XVI. Trains
WATCHING THE TRAINS
Used to watch all the engines on the Horwich
line. There was Puffing Billy, that could only
go to Blackrod, and back, backwards. Then they'd hitch
shunters to carriages and play at puzzles,
putting them in and out of the sheds twenty
times without getting them right. All their shuttles
and their fussing about wouldn't be needed
if you could lift them off the lines like I could.
Funny though, with my toy rails down, if I cheated,
taking the engine right off the track, it would
spoil my play. Real shunting wasn't the same.
making it easy wasn't playing the game.
THE RAILWAY BRIDGE
When you went down the path by the Cut, it took
you by the railway. There was the bridge that, if
you stood under it, thundered like guns and shook
rusty drops over you. You could watch drivers
as they polished the name-plates. I'd catch a whiff,
choky and hot, of the smoke. The travellers
didn't notice you going by, each window
ran into dazzle and you lost their faces.
The lines sagged as they passed, had to let them go.
Signal-arms clanked to 'Stop' when the last traces
of their noise had gone. I'd wish I'd chosen
to watch there when we went by train to Bolton.
IN THE SIGNAL-BOX
I especially liked junctions. He let me
in the signal-box. Pulling levers over
meant a train nowhere near would have to agree
with your choice. All its warning shrieks, its shaking
of the lines would avail it nothing. Closer
it came, ringing the bells, setting wires whining,
till its trumpetings echoed from down the track;
out from bridges its smoke burst in challenges,
spreading banners that hid the world at its back,
and the pistons shot huge couplings into frenzies
of convulsion, to climax thrusting ahead.
It went grinding its blind way where we had said.
BUFFERS
I like buffers. The wagons, weighty, clonking,
rigid objects, will yield just there, the brightest
of their metal. The engine now is honking
in a dominant strain a marching order
against which there can be only the slightest
of resistance, so each transmits the pressure
down the line in precise obedience. They
even call out by number. Notice how it's
done in detail. Each yields so much to each. Way
is a gently considered compromising
in which this tries to spare that the worst of hits
as they strongly together act obeying.
ENGINES LIKE PEOPLE
Saw the engines like people. Saw Sir Nigel
Gresley a knight, smart, streamlined, dashing and fast;
the expresses important men, powerful
prime ministers, businessmen, mayors; the 2 - 6 -
2's were workmen that hauled freight trains, made to last,
black as their smoke, and in shunting yards would fix
all the puzzles of rearranging wagons.
But it was Puffing Billy, my favourite,
that was just like a child. Through all the seasons
he would take people from Horwich to Blackrod. It
was no more than a mile. Part engine and part
carriage, I would be like him, loyal at heart.
THE METAL ADVERTISEMENTS
There were metal advertisements on platforms
made out of 'stove enamel', Daddy said. They
would last longer than paper in the rainstorms,
frosts and the burning suns — Mazzawattee Tea,
Reckitt's Blue, Coleman's Mustard, and Craven 'A'.
Just like a bath or a sink, water would be
kept away from the iron underneath. They'd last
brightly for ever, the Bisto Kids sniffing
on through winters and summers, tying the past
on to the future. But there were holes starting,
sunspots blackening the orange, so that one day
Time would have his revenge and they'd rust away.
VIEW FROM THE TRAIN
From the train see the telephone wires dancing,
lifting their arms to let the poles run under,
though in fact that's where they're fixed. The advancing
sides of the cutting go skipping to climax
in the sky, though in fact they go no faster
than the foundations of this bridge. See the tracks
helter-skeltering into and out of each
other, and the sleepers so woken up they spin
past your eye like harvester-slats. That high screech
dropping to low as it passes — what a din
from a train that is checked by clocks every day:
you could think it had lost its permanent way.
EVOLUTION
The compartment had two long seats facing each
other, in dark spotted pink, with wide photos
set above them of Snowdon and Blackpool beach,
Keswick, Loch Lomond, all in a browny grey.
Heard Miss Moscrop in history tell us they chose
back in the past to put coaches in that way
side by side because people expected stage
coaches to ride in. And long before that they'd
made long seats all upholstered, and then an age
long before that they were sitting on seats made
out of wood. Further back still, one early day,
they were sitting on tree trunks, eating their prey.
LOCOMOTIVES
As I stood by the glazed brick walls, brown and white,
under the fretted canopy of Bolton
railway station, I'd look at the engine's bright
couplings, oil-smooth, and the solid cylinder,
catching a glimpse of the hot fire, see the cannon
chimney all ready to go 'Crump! Crump!' faster,
faster, faster; the long fat boiler harnessed
over with brass piping; in the tender
coal like black sugar-lumps,; and the steam that hissed
out its unused power — and I'd think over
how those organs for forcing were all set out
so that little warm beings could move about.
THE SMOKE FROM THE EXPRESSES
From the Pike you could see the smoke from the trains.
They were like long cigarettes pushed in a groove,
keeping level and straight though they went through plains,
hills and valleys. The smoke was like a feather,
but it changed like a flame. You would see it move
slower and fainter than the train, its tether,
which was odd, and it trailed back or to the side
up from some strange volcano's vent that slid through
the earth. Coal there, dug up from earth, helped them ride
smoothly from Preston to Manchester. Smoke blew
away vanishing, never more to be seen,
like their journey, as if it had never been.
NARROW WAYS
It was fun running down the little narrow
way to the railway station. The walls were high,
but you saw where you went. At Bolton, to go
over the rails to the platforms you went through
a long girdered bridge, smoke bubbling to the sky
up from the trains underneath you , but you knew
you were safe. How I liked following the sheep
paths on the hill: in Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle
there was one that went up and up, and there deep
down in the valley the farm, but the little
girl at last reached that cosily sheltered door.
Paths were journeys that people had been before.
ON THE RAILWAY LINES
Knew so much about railway lines in Horwich.
Engines, far off, were little, like toys, drawing
model wagons and oil-drums and coaches which
followed so smoothly, exactly. At junctions
they were handed across like with a new law
onto another line; points were illusions.
And the way was all levelled: hills had been grooved,
plains had been raised, and the mountain was tunnelled.
When you went through the dark hole, it only proved
lines led to light and to stations where baffled
snorting engines must wait for their dismissal
by the uniformed guard to blow his whistle.
THE HORNBY CATALOGUE
Got a catalogue. Showed her the Hornby train.
Mammy said, 'Look at the ones outside! Can't they
by your toys?', pointing out through the window-pane.
Preston expresses, though their shrieks echoed all
over Horwich, at that distance you could say
looked just as tiny as Dublo, and how small
was the old Puffing Billy, having to slog
backwards and forwards all day, and in the war
Coronation Scot carriages — catalogue-
new — had their beauty locked up. Could say you saw
toys, not trains. But they weren't shrieking 'cause you said
so, weren't working for you. weren't locked in your shed.