one shift following another in quick succession, he came to realise that the noises which he had dreaded coming to hear had stopped. We will never know whether they were a manifestation of the restless spirit of someone perhaps killed on the line around Burton Joyce or some thoughtless prankster oblivious to the dangers of spooking someone in a position of trust and responsibility like a railway signalman. The Nottingham to Lincoln is still operational.
Mechanical signal boxes have survived repeated notices of their imminent demise and, although they are greatly reduced in numbers in the twenty-first century, a sizeable number of these anachronistic installations still exist, especially away from the lines carrying the heaviest traffic and the fastest trains. Although those who work in signal boxes are now called signallers, and there are women among their number, this book, dealing essentially with the past, will continue to call them signalmen. Hopefully this will not cause offence.
It requires a very special kind of person to cope with the demands of the job. There are many failsafe devices to assist his operations, although the signalman still needs to be steady, systematic and extremely vigilant. The requirements of the job embrace other qualities. Many signal boxes were to be found in remote spots in the depth of the countryside, and night shifts in these boxes were not for those who possessed faint hearts or too lurid an imagination. The immense darkness on certain nights; the noises of the creatures of the night as they scuttled around their beats; the bark of the fox and the call of the owl could all play havoc with man’s primeval fears. Often signal boxes were located in cuttings where the sense of remoteness could be almost tangible, and the animal noises did little to offset a feeling of all-enveloping silence. Even the presence of a country by-road some distance away, with the sound of an occasional car becoming even more occasional in the witching hours, somehow only served to emphasise the loneliness of the signalman’s post.
Then, of course, in the days of the steam railways there were the trains themselves. In the hours of darkness steam trains immediately assumed an aura of mystery, both romantic and yet also rather sinister; somewhat threatening. Smoke from the chimney was illuminated by the glare from the firebox, and as the locomotive passed, a glimpse of the men on the footplate, the driver peering into the darkness, straining to catch the small, unblinking stare of the old semaphore signals, the fireman heaving coal into the hungry maw of the firebox. More types of train were around in those days. Express passenger trains went past with a rush and a roar, occasional glimpses of snug-looking compartments made cosy by steam heating; and even faster than the passenger expresses might be the milk trains rushing their perishable cargo up to London, or the fully braked fish trains from the likes of Grimsby. Even in the still of the night, the fish trains had their own unique olfactory way of marking their passage. Hurrying parcel trains and lumbering goods and mineral trains would be signalled on their way. Meat, livestock and mail trains all passed in the night. On many lines there were more trains about between ten in the evening and six in the morning than during daytime hours.
Even the interior of the signal box seemed mysterious; the lighting was deliberately made to be dim, and what light there was focussed on the block instruments and the train register in which the movements of all trains as well as any untoward events were recorded. The further corners of the box became at night places of dim surmise, odd flickers of movement perhaps reflecting a sudden flare-up from the coal in the well-stoked stove. In the event of a big storm with thunder and lightning, the block instruments clicked as if they were possessed by invisible spirits, and little blue sparks flew as the bells rang. It was once said that a signalman’s job combined the worst features of the work of a lighthouse-keeper, the captain of a warship, the coxswain of a lifeboat and a night-watchman.
Mapperley Tunnel
Nottingham was one of many localities where bitter rivalries were fought out between railway companies vying with each other for access to sources of lucrative traffic. Here the main contenders were the Great Northern and Midland railways. Lesser players were the London & North Western and later the Great Central. The idea of transporting as much of the abundant ‘black gold’ as possible from the rich coalfields of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire attracted these companies like a pot of jam attracts flies.
In the 1870s the Great Northern opened a line skirting round the eastern fringe of Nottingham, from Colwick, which led, eventually with extensions, through the heart of the coalfield in the Leen Valley to Newstead and on to Langwith Junction, and also to Pinxton, Heanor, Derby, Burton-on-Trent and even Stafford. On the eastern section of this system, through Gedling to Daybrook, hilly terrain was encountered, and the Great Northern was forced to bore through this with Mapperley Tunnel. This tunnel caused the railway civil engineers enormous headaches over the years on account of subsidence caused by mining. In 1925 part of the roof collapsed and in the late 1950s much of the roof had to be shored up with timber. The cost of making the tunnel good eventually became prohibitive and traffic was diverted away to alternative routes. Most of the line closed in April 1960. A stub from Netherfield to Gedling remains in situ at the time of writing (December 2008) although the connection at Netherfield to the line from Nottingham to Grantham has been severed.
In the 1970s a number of children playing near the south entrance to Mapperley Tunnel claim to have heard a steam train approaching them through the tunnel despite the fact that the rails had long since been lifted and it had been sealed at its northern end.
Netherfield has its own railway ghost – a man who walks the tracks from time to time and, when challenged, just disappears.
Rolleston
This station is on the same line as Burton Joyce (above). For a little station (long since unstaffed) there is a lot of paranormal activity. It includes a ma
n who was knocked down and killed by a train who revisits the spot, a man reading a newspaper while he waits for a train but who then disappears before the train arrives, and bells ringing in a crossing-keeper’s cottage to announce the approach of a train that never gets there.
Although the line was still busy, subsidence in Mapperley Tunnel meant that it had to be closed.
A delightful wayside station with steep gables, now a private house in Thurgarton – shame about the extension! The station is still served by trains on the Nottingham to Lincoln line. The ghostly sounds of children playing have been heard by the level crossing.
The station was formerly the junction for the Midland Railway branch line to Southwell and Mansfield. The short stub from Rolleston to Southwell outlasted the line on to Mansfield, but it closed to passengers in 1959. Southwell is one of the East Midland’s little-known and hidden gems. It has a delightful Minster (actually a cathedral) with a fine Norman nave, unique western towers capped by ‘Rhenish helms’ and a chapter house with naturalistic carvings of sufficient quality to drive the austere art historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner into raptures of joy.
Down the line towards Burton Joyce is Thurgarton where a crossing-keeper’s cottage was supposedly haunted by the sound of children at play. The manned crossing has been replaced by automatic lifting barriers.
Shadows in the Steam Page 8
