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Books Cumbria : History : Railways : Folk Tales on the Settle-Carlisle Railway

Folk Tales on the Settle-Carlisle Railway

W.J. Mitchell
£14.99

In Folk Tales on the Settle-Carlisle Railway, join the driver and fireman on the footplate of a locomotive. Stand behind a range of levers in a signal box or be one of a gang working on the permanent way, sweating in the summer heat or shivering after a heavy snowfall.
Maintenance men in Blea Moor tunnel needed patience and good lungs; the tunnel might be thick with locomotive smoke or draped with icicles. On the Settle-Carlisle journey, we are thrilled by a slowly changing landscape, glancing at Pen-y-ghent, which crouches like a lion above Ribblesdale. Further north, we admire the broad acres of the Eden Valley, which lie between the Northern Pennines and the gaunt fells of the Lake District. An afternoon passenger train that took in the line from Garsdale to Hawes was named Bonnyface; when it turned up, workers smiled as they were about to go home. The Garsdale tank house was used for dances and an adjacent wheel-less carriage was the refreshment room.



Publisher : Fonthill Media
Published : 07/2015
Pages : 112p.;
Format : Paperback; H:234; W:156; D:12;
Illustrations : 39 black and white illustrations
ISBN : 9781781553213

Folk Tales on the Settle-Carlisle Railway
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Review


You might imagine that riding the Settle to Carlisle railway of an early
morning, the fireman would place some bacon and fresh eggs on his shovel and
thrust his breakfast briefly into the fire beneath the boiler, pull it out, and
he and the driver would enjoy crispy bacon and perfectly cooked eggs as the
train steamed comfortably across the Ribblehead Viaduct.

Bill Mitchell
knows what really happened. "If you shoved it into the firebox when it was red
hot, your bacon would go whew and your eggs with it." There might be the
chance to keep a tin of tea warm in the cab, but, riding the Settle-Carlisle,
the fireman was constantly at work maintaining a head of steam.

He
had to watch the chimney top all the time. Things were well if there was a haze
above it. As soon as it cleared, it was time to shovel in more coal. One
Carlisle fireman reckoned that he shifted between four and five tons of coal on
the journey between his home city and Leeds. There was very little time to enjoy
a cup of tea, let alone a plate of bacon and eggs.

They did find time
to do a little trading on the way. The signalmen welcomed a good coal fire in
their boxes in the winter and a few stray lumps from the train didn't come amiss
and, in return, they always had the chance to catch a few rabbits for the next
time the locomotive came down the line.

Their work could be
romanticized. Bishop Treacy, the "Railway Bishop", remembered being allowed on
the footplate: "Up the bank, beautifully crisp 3-cylinder beat, exhaust shooting
up into the sky. Air as fresh as you only get on Ribblesdale."

People
thought life on the Settle-Carlisle was good. One passenger shouted, "If you get
a job on the railway, you would have bread and butter for life." The answer came
back from some-one who knew better, "But you wouldn't have jam on it."

The locomen would stop overnight at the barracks in Upperby. They were so
crowded that men had to wait for a bed. "The place was really noisy. If you have
a barracks in a loco yard and there are locomotives belching smoke and steam for
twenty-four hours a day, it's not easy to get to sleep."

At Kingmoor,
it was even worse. The men tried to sleep next to the yard where the coal was
tipped. "The noise was appalling. . . . As a man got out of one bed, I got in.
It was still quite warm."

Bill Mitchell's latest book on the
Carlisle-Settle line captures this much-documented railway in a new way. He's
brought together the sayings and tales of the railwaymen throughout the years
and the tales that have gathered round the line. These are the everyday
incidents in a working life. The problems and irritations faced in the day - the
ice in the bucket, the farmer who throws a dead sheep on the line for
compensation, the poor coal that won't fire. And there's the apocryphal tales of
the bruised wife preparing bait for a brutal husband, who baked his leather belt
in his crusty pie.

Always there was humour and comradeliness and
there was nothing better than getting one-up on authority. One ganger, Old Adam,
kept his eye out for the pernickity permanent way inspector. He reckoned that
one way of stopping him entering a cabin "was to heat up t'sneck so it would be
too hot to handle."
Review by Steve Matthews




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