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Scotland the Brave Chapter 4 By Jonah
Toot
This was getting to be a habit.
I leaned over Luke and Howard and moved the curtain. There was snow up to the sill again, but no ice on the panes. I leaned forward and, sure enough, there was the black five just our side of the bridge.
Simon came in, fully dressed and bearing a cup of tea.
"They're trying to raise a crew," he said. "The guard got off at the station to go and see what men he could raise in the village. The ploughs got though the drift at the Baddengorm Burn, and through the forest. They ran into another, just this side of Slochd, and now they've got themselves buried. No way of moving forward or back. They've had two bad blizzards through the night so now they're well and truly buried."
I digested this.
"Do they want us to help?" I asked.
"Geordie says that's why they drew forward to here. Grannie's made porridge. Geordie and Alan are coming down for some, then they're going to relieve the Scotrail driver so that he can have some."
I was already half dressed by this time. Showering could wait, but breakfast couldn't.
Over breakfast Alan explained,
"There's bad drifting between Kincraig loop and Aviemore. The plough would clear it in no time, but the plough is stuck up here so, without it, the gang have their hands full keeping that bit of line open. They've a 37 with mini-ploughs working from the loop, but they need every man they can get to stop it getting too deep for mini-ploughs. Anyway, if we rescue the night gang, they'll fill up our brake van, so we could do without taking up a gang that'll also need transport back to Aviemore. That's why we want to take up Carrbridge folks if we can."
There was a knock on the door. Janet let in a Scotrail guard, who asked if his driver were here.
"Get out of your wet things and sit ye down at the table," Janet told him. "Ye need some hot porridge inside ye, and your driver will be down in a wee while."
"I've got seven," the guard told us as he sat down with us. "Three of them are barely teenagers, but they're willing. Two elderly gentlemen offered, but I daren't take them."
Alan rose,
"I'll drop back to the station and pick them up, then draw forward up here again. I'll send Terry down for his porridge, I think I can manage two hundred yards back to the station without a conductor."
"I'd best come with ye though," said Geordie rising.
"No need," said Alan." Simon's already up there. In fact, Terry's here now. Simon must have sent him down."
With that he departed, the Scotrail driver squeezing past him in the doorway.
Quarter of an hour later the guard was in his brake-van with the seven volunteers. The rest of us were on the locomotive footplate. Terry was sat in the driver's seat keeping a forward look-out as Alan stood behind him and drove the engine, just occasionally reaching across him to reach the reverser. I was crammed into the front corner of the tender on the fireman's side, and Peter and Luke were in the identical position on the driver's side. Geordie and Simon took turn about at sitting on the fireman's side and keeping a look-out that side, and firing the engine.
"It's not that I'm delicate," Geordie confided to me, during one of his stints on the seat." I'm not. It's just that, yesterday, it wasn't such a good idea for me to take a turn on the steam lance on the front. I was frozen and, as soon as I came back in the cab, I blacked out. Of course, yesterday, I didn't have Simon's Grannie's porridge inside me."
The beat of the exhaust from the chimney was slow but fierce and echoed back from the mountains. Occasionally the big loco would slip, causing Alan to quickly pull the regulator closed. On one occasion the slipping was so violent that he had to swing on the regulator and Simon had to leave the fireman's seat to add his weight.
Geordie was swinging the shovel at the time but stopped in mid-swing just in time to avoid hitting anybody's legs. The coal shot off onto the footplate, but Geordie simply scooped it up and dropped it on the tender coal-plate as Simon grabbed a bit of cotton waste and slammed the fire-hole doors shut. The slipping subsided and the juddering stopped. We could hear ourselves think for a moment, until Alan gently opened the regulator again and the exhaust beat picked up again.
The speed, which was never high, began to pick up a bit when --
"WOAH!" shouted Simon from the seat.
Alan closed the regulator and reached for the steam brake as Simon reached up and sounded three short pops on the whistle. He followed that with three longer blasts.
Alan gently braked us to a standstill. Thirty seconds later our guard climbed on to the footplate.
"Which of you sounded that whistle?" he demanded.
Everybody looked at Simon.
"Good lad," said the guard. "I'd forgotten to warn my passengers what an unfitted train was like, and we'd a hot stovepipe in there. We'd have had casualties if you hadn't thought of that. Well done son."
Outside the sky was black and threatening and a light snow began to fall.
"It's started," said Terry. "There isn't a moment to lose."
"Right" said the guard, picking up the footplate bucket from the tender. "Geordie, break some coal up and fill that for me will ye. You won't need it now as it's all downhill going back, but if we can't keep that van warm enough to stop the snow settling near it, we're in trouble. You two boys -- I want you both on the brake van. Those plastic snow shovels you put on might come in handy after all. I want one of you behind the train making sure the snow doesn't settle on the rails. Keep about fifty yards behind us clear. The other one I want in the brake. Make sure that stove keeps burning. Swap over every ten minutes. Everybody else, including drivers, we'll grab shovels from the brake and dig. Geordie, you and your mate take turns to watch the engine."
We all looked at Alan who, after all, was nominally in charge on this locomotive.
"What he said," said Alan.
We climbed off and began the rescue operation.
We were facing a wall of compacted ice approximately fifteen foot high. Our guard, who was a former permanent way man, told us that we would be better to dig a four-foot diameter tunnel through it, as there were not enough of us to dig a cutting and, in any case, another blizzard could fill that in again. With my shovel I cut an outline approximately that diameter in the face and then a man from the village helped me to break up the ice inside it. I started to shovel away what we had deposited on the ground, but Simon and another man were behind us.
"Keep at the face," said Simon. "We'll look after this."
We got about six foot into the ice-face like that before another two people fell in at the back.
I heard Alan shout up to his fireman.
"Geordie, check that she's in mid gear."
"Check!" came back the reply.
"Good. Open the cocks, then crack the regulator open a bit."
"Just to the first port?"
"Not even that. Just enough to get us a jet of steam here at the front."
I was too busy at the ice-face to see what was going on, but I heard Alan say.
"There you are. Dump the ice there. It'll soon melt and get rid of itself."
Having to work in a crouched position, and working mostly above shoulder level, my arms were becoming quite painful. After about twelve feet my comrade said, "Swap" so we did so. He clambered over me and began attacking the face and I began shoveling what he had loosened backwards. A few minutes later Geordie, who was behind me, Simon obviously having relieved him, said "swap!" and we did that. Thus, after about an hour, I found myself outside the tunnel shovelling ice onto a heap in front of the locomotive. Steam rose from the heap which seemed not to get higher. Looking under the loco, a stream of water ran backwards, but whether it was melted ice or condensed steam it was impossible to tell. Hopefully it was the former. The snow was blowing across the top of the shallow cutting but didn't seem to be affecting us. If it only settled on top, of course, it wouldn't hurt us.
At about two o' clock there was a shout from behind the train. The two elderly gentlemen whom our guard had not accepted, had rounded up a group of people of both sexes who had walked up the line from Carrbridge bearing thermos flasks of hot cocoa and vegetable soup. We enjoyed that as none of us had ever enjoyed a meal before.
"How far do you think you are from them?" one of the old gentlemen asked.
"We've gone about two hundred yards, which would easily be enough to stop them getting out again if they couldn't get a run at it, so we could find them anytime," said our guard. "We've already moved the tunnel out of the four foot and into the cess, so that we won't meet them head on. We don't want to have to crawl under the plough."
There was a shout from the tunnel mouth. A figure clad in orange crawled out of the tunnel.
We all gathered round him.
"Good to see you Jamie," said the guard. "Where were ye?"
"Back plough," said the man. "There were six others in there, and another eight on the loco, counting the driver and second man. The other five are on their way now, but we're trying to keep out of the way of you guys digging because they've still got to get to the back cab of the loco. If it's as cold on the loco as it was in the plough, they'll maybe be hypothermic."
Another orange figure crawled out of the tunnel, helped by one of our diggers.
In another hour the last person was out of the tunnel. That was the DBC driver from the 66.
"They say you've got to collapse that tunnel when we're done with it, so that nobody crawls into it without us knowing and gets buried, but don't do it yet, because I've got to go back in."
"Why's that?" said our guard.
"Because you don't have GSMR on that steam loco," the driver replied. "My loco's the only contact with the outside world. They've been trying to contact you all day. They say, do you want to go back to Aviemore and pick up a coaching stock brake. They've got a loco in steam there and are keeping one heated for you, they just need to attach your loco to it. I've to let them know if you want it."
"Yes, I do," said Alan, saving his guard the trouble of replying. "We can be down there in twenty minutes. These folks who have walked up from Carrbridge -- I'll take them back there on the brake. Tell them I'll need to bring the goods brake back as well, because I can't propel a passenger brake all the way to Aviemore."
"You don't need to," said the other driver. "Just keep the other steam engine on the back. If you top and tail there'll be no need for propelling. Make sure you keep that steam lance on your loco. We'll need it to collapse the tunnel when you come back."
With that he disappeared back into the tunnel. It takes a brave man, I thought, to crawl back into the hole from which he's just been rescued.
Alan and his guard began rounding up all those who had walked up with thermos flasks.
"Which fireman am I taking?" asked Alan.
"Best take Simon," said Geordie, knowing that Simon would jump at the chance.
I would have thought that Simon could at least have put up a show of reluctance.
A minute later, with a toot the big locomotive set off backwards.
It was quiet up there at the ice-face. There were twenty-odd people up there, but it seemed lonely without the big steam engine for company. Some of us sat on the rail head, and some of us stamped our feet to keep warm. Some chatted, and some just gazed silently in the direction in which the train had departed. Peter and Luke, I noticed, were clinging to Geordie, who had an arm around each of them. Suddenly he lifted his head and shouted.
"Oy! You can't go down there. There'll be a train coming back up. You need to stay here with the rest of us."
The two former diggers, who had set off to walk back toward Carrbridge, looked back, shrugged, and then carried on walking. Geordie let go of the two boys and started to run after them. The DBC driver, coming, at that moment out of the tunnel started to run too, and so did I. We all arrived at the two errant rescuers at more or less the same time.
"Stop!" said Geordie, seizing the nearest one by the collar. " It's not safe down there."
"Get lost kid," snarled the man. "We've rescued your pals. Now we're going home."
"But you need to wait for......"
"Take your hands of him," said the other man, swinging a punch at Geordie which only succeeded in connecting with the blade of a shovel.
The huge, orange-clad platelayer who had raised the shovel stood towering over the men.
"Very brave," he commented, as the man nursed his bruised fist, "making all these good people risk their lives to save your stupid necks."
The men looked up in silence.
"Now get back to where you're supposed to be, and maybe we can all get home in one piece."
We all obeyed. The men shuffled sulkily in front of us.
"It's a good job you were there," I commented to the platelayer.
"Aye it is," he replied, "but not for the reason you think."
"Do you want me to guess the reason or are you going to tell me?" I asked.
"Did ye see what yon fireman had in his other hand."
I hadn't noticed that Geordie had anything in either hand.
"He held one man by his collar," the platelayer persisted, "But he couldn't grab the other one because he had his bardic handlamp in that hand. If the men had kept it up, he might have taken a swing at one of them with it and if he did that they wouldn't have got up again. The poor wee lad could have been done for homicide when he was just doing his job."
I looked up at the platelayer with a new respect.
"He's right," said the DBC driver. "That's why I ran after him, but I hadn't got a shovel and I daren't have hit him with a case full of detonators."
"It's a good job you were there," I repeated quietly.
"Anyway," said the DBC driver, "it's high time we got some protection down," and he set off in the direction of Carrbridge with HIS handlamp shining in front of him.
A few minutes later we all heard the distant sound of an engine whistle. It was noticeably nearer when we next heard it and, by that time, we could hear the exhaust beat of a steam engine working hard. In a little while there was a long whistle and the exhaust beats stopped. There were three loud bangs in the distance. It was a minute or two before we heard the locomotives start up again, and we could distinctly hear the separate beats of two locomotives. A minute or so later there was another bang. The train didn't stop this time. We listened to it drawing nearer. There was another bang. We could see them now working hard, but slowly. In the dusk. The glow from an open firebox door lit up the underside of the exhaust that was thrown high in the sky. At about a hundred yards away the exhaust stopped, there was a flash from the rail top and one final bang and the train, after rolling a few yards. Came to rest. We saw the handlamps of two men climbing from the front loco and walking towards us.
"Come on," said Geordie. "That's as far as he's coming." He switched on his own handlamp and led us toward the train.
It was fully dark long before we dropped off by the river bridge and made our way down to the cottage. It had been dark when we left the ice-face. Particularly as the DBC driver insisted on crawling through the tunnel again to ensure that it was clear of people before the platelayers expertly used the steam lance to collapse the roof. But eventually we dropped off of the black five's footplate. The Ivatt 2-6-0 that was at the other end of the train gave a toot and with and answering hoot from the black five, our friends chuffed away.
Well we could have been soldiers returning from five years of war for the welcome we received. We were ready for the beef stew that Janet had prepared for us.
Fergus had poured mugs of tea for us all. Yes, I saw him pour a drop of Glenlivet in mine and Simon's. I said nothing.
I think we were all too tired to do much after dinner. Fergus had turned on the radio and we all listened to -- whatever it was that we all listened to. I don't think any of us could have told you what it was.
Before long the boys were in bed and, yes you've guessed it, it was just me and Fergus.
"Quite a day, Jonah", said Fergus handing me a glass.
"An education," I replied after a sip.
Aye," he said, "I told you that ye're giving those boys the best education they can get."
"Never mind the boys," I replied. "I meant me. There are things that you learn working on the railway that you don't learn being a graphic artist for an advertising agency."
"I expect there are," he murmured non-committally.
"Yes, well I've learned a few of them and it's scary."
"How so Jonah."
"Am I getting old?"
"I wouldn't have said so."
"Well I've landed the job of looking after those boys, and it's a great job, but today, all three of them proved that they're quite grown-up enough to look after me, and I don't think I'm ready for that yet."
He smiled.
"Ohhh Jonah," he sighed." They're certainly grown up enough, but that's because you're giving them a great start in life and they ARE only starting. Grown up or not, they're not ready to take on the old man yet. You four have a great relationship. Just be thankful."
TO BE CONTINUED