Shadows in the Steam

by David Brandon

  When this extension was made, a new through station was built and the old terminus was converted into a goods depot. It was on the edge of this goods yard that a small engine shed was erected, perhaps large enough to accommodate two small locomotives under cover. This mean little building was well away from the new station and stood amidst a collection of other shanties which housed the varied freight services provided by the railway for the needs of Sudbury and district. None of these was occupied at night when the branch line closed down, but a man was required to be on duty in the shed and ensure that its locomotives were ready for activity in the morning. This meant that although the man had plenty of work to do on the shift servicing the locomotives, his was a lonely post. He would have been well aware that thieves often found railway sidings and depots a tempting target for their depredations. Contrary to current received wisdom, the ‘good old days’ never really existed, and even small towns like Sudbury had their criminal fraternities in the nineteenth century, and theft supported by violence was by no means uncommon.

  We do not know what went through the mind of the shedman during his nocturnal vigil, but he would only have been human to feel a sense of loneliness and vulnerability. Is it worse to be threatened by a living entity or a dead one, perhaps a ghost? One night in 1923 the man had done all the work that needed doing and was relaxing over a mug of steaming tea in the little room that constituted the office and mess. It was about an hour before any of the drivers or firemen were due to sign in and not too long before his shift would finish. Suddenly, only yards away because the shed was so small, he heard the sound of coal being shovelled from a bunker or tender fall-plate, just as it would sound if a fireman was feeding an engine’s firebox. He picked up a lamp and rushed outside, but the moment he did so the sound stopped. He examined both the engines under his care but there was nothing to be seen and so, puzzled, he went back to the office. No sooner had he resumed his seat when the shovelling sound started again. Once more he rushed out – nothing there! Now simply irked rather than puzzled, he had another look round, more thoroughly this time, and then went back to the mess. Three more times the sound reoccurred and then stopped abruptly the minute he opened the door into the shed. After the fifth time the man was a trembling wreck. Gone was any desire to find out what was causing the noise; all he wanted to do was to run away to home and hearth. He knew that if he did he would be dismissed from his post. Fortunately it seemed as if the fifth bout of shovelling had been the last, and he waited patiently, but only partially recovered from the shock, for the first of his colleagues to report in. He resolved to put a brave face on it and not tell any of them of his experience.

  It was with a sense of understandable trepidation that he made his way to work the next evening. He knew that he had heard something the previous night. He could have handled the situation had it simply been some stupid prankster. He would have given him a hiding he would never forget. The trouble was that he knew that anyone playing tricks would have given themselves away. He just couldn’t reconcile himself to the idea that somebody in Sudbury was stupid enough to walk through the town in the early hours of the morning, trespass on railway property and enter the tiny darkened shed, climb onto a footplate and then simulate the actions of a locomotive fireman, and do so without being discovered. It was too absurd even to contemplate. The problem was that the alternative was worse. Could it have been a ghost? But ghosts were just something you read about in books. Nobody thought they actually existed, or so his rational side argued.

  As the last of his colleagues mounted his bike and cycled off into the night, the man realised that he had never felt lonelier. What would he do if the dreaded shovelling started up again? His routine jobs kept him busy for a while. There was some paperwork to do and a few simple pieces of maintenance on the two engines present that night. As usual this work took a couple of hours or more, and he then retired to the mess for a mug of tea poured out from a vast black and somewhat soot-encrusted kettle. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep his hand steady as he held the mug and glanced up at the clock. It was almost exactly twenty-four hours since he had heard the mysterious sounds of shovelling. He felt a gnawing in the pit of his stomach as he strained to hear the repetition that he so dreaded. The minutes ticked by in an awful suspense. Five…ten…fifteen. The mess room was hot and the man dozed off. He woke with a jolt – he must have been asleep for an hour. He had a few more chores to do and then he heard a cheerful whistle as the first of his mates arrived for work.

  He never heard the sound again nor did he mention it to anyone for years, but then one evening in the pub he and a group of railwaymen were telling yarns. He’d had a pint more than usual and was feeling somewhat garrulous – he only had a few weeks to go before retirement. What he related didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Two of the men said that they had heard the same noise but also hadn’t mentioned it for fear that they would be thought of as moonstruck. Gossip got around fast in a little town like Sudbury. Another man said that fifty or more years ago a fireman at the shed was the victim of unrequited love and had become so despondent that he had hanged himself nearby. Was it the ghost of this lovelorn man that returned every so often to shovel coal in the witching hours?

  The shed was taken down around 1950 – a good shove would probably have done the job – and after that the locomotives stood in the open. Diesels replaced steam and, perhaps surprisingly, the branch line from Marks Tey as far as Sudbury remains operational.

  SUSSEX

  Balcombe Tunnel

  Such was the significance of Brighton in the social and fashionable life of the so-called great and good of Britain that a line between that town and London featured strongly in the list of early railway projects. In fact in 1835 no fewer than six schemes to join them were being considered. In 1837 the London & Brighton Railway received parliamentary authorisation. The first sod was cut on 12 July 1838 and the line opened in September 1841.

  The terrain meant this was a heavily engineered line, striking against the grain of the Weald and penetrating the heart of the Downs to reach Brighton. Nowhere is this civil engineering more evident than in the vicinity of Balcombe between Three Bridges and Haywards Heath.

  Balcombe Tunnel is 800 yards long, and has long been regarded as haunted. In the first instance it is said that during the First World War three soldiers took shelter in the tunnel during a bombing raid, presumably by a Zeppelin. They may have got away from the bombs but were knocked down and killed by a train instead. Others say that they took shelter during a storm. History repeated itself as tragedy during the Second World War when once again the tunnel was used as a shelter, perhaps during a bombing raid. This time two soldiers entered the tunnel, and they also died courtesy of a fast-moving electric train. So a total of five soldiers breathed their last in Balcombe Tunnel, and there have been many reports that their ghosts have been seen, but as is the way with many ghosts, they simply fade away if any attempt is made to approach them.

  Just south of the tunnel is the Balcombe or Ouse Valley Viaduct. This is a claimant for the title of most elegant viaduct in Britain, and its fine lines are evidence of how the early railway builders were successful in combining engineering and art to enhance rather than intrude on the landscape. The viaduct is 492 yards long. It is built of red brick and Caen stone and all the materials were brought to the site by barge up the River Ouse, which was then navigable almost as far as Haywards Heath. The line over the viaduct and through the tunnel is still operational.

  Clayton Tunnel

  Clayton Tunnel is one mile and 499 yards in length and burrows under the South Downs on the London to Brighton main line of the former London, Brighton & South Coast Railway between Hassocks and Preston Park, just north of Brighton. On Sunday 25 August 1861 it was the scene of an appalling accident, the worst up to that time that had occurred anywhere on Britain’s railways. This tunnel is on the same line as that at Balcombe and opened for traffic in 1841.

  Early signalling and safety
arrangements on the railways strike the modern observer as being rather haphazard or even verging on the slap-happy. The idea of despatching trains on a busy line on the basis of a short time interval seems fraught with obvious dangers. However, there was a justifiable dread of an accident occurring in a tunnel and it was for this reason that the LB&SC had installed a primitive block system worked by electric telegraph in the tunnel. It was the very first such installation on any of Britain’s railways. Its inadequacies, other failed equipment and human error were responsible for the horrific crash.

  Balcombe Station on the London to Brighton line. This tunnel is just to the north of the station and, close by, to the south, is the magnificent Balcombe or Ouse Viaduct.

  In the enquiry following the accident a farrago of bad practices was unearthed. Not the least of these was that the signalman in Clayton Tunnel south signal box was working a twenty-four-hour shift on that day. This was to allow him to have one full day per week away from work, but it may have accounted for his rather slow responses once things started going wrong; he was simply over-tired. Three trains were scheduled in close succession on the northbound line through the tunnel. They were an excursion from Portsmouth consisting of sixteen coaches, an excursion of seventeen coaches from Brighton and a normal scheduled train of twelve coaches. It was the usual practice on this line for trains to be despatched at intervals of five minutes. The enquiry into what subsequently happened showed that the three trains had actually been booked away from Brighton with three-and-four-minute intervals between them, although the train register had falsely recorded five and nine minutes respectively.

  Clayton Tunnel is odd because it has one plain portal, the other being this extraordinary romantic castellated entrance. The small building peeping coyly over the parapet was originally the tunnel-keeper’s cottage.

  In simple terms what happened was that the signalman in Clayton Tunnel south box was unable to ascertain from his colleague in the north box at the far end of the tunnel whether the first train had passed through. At the very last minute he showed a red flag to the following train, which was seen by the engine’s crew who braked and came to a halt in the tunnel and then, and this seems absolutely extraordinary, began to reverse slowly to check with the signalman what he had meant by flagging them. It was while the second train was backing that it was hit by the third train. On impact, the engine of this train reared up, its chimney hitting the roof of the tunnel, red hot coals going in all directions and scalding steam being released under high pressure. Twenty-three passengers died and 176 others were seriously injured.

  The improvement of railway safety has been cumulative and the enquiry into this accident was one of the factors leading to the adoption of block rather than time-interval signalling throughout those parts of Britain’s railway system used by passenger trains, and also compulsory continuous brake systems on passenger trains.

  Since 1861 there have been sporadic reports from men maintaining the track inside the tunnel of the horrifying sounds of crashing and crunching metal, the release of high-pressure steam and screams of agony. These have been put down to a ghostly re-enactment of the horrors of that dreadful August day in 1861.

  Clayton Tunnel is odd because it was built with a plain portal at its southern end and a highly eccentric north end designed to look like a medieval castle gateway. The strange sight this offers is only accentuated by the fact that a little brick cottage peers incongruously and a little self-consciously over the parapet. When it first opened, Clayton Tunnel was lit by gas and it is thought that this cottage may have housed the man who looked after this lighting.

  So odd is the effect created by the castle and the cottage that the northern entrance to Clayton Tunnel often features in books on architectural follies and foibles.

  West Hoathly

  In 1882 the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway opened a line from East Grinstead through Horsted Keynes to Culver Junction where it met the same company’s line from Tunbridge Wells, Eridge and Uckfield to Lewes. The new line was a scenic route and gained the nickname of the ‘Bluebell Line’. It was also a solidly engineered line built in anticipation of a level of traffic which was never realised. It did not help that several of the stations were a considerable distance from the places they purported to serve. The high hopes for the traffic that would develop were indicated by provision being made for double track on the section south from Horsted Keynes to Culver Junction. The second track was never required although there were passing loops at stations.

  In the early 1960s a man was having a quiet holiday pottering around in this delightful part of Sussex. Being interested in railways, he thought he would go and wallow in a bit of pleasant nostalgia tinged with melancholy by visiting the closed ‘Bluebell Line’, parts of which were in the process of being dismantled. He parked up near West Hoathly Station and decided to have a look at Sharpthorne Tunnel, which was 731 yards in length. It was Saturday afternoon and the demolition contractors had left the site for the weekend. He walked along the formation where the track had been and came up to the tunnel entrance. He was able to see a circle of bright sunlight at the far end. He rather wanted to walk this abandoned tunnel before it was bricked up, and he thought it would only take him about fifteen minutes. He plunged into the darkness eagerly, realising that he was doing something that not many other people would ever do. Some though, he acknowledged, might not have had any wish to do such a thing.

  It was surprisingly dark within the tunnel but, although the rails had been ripped up, the ballast was still in place and his feet, which he was unable to see, made a reassuring crunching sound as he stumbled along. Other sounds intruded on his senses. One was the drip-drip of water falling from the tunnel roof in many places; another was his own unnaturally laboured breathing. He realised that this tunnel had ‘atmosphere’. He quickly decided that it was an atmosphere that he didn’t like, but he pressed on despite increasingly having qualms about the whole venture. It was a bit late to be having second thoughts. The tunnel end he was making for provided a welcoming circle of sunlight, although it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Suddenly a figure was silhouetted against the sunlight. Something a little distance ahead pranced across his line of vision and then disappeared noiselessly. He wasn’t quite sure whether it was a human figure – it had moved so swiftly – but on the whole he thought it must have been. He dared not think about what other kind of creature might be lurking in an abandoned railway tunnel.

  He stood petrified and rooted to the spot, the steady drip-drip of water and his breathing now being drowned out by another noise: the stentorian beating of his own heart! He had the horrid feeling that whatever he had seen was hiding in wait for him. Perhaps it was eyeing him up at this very moment from one of the little refuges or recesses in the tunnel walls that the platelayers and gangers sheltered in when trains passed. Desperately he looked around him, realising that he was only just about half-way through the tunnel. He was afraid to advance, but the idea of beating a retreat with this thing perhaps dogging his footsteps was equally repugnant. With a superhuman effort he decided to continue but when he tried to put one foot in front of the other, he couldn’t move. It was as if he had hit an invisible barrier.

  He was scared witless but he made himself turn round and head back the way he had come, albeit looking back nervously over his shoulder every few seconds as he did so. Then he stopped, seeing or sensing nothing untoward. He had had a very bad fright but what had he actually seen? Could it just have been some prankster who at this very moment was chortling away to himself and would undoubtedly be telling his mates down the pub that night how he’d scared away this stupid bloke walking through the old tunnel?

  It took much effort on his part but he decided that no local yokel was going to get the better of him in this way, so he reversed direction to head for the far end of the tunnel once more. He had taken no more than a couple of steps when he again experienced the sense of walking into an invisible and immovable barri
er. That was too much. He turned round yet again and ran in a blind panic towards the original end of the tunnel. His legs seemed like lead, but this time he dared not look back. What a glorious relief to stumble out into the warmth of a lovely English summer’s day full of birdsong.

  Covered in a cold sweat, he sat down on a wall to try to regain his composure. The contrast between the reassuring and familiar sights and sounds of the countryside and the sensations in the tunnel could not have been starker. He made a resolution never to walk through an abandoned railway tunnel again. He had had a bad scare and recalling the experience in later years always brought him out in goose pimples. He told a few people about his adventure and learned that the tunnel did have a sinister reputation, local gossip being that it was haunted perhaps by someone who had gone into it for a dare and then been killed by a train. Was it the ghost of this unlucky or just stupid trespasser that the man saw in Sharpthorne Tunnel that day?

  Another tunnel on the line, Cinder Hill Tunnel, which is a mere 62 yards long, gained fame in the Second World War when a train used it as a shelter from a German fighter which dived down to strafe it.

  The line from East Grinstead to Lewes became notorious in the 1950s. The Acts of 1877 and 1878 which authorised the building of this route specifically stated that a minimum of four trains a day in each direction had to call at Newick & Chailey, Sheffield Park and West Hoathly stations. The line lost money and British Railways Southern Region wanted to withdraw passenger services. The normal procedures were observed and the line was scheduled to lose its passenger services in June 1955, but in the event they ceased earlier due to a national strike by footplatemen. A zealous local resident then informed British Railways that the closure of the three stations was illegal and that the service would have to be restored. This the Southern Region did with extraordinary ill grace. Services were restored running between East Grinstead and Lewes but calling only at these three stations and omitting Barcombe, which was the only one which generated significant traffic! Not only that but the trains ran at the most inconvenient times possible and consisted of some of the most ramshackle coaches in use anywhere in the country. This ridiculous service of what might almost be described as ‘ghost trains’ ended when British Railways managed to have the original Acts repealed. The locals mockingly called it ‘the sulky service’.