Andrew Martin: The Blackpool Highflyer

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 this 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.

The excursionists were coming forwards now: Sunday suits, boaters and caps: faces frowning at having stopped somewhere short of Blackpool. They all wore the white rosettes and looked like supporters of a football team that had no name. Reuben was following behind, and he was reading a book as he came.

'What's Reuben up to?' I asked Clive, still feeling shaken and not seeing things aright. 'He's never reading a book, is he?'

'Looks like it,' said Clive. 'I'll tell you what, it must be a bloody good one.'

But then it came to me that the book must be his guard's manual.

The excursionists got to us first, hot and dusty from the track ballast. They all looked at the grindstone for a while.

'Who put that there?' said one of them.

Clive looked at me and rolled his eyes, before turning to the excursionist. 'Wreckers,' he said.

'You the driver?' said another excursionist, pointing to Clive.

'Depends,' said Clive. He was reaching into his poacher's pockets, taking out one of his little cigars. 'You're not going to start yammering on about being given a rough ride, I hope. We had all on to stop in time.'

'Daresay,' said the first excursionist, 'but Mr Hind's not going to be best pleased.'

Just then, Reuben came up with his book – it was his guard's manual. 'Stoppage or failure of engine?' he said, looking up from the book.

You could tell the excursionists couldn't quite credit this, but they shuffled out of the road in any case, to let Reuben see the millstone.

'Obstruction on the line,' I said.

'Then it's wrong page,' said Reuben, and there was a bit of cursing at this from the excursionists. Blackpool was waiting, and they were watching an old man read a book in the middle of a meadow.

Beyond Reuben, Martin Lowther was walking towards us in his gold coat, and behind him came the only man in the field wearing a topper. That had to be Hind himself, or was it Hind's father, for he was getting on in years.

Reuben licked his finger and turned over a few leaves of the manual. '"Should any part of the train in which the continuous brake is not in operation -" No, that's not it.'

There were two excursionists at my elbow. One of them was shaking his head, muttering 'Premier Line, they call themselves'. I looked him up and down: little fellow, coat over his arm. Still sweating, though.

'No sir,' I said, 'that is the Great Northern. We are "The Business Line".'

Well, they fell about at that for a while, but went quiet as Lowther and Hind came up: first a ticket inspector, then their governor – it could hardly have been a worse look-out for the poor buggers. But Lowther stopped twenty yards shy of us. As soon as he saw the stone on the line, he sat down, just sat right down in the bluebells beside the track, all crumpled inside his gold lace. There would be no more ticket inspecting that day. Beyond him, the bathtub was being passed down from one of the middle carriages.