The locomen would stop overnight at the barracks in Upperby. They were socrowded that men had to wait for a bed. "The place was really noisy. If you havea barracks in a loco yard and there are locomotives belching smoke and steam fortwenty-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 wastipped. "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 theCarlisle-Settle line captures this much-documented railway in a new way. He'sbrought together the sayings and tales of the railwaymen throughout the yearsand the tales that have gathered round the line. These are the everydayincidents in a working life. The problems and irritations faced in the day - theice in the bucket, the farmer who throws a dead sheep on the line forcompensation, the poor coal that won't fire. And there's the apocryphal tales ofthe bruised wife preparing bait for a brutal husband, who baked his leather beltin his crusty pie. Always there was humour and comradeliness andthere 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 thatone way of stopping him entering a cabin "was to heat up t'sneck so it would betoo hot to handle." Review by Steve Matthews