Re: The Silent Whistle
Part 2
The descent to Sandford was a very shallow gradient now compared to the route from Axbridge to Winscombe. He approached the old station with excitement and anticipation. When the railway land had been sold to a local businessman and railway enthusiast, the new owner had made sure the old buildings were kept in good order.
Now the site had been cleared and a brand-new state of the art retirement village with dementia unit and nursing home had been built. The charity that had built the site were charged with maintaining the historic station, and according to the brochure he had seen, they had made an excellent job of it.
Volunteers had turned it into a museum and visitor attraction, complete with a small section of track next the old platform, and installed a coach in GWR colours along with a pair of open wagons, and most recently, a small Sentinel quarry engine.
As Pete approached the site, he looked around for the track that used to service the local quarry. It was not well maintained, or particularly obvious, but he nipped up the narrow footpath where the track had been to be met by the sight of a cider-apple orchard with hundreds of trees in full bloom.
Scrambling back down to the old branch-line, he walked the short distance to the tarmac paved road running through the retirement village. Stopping briefly, he admired the stone goods-shed that had now been converted to a residents’ restaurant, before making his way onto the platform.
Once upon a time, local produce, including the famous West Country strawberries along with clotted cream would be brought here from the surrounding fields before being transported all over the country. Closing the branch-line in the sixties had put many local smallholders out of business. Doctor Beaching had a lot to answer for as far as the people around here were concerned.
Now he was at the station, and stood admiring the beautiful stonework, the intricate gingerbread woodwork on the gable ends, and the fancy locally made clay ridge-tiles.
He spent an hour in and around the building, walking through the carriage, watching a video, looking at the side-tipping narrow-guage quarry wagon and associated quarry tools, including two widow-makers, the “new-fangled” pneumatic drills that would shake a man’s bones and loose the flesh on his chest from his ribs.
Inside the waiting room, he admired the block-working machine that allowed trains to operate on a single-track line, bought a facsimile platform ticket from the booking office, and chatted with the volunteers before purchasing a slice of most excellent home-made cake and a steaming mug of hot chocolate that he consumed on a folding chair in one of the open wagons.
Waving a cheery goodbye, he dropped several coins into an old milk churn that was being used as a collection box, before heading across the road towards the gate leading to the pathway for the next leg of his journey to Congresbury.
Halfway across the former track-bed, he was seized by a sudden inexplicable feeling of dread. Transfixed as if he was being held in the grip of some unseen force, he was suddenly transported back through time and space to find himself standing in the middle of the permanent way, with a rapidly approaching steam engine bearing down on him. He tried to shout, tried to run, but it was no use as he was forced to watch a terrible scene unfold before him. There were loud explosions and flames under the engine’s wheels that spewed sparks from the brakes as it hurtled directly towards him.
Four open wagons, each bearing ten tonnes of stone destined for the nearby Portishead Docks construction, jumped their sprags in the local quarry, and broke away before running downhill to the nearby station. The trucks passed unhindered through the open quarry gates before rumbling across the thankfully quiet village road, then steadily picked up speed before screeching round the final curve where they forced their way through the goods-siding points, and with a rush of air, rocketed through the open door of the goods shed itself.
The buffers at the end of the building were meant to stop slow moving wagons, not a group of fully loaded trucks travelling at forty miles an hour. Slowed by the impact, but not completely stopped, wagons and the remains of the buffers careered through the end wall of the shed before rearing up the platform ramp and smashing into the small lamp-hut where they eventually came to a stop.
The signalman had set the home signal to all clear, and waited diligently for the through-train to pass. He was conscientious, and good at his job. Standing with his pen ready to log the precise moment the train passed his signal-box, he was distracted as movement caught his eye, and for just a moment he was confused by what he was witnessing, but only for moment.
The train was travelling at twenty-five miles an hour, and was already past the signal, so the railwayman jumped across to pull a lever that shot three sets of detonators onto the track before grabbing a red flag and waving it furiously from the steps of his domain.
The wagons were rapidly overtaking the train as they screeched round the final curve, spilling rocks that bounced down the embankment, threatening to smash into the train carriages. At the same time, one of the wagons tipped onto two wheels and the signalman was sure it was about to leave the rails, before it was miraculously pulled back onto the track by the lead wagon.
The driver heard the explosions as the front wheels of his Panier Tank engine struck the detonators, and immediately rammed the throttle shut before pulling the chain for the steam whistle and then slamming shut the handle of the train vacuum brake.
Suddenly, he saw the wagons pass him on his right before they disappeared into the goods shed. His fireman and best friend since school had each married the other’s sister, and were very close. The second-man had already started frantically winding the engine brake wheel just as the wagons burst through the end wall of the shed, throwing stone blocks and steel girders into the air and across the track.
“Jump, Sid”, bellowed Stan Mason, “JUMP!” but Sid ignored his friend and heaved harder on the brake wheel. Stan couldn’t bear the thought of his beloved sister losing her husband, so without thinking of himself, he grabbed his brother-in-law by his greasy overalls, and heaved him off the footplate onto the grass bank beside the track, a fraction of a second after Sid had thrown his coat over the boiler sight-glass.
It was an old engineman trick. Rain or shine, the footplatemen would hang a coat on the spectacle plate latches. If the water sight-glass broke, shards would shoot out under the force of scalding high-pressure steam ready to rip and tear anything in its way. The coats weren’t there just to wear, they were there to absorb the impact and stop the jets of murderous steam in an emergency.
Before Stan had time to brace himself, his engine struck the debris left by the runaway wagons. The track buckled and the train derailed, the wheels spewing chunks of ballast like a wave of stone as it screeched to a halt. Buckeye couplings had been around for decades, and thanks to them the whole train stayed upright before finally coming to a rest.
Pete stared in fascinated horror as he helplessly lived through the carnage and destruction. Just as the train buffers were about to hit him full square at his waist, he heard an anguished cry that was instantly cut off, then just as suddenly as it had begun, he found himself standing in the middle of the retirement village road again.
“Are you alright sir?” Confused, Pete discovered he could move again, and turned slowly towards the speaker who had an Eastern European accent, only to find himself staring at an eerie black figure standing stock-still on the end of the platform next to the now intact lamp-hut.
The woman who had spoken was one of the full-time carers who visited resident in their own apartments. She turned to see what this man was looking at, then shuddered as she turned back to him again.
“Is statue of Station Master, but I don’t like. I am Polish and he look like Stalin. I try not to look as I walk by.”
“Is everything okay, please?”
As Pete’s mind cleared, he swayed a little before recovering. “Oh, yes I am fine thank-you. It’s a little hot and I think I should get into the shade for the rest of my walk from now on.”
Up until then he had waved or said hello to nearly every walker or cyclist that he had met, but now he couldn’t get the strange visions out of his head, and remembered very little of the last part of his walk, or of the train journey home.
His wife was quite concerned when she got home to find him staring at his laptop, waiting for a web-page to load. Normally he would be bubbly and enthusiastic about his walk, but would always ask her first about her day. Not this time though. He was quiet, morose almost, giving only monosyllabic answers to her questions until she asked him firmly what was wrong.
Suddenly he couldn’t shut up, and told her about his strange episode at the station.
“Hmm,” replied his wife. “I think you must have been out in the sun too long and didn’t drink enough. Are you sure you didn’t nod off whilst you were at the station?”
“Well, I suppose I could have, but it felt so real, as if I was actually there at the time.”
“Had he been daydreaming?” he thought. Well, he must have been. Nothing else made sense.
Just as he closed the lid of his computer, the web site he was searching for finally finished loading. Had they looked, the pair would have seen the details of a fatal accident at Sandford Station in the 1920s, exactly 100 years ago to the day, when a set of quarry wagons broke free, careered downhill, smashed through two buildings, and killed a porter who was filling oil lamps in the station lamp-hut.