Shadows in the Steam Page 3

  The quality that man or wife,

  Whose chance or choice attains,

  First of this sacred stream to drink,

  Thereby the mastery gains.

  Apparently the well became famous, at least in Cornwall, and many newly married couples would head for the well when the nuptials had ended, each hoping that by being the first to quaff a mouthful of its limpid waters, they would establish who wore the trousers in the marriage.

  The poet Robert Southey (1774–1843) visited St Keyne’s Well and felt impelled to mark the occasion and the legend in verse. Part of it goes like this, his poetic comment being that of someone worldly-wise:

  I hasten’d as soon as the wedding was done,

  And left my wife in the porch;

  But I’ faith she had been wiser than me,

  For she took a bottle to church.

  A neat but little-used halt. Its full name is St Keyne Wishing Well Halt, and it is a request stop on the Liskeard to Looe line. It all looks very tranquil by day, but ghost hunters have registered high levels of unexplained activity during the hours of darkness.

  The custom certainly continued at least up to the twentieth century, and the story goes that one pair of newly-weds were on a Liskeard to Looe train heading to St Keyne. The young bride was so eager to get the upper-hand over the groom that she opened the carriage door before the train stopped, fell onto the line and broke her neck, dying instantly. This tragedy is thought by some to have imbued the halt and its surroundings with a mass of paranormal energy. Consequently, psychic investigators and ghost hunters have made many visits, usually at dead of night, and gathered much fascinating data. A young woman in a white bridal outfit is said to haunt the area around the well and the railway halt.

  COUNTY DURHAM

  Darlington, North Road Station

  The Stockton & Darlington Railway was the first railway authorised by Parliament for the conveyance of goods and passenger traffic hauled by steam traction. This makes it of great historical importance despite the fact that few facilities were provided for passengers in its early years and that horses provided much of the traction. The line opened in 1825.

  The S&D’s first passenger station in Darlington was situated close to the present North Road Station which opened in 1842. Back in the 1850s this station witnessed a striking manifestation of the paranormal. A watchman used to patrol the station and its surroundings, which included the nearby goods depot. This particular night was a cold one and, having done a patrol, the man went to a room in the cellar of the station for a drink and some snap. No sooner was he sitting down than he was aware that he had company. Without having made any noise in entering, a stranger and a black retriever dog were eying him up. They were uninvited, they were trespassing and there was something odd, even eerie, about their appearance. Not bothering to ask questions, the watchman jumped up, hoping that by doing so he might persuade the unwelcome duo to leave. When they didn’t he aimed a punch at the stranger. The watchman was a big and powerful man and the blow would have felled most mortals, but in this case it simply went through the figure in front of him and did so with such force that he injured his knuckles on the wall behind. By now he was aware that there was more to his visitors than met the eye, but his immediate thought that they were ghosts was modified somewhat when the stranger called out in pain and fell back as if the blow had landed on him fairly and squarely. As its master was going ‘Ow!’ the dog started to savage the watchman’s leg. However, the visitors must have decided that enough was enough and they went through a door into the adjacent coal cellar. His blood boiling at this interruption of his routine, the watchman followed them into the coal cellar, but they had disappeared, despite the door being the only means of entrance or exit. Probing a heap of coal to see if his adversaries were hiding seemed pretty pointless and so the watchman returned to the cellar and his unfinished tea. The whole bizarre episode had taken less than a minute. His leg was throbbing with pain but it was strange that when he rolled his trousers up to examine the damage the dog had done with its fangs, there wasn’t so much as a mark to be seen. What kind of a dog was it, he asked himself, which could cause such pain with no visible evidence?

  The watchman, as the reader may have guessed, was no shrinking violet, and after work he was soon telling anyone who would listen about his nocturnal adventure. It was soon all over Darlington and, of course, there were some who thought he was just an attention-seeker. In the brouhaha brought about by his revelations, it was remembered that just a few years previously a railway clerk who was always accompanied at work by a black retriever had committed suicide in the same room where the watchman claimed to have encountered the apparitions. Some people accused him of having known this and used the information to get his moment in the limelight. Such taunts had no effect on the watchman, who never budged from his story.

  Trains still call at North Road on their way to and from Darlington and Bishop Auckland. Most of what were the old station buildings are now occupied by the Darlington Railway Centre and Museum.

  Darlington North Road. The train-shed in pre-grouping days.

  CUMBRIA

  Lindal Moor

  Lindal was a wayside station on the main line of the small but enterprising Furness Railway from Carnforth to Barrow. This part of the line used to be in Lancashire. Large amounts of haematite iron ore were extracted in the district around Lindal, which consequently was riddled with underground workings. To service these workings, Lindal Ore Sidings were constructed, and it was at these sidings that one of railway history’s most bizarre happenings occurred on 22 September 1892.

  A Furness Railway goods engine, Class D1, No.115, nicknamed a ‘Sharpie’ after its builders, Messrs Sharp Stewart, was standing light engine in the sidings when suddenly there was an enormous rumbling sound and a huge crater opened up. The driver, Postlethwaite, and Fireman Robinson leapt for their lives as their 50-ton locomotive disappeared into the gaping hole. A break-down gang was summoned from Barrow and they managed to extricate the tender. Removing the locomotive was going to be a more difficult matter and so they returned to Barrow for their heavy lifting gear. Imagine their surprise when, on their return, the locomotive was nowhere to be seen! It is thought to have ended up about 200ft down in the honeycomb of subterranean workings from which ore had been extracted and which had so unexpectedly collapsed. It is still there, and local legend says that it is running on the Hades & District Underground Railway! Over the years there has been talk of recovering it. Now there’s a challenge for railway preservationists! No.115 is effectively sealed in below ground and is quite probably largely unaffected by rust and corrosion, although it is likely to be bearing the scars from its fall.

  Mining subsidence in the Lowfield Pit, which had workings beneath the railway, was blamed for this freakish occurrence and the Furness Railway Co., aware that other tracks in the area ran over similar subterranean workings, quickly had them packed with old railway sleepers in an attempt to prevent a similar incident in the future. It was not until the spring of 1893 that normal working was resumed at Lindal. Mining continued in the area and it was only half jokingly that the men used to quip about the new safety hazard, steam locomotives falling through the roof!

  The line through Lindal opened in 1851 and the station closed in 1951, exactly a century later. The line remains operational but only a practised eye would be able to identify that at one time there were extensive sidings at this point. The route from Carnforth westwards along the northern side of Morecambe Bay and on viaducts across the estuaries of the Rivers Leven and Kent is a scenic delight even if the waters of Morecambe Bay have virtually ceased to lap the promenade at Grange-over-Sands.

  Maryport

  West Cumbria is a strange but fascinating part of the UK. It is out on a limb, not really being on the way to anywhere. People going to and from Scotland head up the West Coast Main Line or the M6, while others visiting the beauties of the Lake District do just that, and consider that Worki
ngton, Whitehaven and Maryport have little to offer. To travel by train from Lancaster via Barrow to Carlisle requires patience and fortitude. There are a few through trains. They take over three and a half hours – otherwise the passenger has to change at Barrow, taking even longer. This is a journey replete with visual interest but, especially when undertaken in one of those abominations known as a ‘Pacer’, a diesel multiple-unit, it would only be a dyed-in-the-wool railway enthusiast who would consider doing it a second time.

  West Cumbria has been and remains isolated, but it has a proud record of mining, industrial and maritime activity. Coal was extracted from outcropping seams near Whitehaven as early as the thirteenth century, but major exploitation of the district’s coal and iron ore resources began in the eighteenth century and reached a peak in the following century. The area was exceptionally hard-hit in the years between the two world wars, and subsequently went into a recession from which it would not be unfair to say that it has never fully recovered. There is still much poverty in West Cumbria.

  Few places in the area were harder hit than Maryport. In the inter-war years, unemployment in Maryport on occasions went as high as 80 per cent of the population of working age. In its heyday huge amounts of coal were exported through the docks, and many small ocean-going ships were built in the mouth of the River Ellen. Proposals to place the town on the expanding railway network were made as early as the 1830s. The first section of the Maryport & Carlisle Railway was opened in 1840 and completed throughout in 1845. Extensions were made under the auspices of other railway companies southwards down the coast through Workington, Whitehaven and Millom to Barrow.

  In the 1930s a man, perhaps driven to distraction by Maryport’s economic woes, threw his baby onto the railway line whereupon it was promptly run over by a train, receiving appalling injuries from which it died a few hours later. The man was hanged for the crime, but on occasions for many years after this needless tragedy the screams of a newborn baby in extreme agony resounded around the spot, much to the horror of local residents. The line through Maryport is still operational.

  Tebay

  The trains that rush up and down the West Coast Main Line today pass the small settlement of Tebay in the twinkle of an eye. To most travellers the name ‘Tebay’ only recalls a service area on the M6. To railway enthusiasts, however, the place has much greater significance. It stands at the bottom of the climb to Shap which, with Beattock Bank north of Lockerbie in Scotland, represented the most formidable inclines facing northbound Anglo-Scottish steam trains. The climb itself involves four miles on a gradient of 1 in 75. So formidable are the Cumbrian Fells that when a line from London, Crewe and Preston to Glasgow was first mooted, it was believed that the steam engines of the time would not be powerful enough to make the climb. Instead for a while passengers could travel to an obscure place on the Fylde Peninsula which came to be known as Fleetwood after a major local landowner. There they embarked on steamers for Ardrossan in Scotland. However, steam technology moved very quickly and locomotives became powerful enough to ascend these heights, albeit with a sturdy shove from behind with a banking engine.

  The line over Shap was built by the Lancaster & Carlisle Railway and formally opened late in 1846. Tebay was the place chosen for an engine shed to house the bankers, and a settlement of houses and associated social facilities was built for the railway employees. In that sense Tebay was a railway village every bit as much as Crewe was a railway town. The sight of a steam locomotive at full stretch pounding up Shap with the banking engine blasting away with brute force at the back was an awesome one, and also highly photogenic. Tebay and the lonely country abutting the climb to Shap became the haunt of generations of railway enthusiasts and some very fine photographs by the likes of Ivo Peters, Eric Treacy and Derek Cross survive to give an idea of the heroic physical efforts required by the crews of heavy trains climbing the bank. Steam working over Shap continued almost to the bitter end of regular steam power in the UK, and in the last few years enthusiasts from far and wide made the pilgrimage to enjoy and record a scene they knew was about to disappear.

  Engine sheds were potentially very dangerous places and official entry was prohibited to all except those with written permission. However, notices not to trespass in such places did little to deter most railway enthusiasts who exercised great ingenuity in finding ways to ‘bunk’ sheds, this being slang for getting round them without a permit. We do not know whether the enthusiast concerned had permission, but he visited Tebay shed in 1967 to photograph some of the last generation of banking engines. These were Standard Class ‘4’ 4–6–0s, and a pretty rundown lot they were by this time. Tebay was only a small shed and just two locomotives were present when he visited. There didn’t seem to be anyone about, even if he had tried to ask for permission. Apart from the sizzle and gurgle of these two engines in light steam, the place was as silent as a grave. Anyway, he took what photographs he could and left, still rather puzzled by the apparent total lack of living beings in the shed. Imagine his surprise when his photographs came back from the processor and there in several of the pictures was a human figure staring at the camera with a slightly enigmatic expression. Even more enigmatic was that the figure was diaphanous and details of the locomotive in front of which he was standing could clearly be seen. He knew the figure had not been there when he took the photographs. Was it a ghost?

  DERBYSHIRE

  Chesterfield

  The main line of the former Midland Railway leaving Chesterfield in a northerly direction shares the valley of the River Rother with the A61 trunk road and the Chesterfield Canal. Just to the north of Chesterfield is Tapton Junction where a freight-only line diverges to the east and avoids Sheffield passing via Staveley on its way to Rotherham. The main line heads for Sheffield via Dronfield and Dore.

  On the hillside east of the railway at Tapton Junction stands Tapton House, now part of Chesterfield College of Further Education, about a mile from the town centre. It was to Tapton House that George Stephenson (1781–1848), often called ‘the Father of the Railways’, retired to spend the last ten years of his life. He had been born in humble circumstances but his was a life of rich achievement and he became a wealthy man with a host of business interests in railways, coal mines and ironworks, for example. He had never lost his broad Geordie accent nor had he cultivated much in the way of refined manners but he was on intimate terms with many of the ‘movers and shakers’ of his generation and there were frequently distinguished guests at his house. They tended to be hard-headed practical people like himself. He had little time for the idle fops of the aristocracy and gentry.

  He remained very active during his years at Tapton and took great pleasure in the grounds of the house and in gardening. One of his less well-known endeavours was an attempt to cultivate a perfectly straight cucumber. While this was a worthy task in itself, and one to which he brought all his customary resource and determination, it was fated to be unsuccessful.

  The final resting place of George Stephenson’s mortal remains is under the communion table in Trinity Church, close by. It seems, however, that his spirit could not abide to be away from his beloved Tapton House, and what is thought to be his ghost is seen from time to time moving from room to room as if in search of something. Not only seen but heard, because on occasions the ghost asks, ever so politely but in a Geordie accent you could cut with a knife, for a cup of tea.

  The problem of the cucumber remains unresolved.

  George Stephenson. The ‘Father of the Railways’ became rich and famous but never lost his thick north-eastern accent.

  A view looking north from Chesterfield Station in the direction of Tapton.

  Tunstead Farm

  The line from Buxton northwards to Chapel-en-le-Frith, New Mills and Stockport was opened in 1863. It was initially operated by the Stockport, Disley & Whaley Bridge Railway and absorbed by the London & North Western Railway in 1866. The building of the line had not been easy. Any plan for public passenger-c
arrying railway lines had to be presented to Parliament in the form of a Bill to be considered by both Houses. If it was passed, it became what was known as a Local and Personal Act which, among other things, would equip the company concerned with rights for compulsory purchase. These would be exercised where landowners were unwilling to sell land or buildings, and one such place where this happened was Tunstead Farm. This remote place overlooked the railway between Chapel-en-le-Frith and Whaley Bridge, and it also overlooked Coomb Reservoir. The terrain is very hilly in this neighbourhood and the engineering works were correspondingly heavy. The route had been surveyed to cross part of the land associated with Tunstead Farm but so many problems were encountered with the embankments on this section of line and with bridges that collapsed and had to be rebuilt that eventually the company decided on a new route avoiding Tunstead Farm altogether. The engineers encountered far fewer problems on this adjacent new alignment and the work went ahead quickly. The company let it be known that geological conditions had forced the change of route. Local people knew otherwise.