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Scotland the Brave Chapter 3 By Jonah
Toot!
That probably doesn't express it very well. This wasn't the short sharp toot of a Midland tank engine, nor was it the mellifluous ring of a Gresley chime whistle. It was definitely a steam whistle, but it had the deep resonant tone of a Stanier "hooter".
Howard was on his feet, his ears pricked up.
Luke was sitting up in bed. Had they been capable of it, his ears would have been pricked up too.
I clambered over Luke to the window. Pulling back the curtain I was able to see the lovely patterns of ice on the window pane. I used part of the curtain to try to wipe it clear, but it was frozen fast.
"Showered and dressed!" I said to Simon, who had rushed into the room to tell me what I had already worked out for myself. "He's not going anywhere anytime soon."
Well showering and dressing and even porridging took place while we could only imagine what was taking place the other side of our ice-wall. Eventually, suitably muffled up against the cold, we were able to circumnavigate the bathroom and see for ourselves.
There on our side of the river bridge stood a Stanier Black five. The same 4-6-0 that had taken us to Broomhill at Easter. Its safety valves had lifted noisily, and smoke and steam hung around the locomotive -- clinging to the boiler in the cold, Winter air.
Two orange clad platelayers sat on the front buffer-beam, and a third leaned from the cab window.
Led by Fergus, and leaving Janet and the dogs to hold the fort, we climbed the embankment.
The steam engine had towed up an ancient goods brake on which the orange army were encamped. A wisp of smoke curled upwards from its stove-pipe. Even in what passed for daylight at this time of the year, it was still possible to see the orange glow of flames and sparks at the mouth of the stovepipe. I'd happily bet that the pipe was glowing red-hot inside the van.
"Oy!"
The driver had appeared in the doorway behind the orange-clad foreman platelayer who leaned from the cab window.
"You!" he was pointing to Simon. "Up here, quickly."
Simon obliged and I -- uninvited -- followed him. In the cab were two drivers -- one Scotrail and the other our friend from the Strathspey Railway -- the foreman platelayer and a young man in overalls who sat on the tender coalplate, with his heels against the fallplate and his head between his knees.
"Fergus!" called our driver, "have you got a fire in your cottage."
"We have," I told him quietly.
"D'ya think we can get him down?" he said nodding toward his young fireman on the tender front.
"I should think so if your pilot lends a hand," I replied.
I leaned from the door.
"Peter," I called, "run back and tell Janet we're going to need lots of hot chocolate. Tell her we're bringing a casualty down and he'll need keeping warm."
I turned back to Simon.
"Do you think you can look after the engine while we do that?" I asked.
The driver answered for him.
"I think I'll need to keep Simon," he replied. "I don't think young Geordie is going to be much help today."
I turned again to ask Simon if that was OK, but he was already adjusting the steam and water supplies to the driver's-side injector to try to get more water into the boiler and silence the roaring safety valves.
With a shrug I turned to exit the cab backwards.
"I'll go down below if you two drivers can pass him down to me," I told them.
Well they maneuvered the young man into the doorway, then Fergus and I supported his back while Luke guided his feet from step to step and the two drivers held his arms. Eventually the young man was standing in the cess, shivering, between Fergus and I.
"That was the easy part," I said. "Now we've got to get him down the bank."
"Ach we can do that," said Fergus, removing his heavy coat.
He lay his coat on the bank and said,
"Sit him on that. If we go either side of him we can slide him down. Luke, you go at the bottom, ready to stop us if we have to slide ourselves."
Well we did that and before long were guiding the young chap into the kitchen.
Janet had hot cocoa on the go and Peter, at her instruction , had put a fresh log on the fire so we guided the young man through to the lounge and sat him in front of it.
Janet followed us with a big towel. The young man was deposited on the sofa and off came his boots and his wet socks. Janet set to drying his feet -- a task at which I relieved her so that she could make the hot chocolate. From my position at his feet I peered up at the young man.
He looked to be about sixteen, or seventeen, though I knew that he must be over eighteen to be firing on the mainline, even on loan from a heritage line. His face looked fresh and florid and his dark hair hung in a sort of a bang over his right eye.
"How are you feeling now?" I asked.
"Daft," he replied. "I made a right ninny o' myself."
"No, you didn't," I replied. "Do you think you could manage some hot chocolate, or would you be better with a drink of water for now?"
The blue eyes seemed to grow tired of looking at me and he closed them wearily. Moving the towel aside, his feet felt cold and I could see that his hands were shaking.
"Hot chocolate," I said to Janet quietly. "Can you see if you've got a hanky, or a serviette, to wrap it in. We don't want him to burn his fingers. Peter, can you warm this by the fire for a few seconds?"
I handed him the towel. Briskly I rubbed the young man's feet. His toes were like ice. Gripping them in both hands I began flexing them to encourage circulation. His eyes were still closed.
"You needn't think you're going to sleep on us," I told him. "Not just yet anyway. I'm not allowing that, and there's a big Pyrenean mountain dog here who isn't allowing it either."
He opened his eyes and gazed at Lady, who was climbing onto the sofa next to him. Slowly he reached out a shivering hand to the dog.
"Hallo boy!" he said reaching around to hug her.
"She's a girl, but she'll forgive you for that," I told him. "Geordie -- Lady, Lady - Geordie."
He smiled as I wrapped the warm towel around his bare feet.
He shyly ruffled the animal's fur just as Janet came in with a cup of hot chocolate, wrapped in a table napkin.
"Peter, swap places with Lady," I said.
I took the steaming mug from Janet and held it in front of Geordie as Peter evicted the big dog.
"Geordie, Peter's going to sit next to you. He doesn't want you to hug him though -- he's not like that."
I saw a flicker of a smile -- but not from Peter.
"Now I want you to hold this," I said, holding the mug by the handle but guiding his hands to hold it by the napkin. "Now Peter's going to keep hold of the handle because I'm staying here and, if you drop it, you'll scald both of us."
There was no need for me to remain where I was, but I reasoned that, if he knew I was at risk as well, Geordie wouldn't object to Peter's help.
An hour later Geordie was like a new boy. The colour had returned to his cheeks and a merry laugh escaped frequently from his lips. He lay back on the sofa with an arm wrapped around Lady, whilst Howard acted as a sort of footstool as our guest wiggled his bare toes in front of the fire.
Outside we heard the occasional whistle, and the constant hiss of steam as the permanent-way crew played their steam lance on the ice. After a while, the locomotive gave another whistle and then chuffed away into the distance.
"They must have cleared the Ice on the bridge," Geordie explained. "They'll be off as far as the burn to make sure the line up there is passable for the snowplough. It's a climb up there, even just engine and brake. That'll take a bit of shoveling and that's a big boiler to keep topped up when the front end is high."
"Don't worry," I told him. "Simon's fired bigger engines than that one."
"What, that black kid?" he began, then, looking at Peter, "Oh...... I'm sorry...."
Peter rose from his place by the fire and walked over to the sofa.
"Why?" I asked.
"What?"
"Why are you sorry?"
Peter had reached the sofa by then. He sat himself on the arm and wrapped one of his arms round Geordie's shoulders.
"Jonah's teasing you," he said. "Don't worry about it."
That, I thought, was an awfully grown-up way for an almost-twelve-year-old to handle it. Did I ever mention that I'm proud of my boys?
Since Peter was sitting higher than he was, Geordie could do no more that pat the brown hand resting on his shoulder, but he still looked up into the brown face above him, smiled, and whispered, "sorry".
Fergus came in with Luke. Both had left their boots at the door, and both had brought the low temperature and the smell of the cold on their clothes.
"Geordie," Fergus said, "when they finished up at the burn they want to be straight back to Aviemore. Can you be ready whenever they come back as they don't want to hang about? They want to get the ploughs up to the burn before dark."
"I'm ready to serve up," said Janet. "We'll get a meal inside you before ye go. Ye'd best put your socks and boots back on though."
Well Janet's minced beef and onions with carrots and mashed tatties was more than welcome. No sooner had we put down our knives and forks than a cacophony of whistling in the distance announced the approach of Geordie's engine. Everybody except Janet and the dogs escorted him back up the bank as the brake van approached across the bridge -- the orange clad figures on the front platform blowing on their hands and beating their shoulders for warmth.
"Will you be OK to fire back to Aviemore?" I asked our guest.
"It's all downhill, and I don't really have a choice," he told me.
"Well that's not really true," I replied. "Simon could stay on to Aviemore and come back with the ploughs."
Geordie grinned.
"From what I've seen of Simon, he'd be happy to do that," he replied, "but he'd best come and get his dinner. Thank you all for everything."
With a handshake for everybody, and a special hug for Peter, he climbed up to the footplate. There were a few moments while Simon showed him the state of the engine, then Simon climbed down. With a long toot on the distinctive LMS hooter, the steam brake came off and away they went.
The afternoon seemed tame after that. Even the two-tone hoot of the approaching class 66 diesel didn't liven things up. We didn't see it, of course, but we heard the two-tone horn and recognised the distinctive "ying-ying" of its General Motors power plant.
"They'll have their work cut out," Simon said. "We only got up as far as the bridge over the burn, and there's a foot of snow over that, but the trees close in on both sides beyond that and there's a twelve-foot wall of snow between them. We tried the lance to see if it was just a thin wall, but we couldn't find the other side. My guess is that it goes as far as the trees do. That's a two-mile thick wall of snow, and who knows how many more there are."
"But the plough will go right through them, right?" I ventured.
"Not necessarily," he replied. "We had Geoff on the footplate with us and he explained. For the plough to move that snow it needs somewhere to move it to. With the forest either side, it's likely to just pile it up against the trees, then it'll just fall back on top of them and across the line behind them. That's what the other plough's for -- to get themselves out if that happens."
"So, what happens if it can't get through?"
"Geoff says, if that happens they'd abandon the Highland line above Carrbridge. Inverness still has the Aberdeen line and the far North line open, and Kyle of Lochalsh is still accessible at the moment. Alan and Geordie are on standby again tomorrow, and there's a crew rostered overnight in case they need to rescue the crews on the ploughs."
Ying-ying-ying-ying....
The ploughs had obviously returned to the river bridge.
Five minutes later there was a two-tone hoot and the engine note increased in ferocity. It increased to a roar such as I'd never heard from a 66 before as it charged away Northwards. The noise faded into the distance and then was suddenly silent. This happened three more times as darkness fell.
Eventually the ying-ying came back but, carried on rattling Southwards.
"Have they finished do you think?" I asked.
"It's a crew change," said Simon. "They'll be back later with the night crew on board. I'm afraid we might have to put up with that all night."
Nobody seemed to mind that, but Fergus said there was talk of more snow overnight.
"I'm afraid," said Fergus after Janet, boys and dogs had retired, "Simon will find school a little dull after this."
"Yes," I replied, gazing at the fire through my whisky glass, "but where could he get a better education?"
"Ach, I'm with ye there," said Fergus. "Now you are making sure all those boys are getting a good education. Their teachers must love them."
"Do you know? "I responded, "I've spoken to both headmasters recently and I believe they do, but you've met the boys -- who couldn't love them?"
"There'll be some," said Fergus, "and the boys will need to learn to deal with that, but I think they'll do it."
"I saw Peter demonstrate this afternoon that he already knows how," I replied.
I told him what Geordie had said, and how Peter had reacted.
"Aye, he'll have learned that from his father no doubt," he said, "and I'll bet Vijay didn't even know he taught him it."
"I don't know where he learned it," I told the glass, "but I do know that I've never been prouder of Peter than I was at that moment."
Aye, well, I'll away to ma bed," he said, rising, "help yourself to another if you want. Just make sure the fire's OK before you come up."
I put down my empty glass and picked up the poker to rake over the ashes.
"No, I think that'll do for one day. I'll go and keep Luke and Howard company. I expect Lady will be with the other two as usual"
"Aye, Janet and I get to sleep later when you come to visit," he said with a grin. "Goodnight Jonah!"
TO BE CONTINUED