Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter One The vacuum was created, and we were ready for the road. As we waited at Halifax Joint station for the starter signal, I sat down on the sandbox and carried on reading yesterday'sEvening Courier, which a cleaner had left on the footplate of our engine. 'There are cheering reports of the weather from the numerous seaside resorts, and indications that the Whitsuntide holidays will be spent under the most pleasant conditions. Yesterday was fine everywhere and in every way . . .' That would have been it, or something like, for the glass had been rising steadily since the start of March. 'Enjoyable sports at Thrum Hall,' I read. 'Everybody was in a happy mood at Halifax Cricket Ground this morning . . .' I folded the paper and stood up. My driver, Clive Carter, was standing on the platform below. Further below than usual, for the engine that had been waiting for us at the shed that morning was, by some miracle or mistake, one of Mr Aspinall's famous Highflyers, number 1418. These were the very latest of the monsters, and I hadn't reckoned on having one under me for another ten years at least. 'Now don't break it,' John Ellerton, shed super, had said to Clive and me that morning as he'd walked us over to it at six, with the sweat already fairly streaming off us. Atlantic class, the Highflyers were: 58 3/4 tons, high boiler, high wheel rims on account of 7-foot driving wheels, and higheverything, including speed. It was said they'd topped a hundred many a time, though never yet on a recorded run. They were painted black, like any Lanky engine, so it was a hard job to make them shine, but you never saw one not gleaming. The Lanky cleaners got half a crown for three tank engines, but it was three bob for an Atlantic, and that morning Clive had given the lad an extra sixpence a hexagon pattern on the buffer plates. The sun was trying to force its way through the glass roof of the platform, making a greenhouse of the place. Next to Clive was a blackboard on which the stationmaster himself, Mr Knowles, had written. 'special train', it said, then came heaps of fancy underlinings, followed by 'sunday 11th june, hind's mill whit excursion to blackpool'. After writing it, Knowles had turned on his heel and walked off. He might have given me a nod; I couldn't say. I'd nodded back of course, just in case. I'd heard that Knowles had started at the Joint by redrawing all the red lines in all the booking-on ledgers so as to shorten the leeway for lateness, and there he was: marked down for ever as hard-natured. But I thought he was all right. He knew his job. If he wanted a word with the guard of a pick-up goods, he'd be waiting on the platform exactly where the van came to rest. If the brass bell wanted shining he knew it,andjust where the nearest shammy was kept. Clive called up, so I leant out the side and looked along the platform. The clock said just gone five after, and we were due off at nineteenpast. We had eight flat-roofed rattlers on, one with luggage van and guard's compartment built in. Most of the excursionists were up by now, but a couple of pretty stragglers were coming along carryiMartin, Andrew is the author of 'Blackpool Highflyer ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780156030694 and ISBN 0156030691.