Andrew Martin: The Necropolis Railway

Later on, Dad and I would ride the train to Darlington to watch the Atlantics flying down the main line. After every one that went past, I would look up at him and say, 'What about that, Dad?' and the poor fellow always had to think of something to say, for I had no mother after all.

I had no aspirations to a life at sea; I did not want to be a butcher either. I would look at the letters on Dad's shop -'Stringer: Family Butcher' – and wonder what there was 'family' about it. I remember the barrels of ice in the cold room at the back and the fire in the shop at the front – those two always fighting each other, it wore me out to think of it somehow. My ambition instead was to be on the railways. I read everything I could lay my hands on that had for a subject trains, and had The Railway Magazine every month for 6d, which my Dad paid for because he thought it was improving. Not that he wanted me on the railways. Dad wanted me in his shop, but he changed his tune when myself and three other lads from Baytown were offered five bob each to build a bonfire for Captain Fairclough's firework-night carnival.

Fairclough lived at Ravenhall, and the whole headland was his garden. The fire took a while to get up, but I was told it was still smoking on the seventh, and I expect that's why the Captain sent me a letter, having heard from one of the other lads that I wanted a start on the North Eastern. Fairclough had more connections than York station, and he said that he would be willing to write to the general manager of the North Eastern Railway telling him I was an eminently suitable person to go on.

Now, if Captain Fairclough, who had done something at Khartoum and got the QMG for it, had suggested informing the Governor of Armley Gaol that I was a very good person for a fifteen-year stretch, then that would have been it as far as Dad was concerned: I would have been off. But he did still want me clerking in some way. 'I would prefer you in a post offering some prospect of advancement to stationmaster,' he would tell me, 'and I do not mean stationmaster at Robin Hood's Bay.'

'But the fellow up there, Langan, has thirty shillings a week,' I would say, 'and with his coal auctions he does a lot better than that. They're not lawful, of course, but that's all right.'

I would say things like that so as to tease Dad, and in hopes of making our pretty part-time slavey, Emma, start laughing, because then she was even prettier.

Dad took to spending evenings in the back parlour with The Railway Magazine, and in the morning he might say, in a thoughtful sort of way, "There are twenty thousand bikes taken into Newcastle station every year.' 'I know that, Dad,' I would say. 'Who do you suppose is in charge of them?' "The bicycle booking clerk, Dad. Who else is it going to be?'

'He would have to be quite a respectable party, looking after that amount of bikes.'

I did not want to be a bicycle booking clerk, so I would give no opinion on that. I wanted to be a driver, and I knew I could do it. I'd practised on my safety bike by coming down Askrigg Hill without touching the brakes or without hands on the handles, and without a lamp if it was after dark. I secretly felt that I was built for high speed: my eyesight, I felt certain, was six-six, and I knew I had the lean looks of an engine man. But Dad got his way, and I applied to the North Eastern for something that would lead me into the clerical line all the same. I had my certificates, and my testimonial from that famous gentleman, Captain Fairclough, and my letter was very well greased: 'I feel that I am able to hold my own in a gentlemanly way… I am seventeen years old, and need scarcely say that I am a total abstainer…' (Which was true give or take the odd sip of dad's Sunday night jugs of ale).

I was called to York by some johnnies in top coats who said there was a chance I could go on immediately as a lad porter at Grosmont, but first I had to answer such out-of-the-way questions as 'What is the difference between up and down?' I got my start the following week.

Monday 16 November continued

I asked a fellow where I might find Flannagan, the charge cleaner, and he just pointed to a whole row of huts at the top of the shed and walked on. Then Vincent reappeared, coming around the corner of a long-boilered locomotive. 'All right, mate?' he said. 'You're still looking a bit lost.'

He seemed in high spirits once again; he was a very changeable sort.

'Come here, mate,' he said, and he showed me into one of the huts in the line. There was a thin stove, and a seat like a shelf going all around halfway up – and that was it, except for a lad who was pretty much all teeth.

'This is where the firemen who do the half-link turns mess,' said Vincent. These words came out all of a tangle, and I hadn't untangled them before he went on: 'It's quite a decent spot,' he said, chucking his cap on the bench, 'except for this one thing. Have a good look about, and tell me what's missing.'

'Well,' I said, 'any number of things are missing,' which made Vincent look put out, and the toothy kid go red and walk out of the door.

"The main thing lacking in here,' said Vincent, who hadn't said a word to the toothy kid, 'is a kettle, and there is no kettle because there is no place to boil a kettle, are you with me?' Vincent knelt at the stove and flipped open the door, which fell down on its hinge and came to rest sticking out. 'So we put our billies on here,' he said. 'They take at least ten minutes to boil, and we do one at a time.'

I couldn't see why he was telling me this, but tried to keep up an interested face. 'Now, if it ever happened that all the lads came in here at once' said Vincent, 'this is the order in which we would brew up: first billy on would be Clive Castle, who's a passed fireman who sometimes does firing turns on the half, depending on how busy they are with the Brookwood runs. He's sort of half on the half and half not. Next it would be Joe somebody – just can't quite remember his name – who also fires up at odd times. Then it would be the last fireman, the bloke who's just gone.' 'He's full-time on the half though?' I said. Vincent nodded. 'What's that fellow's name?'

Vincent gave me another of those long looks that he went in for. 'Mike,' he said after a while, and it caused him a lot of pain to say that word.

'Next billy on,' he continued, 'is mine because I was passed for firing on the half-link six weeks back, but I've been kept back on cleaning – though really I'm just kicking my heels – until everything's put straight in the office. Now if you should ever come up from cleaning to firing on the half you'd put your billy on the stove next, making you fifth in line and last.'

I told him that if I ever came up from cleaning to firing on the half-link I would probably bring my tea in a bottle, and he didn't like this one bit. Then I said, 'Look, what is this half-link business? Engine men work in links, and a link is a sort of bundle of duties. You can't have a half-link, and no one's told me I'm to be on it in any case.' 'You sure of that?' 'Honour bright.' But I could tell that he still didn't believe me.

'But you are on it,' he said slowly. 'I know that from the special cleaning duties you've been given. And why shouldn't there be a half-link: it just means a little link, that's all, and I'll tell you what: I'd rather be on half-link than bottom-link.' 'Bottom-link?' "The bottom-link's the one above the half-link. Slow-goods: cutting coal waggons in the dark, hour after hour.' 'Why in the dark?'

'You get in amongst moving coal waggons and it's bloody dark, I'll tell you.'

'But what does the half-link do, then?' I asked, for he still hadn't got to that.

"The half-link isn't like any other link. It does a dog's dinner of local turns, but most of its work is on that one particular special sort of run.' He stopped here and gave me a queer look. 'But you don't need telling about that, mate.'