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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 19, 2011 18:27:23 GMT
OK, so here goes with another "DIY anthology" theme. Railways, especially at night &/or underground &/or in decaying, lonely stations &/or in the days of steam are the perfect setting for all manner of creepiness.
The first ones that spring to mind are:-
Charles Dickens - The Signalman. Pretty obvious & probably very well known to all here but still nicely spooky after all those years. Every time I see a reference to it I remember the excellent BBC adaptation of it made in 1976 with a terrific performance by Denholm Elliott as the haunted signalman, just this side of psychotic..
Robert Aickman - The Trains. Another well known one I'm sure but it works on lots of levels. I always thought it was set in Longdendale by the Woodhead Tunnel.
John Gaskin - The Bay Platform. Set in a fogbound 1950s railway station with a dream-like feel to it. Fog, steam & murder...
L T C Rolt - The Garside Fell Disaster. Rolt's stuff is like industrial M R James, but as he was an expert on railways, canals & other areas of industrial archaeology, that's understandable. Clearly set on the Settle & Carlisle line and probably influenced by his studies of the Hawes Junction (1910) & Ais Gill (1913) disasters, both discussed in his classic study of railway accidents, "Red for Danger." But this crash has a far less mechanical cause.
Adam L G Nevill - On all London Underground Lines. A modern one, this. It's basically an exercise in steadily increasing claustrophobia, well known to anyone who's ever tried to travel in London with a deadline to meet, working harder & harder and getting nowhere.
Any more?
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Post by nosferatu on Jun 19, 2011 18:46:35 GMT
From "Mysterious Railway Stories", Ed William Pattrick (In my give away book list if anyone's interested) Amelia B. Edwards & Charles Dickens – The Four Fifteen Express Eden Phillpotts – My Adventure In The Flying Dutchman Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Lost Special Victor L. Whitechurch – The Tragedy On The London And Mid-Northern Francis Lynde – The Cloud-Bursters Arnold Ridley & Ruth Alexander – The Ghost Train Agatha Christie – The Girl In The Train Hal Thomson – The Fisherman’s Special Harry Walton – Swamp Train Freeman Wills Croft – The Level Crossing August Derleth – The Man On B-17 Robert Bloch – That Hell-Bound Train Fredric Brown – The Last Train Been too many years since i read any of them to comment. but here's the cover.  |
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Post by doomovertheworld on Jun 19, 2011 19:56:40 GMT
The first one which comes to my mind on this particular theme is The Midnight Meat Train by Clive Barker from his Books of Blood Volume 1
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Post by cw67q on Jun 20, 2011 7:52:39 GMT
Andrew Caldecott - Branch Line to Benceston
Ramsey Campbell - Concussion
Stefan Grabinski - the Motion Demon (or just about any other tale from the collection of that name)
IIRC David Rowlands has a number of tales about model railways but I can't bring the title of the one I'm thinking of to mind, maybe I have the wrong author. The tale involves an extensive model railway and a house fire.
And as I haven't posted here in a while, hello everyone :-)
- Chris
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 20, 2011 13:19:44 GMT
The tale involves an extensive model railway and a house fire. Alex Hamilton's The Attic Express? Although I can't remember how it ended so I may be completely wrong! |
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Post by cw67q on Jun 20, 2011 14:26:40 GMT
Hi John, I don't have Alex Hamilton's book, and I don't think I have the story in an anthology, but it sounds like another candidate for the list anyway.
BTW the manic laughter in my post above should just have been a playful smile. I forgot that smileys got ramped up to 11 by the forum software.
- Chris
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 20, 2011 15:03:47 GMT
Could I also nominate my own The Girl in the Glass from the Solaris End of the Line anthology? I think that's where Adam Nevill's is from as well.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 20, 2011 20:26:42 GMT
Well John, I liked "The Girl In The Glass" but, despite its place in "The End of the Line" I felt that it was more of a medical story than a railway one.
But then, having worked like Dr Tom in the tale (being a colleague of yours & all that), I guess I would've.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 21, 2011 5:44:28 GMT
Well John, I liked "The Girl In The Glass" but, despite its place in "The End of the Line" I felt that it was more of a medical story than a railway one. But then, having worked like Dr Tom in the tale (being a colleague of yours & all that), I guess I would've. Indeed, and as Herbert Lom said to Robert Powell in Asylum "It's always a pleasure to meet a colleague!" |
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Post by lemming13 on Jun 21, 2011 7:35:28 GMT
C W Leadbeater's An Astral Murder - totally train-oriented.
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Post by monker on Jun 21, 2011 10:46:41 GMT
The Bend of the Road by Arthur Quiller-Couch is a railway story despite having the word 'road' in the title.
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Post by dem on Jun 22, 2011 8:50:07 GMT
in case anyone wasn't aware, 'William Pattrick' was perhaps better known under his real name, Peter Haining. speaking of whom, anyone else clock the scene stealing cameo of his The Legend & Bizarre Crimes of Spring-Heeled Jack in hugely watchable crime drama Luther last night?
Ronald Holmes edited another book in this series, Macabre Railway Stories, lovely rat on the cover and a bent on horror. The Alex Hamilton story is in there and he even revives another from the earlier Pan Horrors, Raymond Harvey's The Tunnel.
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Post by cw67q on Jun 23, 2011 8:13:13 GMT
Two more set in railway Waiting Rooms:
Robert Aickman's "the Waiting Room", his most straightforward and least representative tale. Perhpas Aickman's deliberate attempt to show he could write perfectly in the style of the Victorian or Edwardian ghost story?
Walter de la Mare's wonderful Crewe which stays mostly within the realm of the psychological with the possibly supernatural just playing around the edges of the confessional tale told by one inmate of a lonely waiting room at the eponymous train station to his chance companion.
Can I aslo just say that I thought John Gaskin's the Bay Platform, mentioned in the opening post, superb. I'm not sure if it has been anthologised anywhere (I read it in the tartarus Press collection) but it certainly deserves to be.
- Chris
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 23, 2011 20:21:45 GMT
The only place I've come across "The Bay Platform" is in John Gaskin's second collection of stories called "The Long Retreating Day", from Tartarus Press. Another railway tale in that same book is "Road Closed" which is less dreamy but has a feel of an inexorable & gradually accelerating progress to total disaster.
His first collection, "The Dark Companion", which I mentioned on the "Favourite Authors" section of this here Vault, also contains a railway story called "Single to Burnfoot". Not as creepy as "The Bay Platform" & less doomy than "Road Closed" but the three together (especially "The Bay Platform") prove that Gaskin doesn't just understand what makes a great spooky tale, he knows a thing or two about railways too.
Both collections are 101% recommended.
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Post by dem on Jun 26, 2011 8:09:10 GMT
Peter Haining recycled much of Mysterious Railway Stories in another psuedonymously edited anthology which he fleshed out with a number of 'true' stories. ‘Richard Peyton’ [Peter Haining] (ed.) – The Ghost Now Standing on Platform One (Souvenir Press, 1990: Futura, 1991) [Published in USA as Journey Into Fear and Other Great Stories of Horror on the Railways (Wings,1991)] 
Richard Peyton – The Tay Bridge Ghost Train
Arnold Ridley – Journey into Fear
Richard Peyton – The President’s Funeral Ride
Rod Serling – The Ghost Train
Richard Peyton – The White Train
Rudyard Kipling – .007
Richard Peyton – The Black Train of Lochalsh
Elliott O’Donnell – The Haunted Curve
Richard Peyton – The Phantom Locomotive of Stevens Point
August Derleth – Pacific 421
Richard Peyton – The Ghost on Platform Two
Alfred Noyes – Midnight Express
Richard Peyton – The Lyonshall Mystery
Robert Aickman – The Waiting Room
Richard Peyton – The Footsteps of Doom
Peter Fleming – The Kill
Richard Peyton – The Spectre of Shake City
Ray Bradbury – The Town Where No One Got Off
Richard Peyton – The Woman in the Red Scarf
A. M. Burrage – The Wrong Station
Richard Peyton – The Night Flyer of Talylln
John D. Beresford – Lost in the Fog
Richard Peyton – The Bedraggled Soldier
Sir Andrew Caldecott – Branch Line to Benceston
Richard Peyton – Joe Baldwin’s Eerie Lamp
Stephen Grendon – The Night Train to Lost Valley
Richard Peyton – The Ghost of the Subway
Allison V. Harding – Take the Z Train
Richard Peyton – Underground Phantoms
John Wyndham – Confidence Trick
Richard Peyton – The Barkston Spectre
Charles Dickens – The Signal-Man
Richard Peyton – The Navvy in the Tunnel
L. T. C. Rolt – The Garside Fell Disaster
Richard Peyton – The Phantom Driver of Dunster
Richard Hughes – Locomotive
Richard Peyton – The Ghost of ’Hayling Billy’
John Newton Chance – Mourning Train
Richard Peyton – Railroad Bill
Robert Bloch – That Hell-Bound Train
Richard Peyton – Voices in the Fog
Henry L. Lawrence – A Journey by Train
Richard Peyton – The Woman in Black
Eden Phillpotts – The Astral Lady
Richard Peyton – Beware: Ghosts Crossing
Algernon Blackwood – Miss Slumbubble – and Claustrophobia
Richard Peyton – The Phantom on the Flying Yankee
F. Scott Fitzgerald – A Short Trip Home
Richard Peyton – The Dead Man of Glendive
William F. Nolan – Lonely Train a’ Comin’
Richard Peyton – The Shortest Railway Ghost Story in the World Haining also compiled what appears to be a companion volume, Murder On The Railways for Orion in 1996. and here's the link to my favourite anthology on the theme, Ronald The Legend of Sawney Beane Holmes' Macabre Railway Stories. i knew it was on here somewhere. finally for time being OK, so here goes with another "DIY anthology" theme. Railways, especially at night &/or underground &/or in decaying, lonely stations &/or in the days of steam are the perfect setting for all manner of creepiness. Horrors on the underground get a fair crack of the whip on the Subterranean Cannibals thread. hope that lot helps. |
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