Semaphore Signals

Hex on Hampton Gay - a ghost story

2010-06-12T23:19:00.014+01:00

A cold Christmas Eve, in the year of our lord 1874. Snow on the fields, ice on the rails: hard and sharp as a crack in a rod of pig-iron. An overloaded passenger train heading north for Birmingham; running late, pressure up, double-headed from Oxford in a bid to cheat time. On she goes; on, on, thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour. Couplings heave and creak, pistons race; three hundred tons and three hundred souls a-clattering and a-swaying down the frozen line, riding on to the beat of two leviathans, raising clouds to cover the moon.

Then "Whoa there!" Shouts from a carriage as one good temperance-observing passenger raises alarm. The wagon behind the second engine is off the rails and bumping along the sleepers. Driver reacts. Instinctively, he applies the locomotive brakes and throws the regulator into reverse.

Oh to have whistled for brakes from the rear. To have consulted the manual. Then four and thirty God-fearing souls may not have met with their end that terrible night when the heavy train overran that fearful wagon of doom, plunging they all down the embankment into the frigid canal below.

Stout men on yuletide breather from yonder paper-mill most handy carried the dead and mangled to their place of work, adjacent to the Hampton Gay manor house. But when the storeroom of the mill was as full of a-weeping and a-wailing and a-lamenting as it could be; not to mention the twenty-six mutilated cadavers dripping horrid goo all over the flagstones, a foreman hearty knocked at the great wooden door of the big house.

"We bow to you as your servants, master and beseech upon you for your pardon, this night of Noels. All our miserable village hovels are full of a-grieving and a-suffering my lord. The mill is a place of death and hanging limbs. What room can you spare for these poor orphans and widows still a-shivering this night of all nights? What mercy, master, for these grieving wretches whose distress we hear a-moaning most piteous? In this fearful cold, with no-one to hold?"

The door of the big house slammed shut. Its inhabitants' joys... uninterrupted.

Fire and water, earth and air. Ashes to ashes, dust to dusty, slight the fall from lord to monkey.

From that night, the villagers spoke in low tones about a hex being placed on the old Hampton Gay house, though not a man would own it as his. The village was as nothing without blessing from the manor and all knew that, however hard they prayed to their maker, the sins of their master would be atoned by they all and right should that be, for life's a bitch.

But neither did these village folk rise from their humble doings on that spring evening in 1877 when the call went up that the old manor was ablaze. Their toiling would continue… uninterrupted; for they heard, in the gaps between the cracking and heaving of a dying house, the subdued clatter of the old wheels of the world going about their business.

The next morn saw this place of once comfortable and lordly repose now as a smouldering shell, its fireplaces exposed to the four winds, a house of no cheer. Bereft of the manor to kowtow to and left only with that squat little effort of a church such as Pevsner later sneered at most snooty, the blighted village of Hampton Gay did itself then fall, its spirit broken and all trace of the poor village hovels did wither.

Some say eyes are windows to the soul. Certainly, the windows of a house are its eyes. What can be seen from the empty mullioned windows of this old stone house? A village... as it was? That may be for the fancy of another teller in another time. But it has been said by travellers, adrift of the last train before Christmas and seeking shelter in this lonely place, that when snow is underfoot and ice is on the rails, a screak of the wrong bloody brakes may yet be heard to follow a distant cry of "Whoa there", as another darkness is layered on darkness.

And then the door goes.

Story © Adrian Brown 2010

Review: Mystery in the Channel by Freeman Wills Crofts

2008-11-11T00:52:00.014Z

My first taste of Freeman Wills Crofts and he didn't disappoint with this nautical detection.

The writing-style is dated, but mostly easy-going and often compelling. Exclamation marks are used to denote moments of revelation and there's much "bless my soul, major, it's not often tragedy comes to Newhaven" type dialogue. Sterling stuff.

One notable difference between this Golden Age yarn and those historical detective fictions I've read by modern authors is that Crofts does little in the way of evoking atmospheres of the time through description. Journeys, even a trip on the boat-train to Dieppe, are usually over within a paragraph. Crofts wrote for a contemporary audience and not for historians yet-unborn, so backdrop details often seem taken for granted and merely sketched. But this hardly matters, for the `tache-twirling 1930s Boy's Own idyll of sleuthing with an engineering theme comes alive through the author's teasing voice and the exactitudes of his detective's reasoning. There are no female characters [notoriously hard to draw] and no attempt at a love-interest subplot, indicating Crofts knew his limits and knew his readership. This is a chap's book and, moreover, a book written for the kind of chap who had useful hobbies and who enjoyed tinkering in the garage.

The best bit, for me, comes in the final chapter. We're ten short pages from the close, on the edge of our fireside chairs, racing ahead yet wanting the fun to never end and Inspector French is staked out in the rain at 2AM, awaiting his quarry. What better time then, to spend a moment reflecting on those other cases he has investigated which also featured a sea-theme?

Crofts, you old sausage. But you needn't have worried. Even without Inspector French advertising your back-catalogue at this beautifully-judged point in the narrative, I'd still have been back for more.

Review: Murder at Deviation Junction by Andrew Martin

2007-08-11T21:37:00.007+01:00

I have enjoyed the preceding books in this series. Well-written, vivid period detail and the tang of steam dancing from the pages. However, as has been noted by other reviewers, the weakness in Stringer's previous outings has been the whodunnit plotting, which has not always worked as well as it might.

Happily, for me, Murder at Deviation Junction is the book which addresses that shortcoming. Not so much a whodunnit this time, but more of a pursuit-storyline [which really gets going in the second half] recalling Buchan's The 39 Steps. Indeed, there is a certain playfulness here, as Martin teases with the readers' expectations concerning the fate of a certain someone who is, more than once, surely just a footfall away from being Scuddered.

Descriptions are perhaps more economical than before, but still convey a rich sense of class, place and time. Curiosities abound; coarse vocabularies in the dialogue between workmates, odd little bits of period detail and some memorable motifs, like the wind-gauge on that viaduct... The snowbound landscapes are beautifully evoked, as are the blast furnaces of "Ironopolis" and the hard men who worked them. Jim Stringer is an outsider in this environment, and we share his trepidation.

There's also some domestic rumblings riding the bow-wave of social change, as Jim's wife Lydia takes up with the Co-operative Society. Again, we share his unease. Well, this particular demographic did, anyway.

But never far away is the railway, with it's fire-breathing Ivatt 4-4-0s, it's ganger's huts and marshalling yards, it's clanking semaphores and lonely wayside halts. We ride the night train and, within the cocoon of our steam-heated compartment, we are transported back to an age when the railways really mattered.

Don't be put off by the rather naff "Steam Detective" marketing tag. If you appreciate a ripping yarn well-told, and have a taste for the Edwardian period as lived by working men, you will surely love this. And the denouement is truly stylish.

Published by Faber & Faber 2007

The Strategic Steam Reserve

2006-01-23T01:09:00.004Z

Heard the one about the Strategic Reserve? A cosy little cold-war conspiracy to go with the notion that conspiracy theories just ain't what they used to be, and one to warm the cockles of every steam lover's heart.

The pitch: A transport infrastructure would need to be rebuilt following any nuclear winter eventuality and the fortunate survivors wouldn't be able to procure sufficient stocks of diesel fuel with which to run modern rail traction. Furthermore, the blast would probably knock out their solid-state electrical systems. Steam traction requires no such delicate technology to function, managing to do the business by dint of just water, homegrown coal and a match. Hence the persistent whispers pertaining to a government store of late-era B.R. steam locomotives supposedly mothballed for use in a post nuclear-holocaust scenariariario and stored in a secret cavern accessed from Box Tunnel.

It's a good story: the idea of these slumbering leviathans, long presumed scrapped but really living on in a secret subterranian existence; de-numbered, painted black and tended by fitters who have signed the Official Secrets Act. Sleeping sentinals resting in their dark cavern; greased, oiled and waiting for the day when they will stride out unchallenged into the desertified plains of what had once been Wiltshire. Rumours fed by old engineman stories from the 50's and 60's, often based around mysterious and unaccountable stock movements, with locomotives going missing from sheds and disappearing from records. Footplate crews relieved of their loco just a few minutes into their shift, sent home with a full day's pay and handing over to an unknown crew, never to see that crew nor that particular engine again.

Unfortunately, several people have noticed that there's no points inside Box tunnel and that there appears to be no connecting tunnel running off inside. And, apparently, First Great Western drivers haven't signed the Official Secrets Act. Aww, man...

Interest then focusses on another tunnel aperture alongside the eastern portal, a remnant from an old quarrying operation and used at some point as an ammunition store. Here, we are entering what has, indeed, just been revealed as an entrance to a massive secret underground government bunker. Well, it was declassified in December 2005, so it's not so secret any more, but the Burlington complex at Corsham really is impressive, not least by it's scale. The underground city was designed to form the seat of government after the bang and had facilities to house 4,000 civil-servants in it's air-conditioned and filtrated chambers. The site covers an area of over two-thirds of a mile and boasts a grid network of streets totalling an unbelievable sixty miles. The BBC Wiltshire pages even feature a video of a drive around on one of their electric buggies. It's sorta like James Bond, only a 1950's British Austerity version. Even the PM's Office has little in the way of fripperies. The MOD have a fine page of photo's here.

But what of the Strategic Steam Reserve? Could the machines from an older and, arguably, better age have been hiding here? If not now, then at any time in the past? Cynics will point to the dimensions just inside the old quarrying tunnel being too tight for large express engines. Okay for small tank engines hauling low two-axle wagons filled with ammo, but doubters have said that there's no way you could get a Bulleid Pacific around those sharp turns. Some of that rock could be polystyrene of course...

Well, for those who really want to believe, I found this. According to Russ' very credibly named witness, the SSR duly existed and was indeed stashed away here at Corsham, Wilts up until the mid 80's, when it fell victim to spending cuts under the evil Cruella de Thatcher and the decision was made to cut up all the remaining locomotion on-site then burn the steel away with strong acid, the steely-acidy solution being subsequently imbibed by Cruella as she danced a curious ritualistic pattern around the smouldering cauldron whilst chanting something about Ken Barlow.

Russ' persuasive photographic evidence notwithstanding, I am happy to make my own revelation. We do still have a strategic steam reserve. The bad news is that instead of the black shadow fleet of legend, it's blue with red stripes and someone's bolted a somewhat unconvincing cheeky face to the smokebox door. The good news is that Pete Waterman says it's Tony's on the nod.

A Trainspotter's Guide to Women

2005-12-17T17:48:00.006Z

...but first we eat our meat.

Another Country

It was a different world, the railways. Another country, things were different there. Remember the music? Have you forgotten already? Such a spread of music; from the clattering, cussing of a goods yard or the rush of an express hammering through the station just inches from our snotty but appreciative noses, to the elegiac dreaminess of a bucolic and quaint branch-line, it’s languid murmurings riding on a bed of birdsong and soft country accents. Ah, Adlestrop. Often wistful; the train in the distance, the night train crossing the border replete with cheque and postal-order, the Brief Encounters, the fearful whistle separating doomed lovers as slowly, slowly, but with great certainty, three thousand of Crewe’s finest horsepower would bellow at the sky in an urge to be gone.

The old railway, the railway of ay fond farewells and slumbering sleepers and the single red tail-light receding into a ghost-green yonder has been superseded and lives on only in the imagination of aging men. The old ghost railway, replaced now by a faceless corporate machine where marketing messages form the only desired engagement of our senses. Is it any wonder railways are now treated with contempt instead of enthusiasm? They have abandoned their remit to inspire. The modern trains are generic European multiple-units with weedy little bus-engines buzzing away under your feet. Carriage lights are ultra-bright, so you can’t see out the window at night. The windys don’t open, so you can’t lean out of them. The seats are thinly-padded, so you don’t get too comfortable. There’s hardly any legroom. The Guard’s coming over on the P.A., only he’s not the Guard anymore, s/he’s a “Customer Care Manager” and the message announces a snack-trolley will arrive presently and that smoking is not permitted anywhere on the train. The toilet isn’t in the draughty vestibule anymore, there isn’t a vestibule. The toilet-door opens straight into the open carriage, so no chance of a sneaky biffta and every chance of broadcasting your bowel movements to a captive audience. And as we are all now treated as semi-morons who can’t be trusted to operate a door-handle, the doors slide open only upon the amber light. Gone is the juvenile pleasure of a running dismount after walloping some hapless commuter with one’s carriage door. Another folk-skill lost to automation.

A Trainspotter's Guide to Women

Before we go any further…. I know what a certain demographic's thinking. You think I’m saaaaad. Maybe I should get a life [whatever horrors of plastic designer-consumerism that may entail]. You think I’m a “trainspotter” and that would be appalling; an anorak, an Asperger’s boy unable to join the Real World. Possibly, and charitably, an eccentric. Or is it that this is all symptomatic of a profound Fear of Change? The following is not for you.

For to talk Railway is to admit membership of a despised institution. It’s hard for we men of a certain age to come out. Fine to drone on about the great deal you’ve got on your new Toyota Treefucker, or the injustices of speed-cameras/ petrol prices/ road-tax, or the car you want after the car you want next; that’s all okay, just don’t mention you like trains. Or even "railways" because, don't kid yourself: everyone knows it's just a euphemism for "trains". "Industrial Heritage" could be used in emergencies, but you'll be rumbled faster than you'd believe possible should any amount of investigation ensue. The female vote will be lost and with it, any hope of your ever accessing her bounty.

So if, whilst promenading your intended trackside one fair summer’s evening, a train goes by and she comments along the lines of “mmm… I do like trains”, do not under any circumstances interpret this as permission to say something like “Yeh, but it’s only a crappy little Network Sprinta. I can remember when the Cathedrals Express used to charge through here; a maroon Western¹ clagging* away up front and dragging a brace of steam-heated Mark Ones³, now that was a train.” You may think a statement of this magnitude combines romantic and thrusting phallic imagery in quite a subtle way, but you’ll have failed and she is now considering the options for replacing you with someone less weird. What she will actually have been thinking was either:

a/ I’m bored and wish I were somewhere else,
b/ I’m feeling romantic, in a vague and wistful These Are the Days of Our Lives kinda way, or
c/ I’m getting a frisson with the thought of exhibiting my bare bouncing arse at all those people on the speeding train, so let’s get jiggy with it.

She does not want to talk Warships² and Westerns¹.

Bummer.

And she's unlikely to find anything like the same amusement as you when you name that train a crappy little Notwork Sprinta, arf arf. Your best bet’s to make a throwaway joke about the earth moving then commence mental preparations for Option C. [It’s true: for years I was in denial, but now I must concede and share this with you. Uncomfortable as the thought may be, but… [whisper it] …women like sex too.]

You may need to do some work on interpreting the signals here, as confusing Option C for either of the alternatives could spell disaster. Resist any temptation to operate a traffic-light or semaphore system for determining her likely responsiveness and never refer to any slip-ups here as SPADs or, worse, "doing a 109-er".

You will have entirely different notions concerning the word "romance". Your earthly delights, your Eden, your enchanted boyhood dreamworld... all are likely to be viewed seedy at best, when seen through the femi-filter. She may even question your hold on reality. It's not your fault. You just have to realise the enemy's every bit as shallow as you are when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of sexual attraction. You like demure and girly, she likes masterful and probably Colin Firth [even though he's gay [allegedly]]. Her sense of romance is more likely to involve sun-bleached beach and palm-tree wine-waiter type scenarios than it is to include railwayana. Her sense of practicality [I'm being charitable] responds to the genial breadwinner rather than the wistful nostalgist. It's not her fault. She just isn't equipped to deal with the depths and contradictions real people show, any better than you are. Talk about houses instead and canvas her opinions on interior design.

Do try and desist from referring to houses, pubs, shops, banks etc. as "non-railway buildings". You'll develop an unattractive nasal twang to your voice, not dissimilar to that heard from bearded folksinging "Keith" in the Mike Leigh film "Nuts in May".

"Not now, Candice-Marie!"

And should you get lucky:

You have not got lucky, scored, got a result. You have engaged in a meaningful union of mutual supportiveness with a view to securing a sustainable future together. You'll come to realise this in due course.

Try not to do the two-tone horn sound upon ejaculation**.

And if things do spiral out of control...

Live it through your firstborn. Should product be female, try again. Or maybe just buy her meccano, dress her in dungarees, then take her to steam-museums on access day and take notes.

Glossary

¹ Western: a diesel-hydraulic B.R. locomotive used on Western Region services until the mid seventies. Curvaceous side-profile, evocative names always prefixed by the word "Western", for example “Western Leviathan”, "Western Pioneer" and “Western Campaigner”, thunderous exhaust note and a face like the man in the moon.

² Warship: a slightly less cool version of the above.

³ Mark Ones: British Rail coaching stock from the fifties and sixties; in use until the early nineties. Usually featuring corridors and compartments, originally heated by steam from the engine’s boiler.

* clagging: the cloud of black particulates issuing from a nicely run-in B.R. diesel loco when under load. This is considered a good thing, as it adds character and leaves a little love behind.

** ejaculation: when you make yourself sticky.

[This piece originally appeared on Smoke Alarm , 13th October, 2005]

The fine three-arch bridge is situated on the northern section of the former Didcot Newbury and Southampton Railway, in chalky downland between Upton and Churn. It is second in a sequence of three bridges known to enginemen as "Faith, Hope and Charity", as they marked a heavy upgradient from leaving Upton station. On the north side, the brickwork remains soot-blackened from the exhausts of long-dead Dean 0-6-0's. Closed to all traffic in 1966, the trackbed under "Hope" bridge is now a landfill site.