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Post by Shrink Proof on Feb 28, 2015 20:18:11 GMT
"Traveller's Fare" is about the Welsh Highland Railway and features anecdotes about its owner, Col Stephens. A truly British individual, he built up an empire of small railways and branch lines across the country. These were all characterised by being somewhere between rustic and ramshackle and were run on a shoestring, something like living museums. There's now a Col Stephens Society and the slideshow of pictures on this page of their website gives you some idea of the levels of decrepitude on his lines - click here.Another rail-based Father O'Connor tale is "The Whistling Stones" in which the haunting consists of a re-run of a real rail crash. The description is of the Curraduff Viaduct disaster on the narrow gauge Tralee & Dingle Railway in Ireland in 1893. A livestock train fell 30 feet into the river below, killing three railwaymen and 90 of the pigs on board. But David G Rowlands would know all about this as he published "The Tralee & Dingle Railway", a history of the line, in 1977.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 28, 2015 21:03:33 GMT
Another rail-based Father O'Connor tale is "The Whistling Stones" in which the haunting consists of a re-run of a real rail crash. The description is of the Curraduff Viaduct disaster on the narrow gauge Tralee & Dingle Railway in Ireland in 1893. A livestock train fell 30 feet into the river below, killing three railwaymen and 90 of the pigs on board. But David G Rowlands would know all about this as he published "The Tralee & Dingle Railway", a history of the line, in 1977. I've this undated, most likely 70's annual, Ghost Special, usual mix of strips, articles, 'Ghostly Giggles', the odd so-so short story, but this item is truly bizarre: The Tay Bridge disaster told in comic book form. Thanks for David Rowlands info Mr. Proof.
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Post by ripper on Mar 2, 2015 10:21:44 GMT
It's interesting how many railway-related stories have been written by David G. Rowlands, and I didn't know that the railway in Traveler's Fare was based on an actual line.
Dem, that Tay Bridge disaster comic strip is a real curiosity. It's odd how quirky, surprising features used to turn up in annuals and summer specials. Completely unrelated to railways but I remember an annual I had, possibly Lion or Valiant, where along with the usual strips was a feature about a ghostly mummy haunting a museum--maybe the British Museum, and purporting to be factual.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 2, 2015 16:33:47 GMT
It's interesting how many railway-related stories have been written by David G. Rowlands, and I didn't know that the railway in Traveler's Fare was based on an actual line. And we're not done yet! His Mr. Batchel story, The Train of Events, features the ghost of a suicide aboard a railway carriage.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 2, 2015 20:05:16 GMT
It's interesting how many railway-related stories have been written by David G. Rowlands, and I didn't know that the railway in Traveler's Fare was based on an actual line. It's quite clear that Mr Rowlands is a railway enthusiast and knows a fair bit about the locomotives, lines and companies of yore. This is clear from the little snippets he inserts; bits that only a steam buff would know (or care about). For instance, in "The Graven Image" he adds an aside ("for the technically minded") that the locomotives (both full-size and model) are F5 tanks, which did indeed run on Great Eastern Railway branch lines, such as the one in the story. Here's a picture of a model one, just like the model in the story.....
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 2, 2015 21:02:43 GMT
I didn't know that the railway in Traveler's Fare was based on an actual line. Another footnote for you. The original Welsh Highland Railway collapsed into bankruptcy in 1937 and had been dismantled many years before "Traveller's Fare" was written. Incredibly, all 25 miles of it have since been rebuilt, and it reopened in 2011. So you can now make the same journey that Father O'Connor did in a narrow-gauge steam train through wildest Snowdonia. Even if you don't have the same experiences he did, the scenery's terrific.
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Post by ripper on Mar 3, 2015 8:22:39 GMT
Even though a lot of references pass me by, it's clear that DGR has a genuine fondness for railways, and good on him, I say. I know rather little about the railways, but the sight and sound of an old steam train really stirs the blood in a way that modern diesel and electric locomotives cannot.
Ah, yes, Dem, that Mr. Batchel tale had slipped my mind.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 3, 2015 8:53:46 GMT
I'm sure you'll have seen this, Dr. Proof, Rip, but a nice little anecdotal something, first appeared in Ghosts & Scholars 11, but available to read on the Pardoes' website. David G. Rowlands; A Meeting With Tom Rolt
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 3, 2015 12:07:34 GMT
Thanks for that, Dem - I'd seen it before in Ghosts & Scholars 11. Tom Rolt was one of the good guys, I think...
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Post by ripper on Mar 3, 2015 14:27:26 GMT
Shrinkproof, that's really nice to hear regarding the re-opening of the Traveler's Fare line, and if I am ever in the area then I think a trip along it would be a must.
I did read that G & S article you mentioned, Dem, though it's been many years ago, so a re-read is called for, I think.
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Post by ripper on Mar 3, 2015 14:56:18 GMT
I just read that G & S article again. What a lovely little story. I hope that David still has that paperback with the Jamesian titles suggested by Tom Rolt scribbled in it.
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Post by ripper on Mar 5, 2015 8:59:42 GMT
Passenger from Crewe by Frederick Cowles, included in The Horror of Abbot's Grange. Mr. Timmins, traveling between Crewe and Manchester, is told a tale of infidelity, murder and suicide by a fellow passenger, which he is assured the climax of which took place in the locomotive carriage in which they are sitting. But how does the storyteller know quite so much about it all?
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Post by dem bones on Sept 17, 2015 5:19:18 GMT
A tidy railway-themed horror was recently posted in our Sealed Section (you'll need to be logged in to read it): Albie - Beneath You (Kevin L. Donihe [ed.], Bare Bone #7, 2005).
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Post by Shrink Proof on Sept 17, 2015 11:53:05 GMT
Very neat. Thanks.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Sept 17, 2015 12:56:19 GMT
Have recently come across another tale to add to the railway archive, namely "Addendum to a Confession" by John Gaskin from his third collection of tales, "The Master of the House". Rather like "The Bay Platform" (in the original post), it's set at Oxford railway station in the 1950s, at night and in the depths of winter. The writer is a student, taking temporary work as a night goods porter prior to going to medical school. He fills the vacancy suddenly created by the departure of one Michael Elliston. Some while later, Elliston, known to be mentally unstable, confesses to the brutal murder of Geoffrey Harding, whose body was found by the first customers of the day in the station canteen.
The writer is unsure of himself in the portering job but is befriended by old hand Charlie Hurdley, who tells him that Harding was an insomniac who hung about the staff canteen at night and was "a rum 'un...like ’e’d eat yer, if yer tasted better than yer looked." Hurdley recalls that his refusal to buy a newspaper for Harding was followed by him suffering badly in a freak bike crash when he ran into something he couldn't see on his way home from work. No-one saw the accident yet Harding seemed to know all about it, telling Hurdley that “Next time, ’Urdley, you disobliges me you’ll not get ’ome”. Hurdley needed no further persuading to buy the paper for Harding, who then said he couldn't pay for it but “I always pays my debts, ’Urdley. Mark my words, I’ll pay you, and you’ll take it.” But before he paid up he was murdered.
Meanwhile the writer has problems of his own. Frequently left to his own devices on the deserted, snow-bound station, he repeatedly encounters a silhouette (or thinks he does) near the parked carriages where the murder weapon was found, eventually summoning up the courage to challenge the intruder, but finding nothing (not even footprints) except a purse containing threepence and a note saying The Keeper Keeps. Increasingly spooked, he becomes convinced that the figure is after him and flees that part of the station, cutting across the tracks and nearly being run down by a goods train which has been for some unknown reason diverted onto tracks normally unused.
Later he offers Hurdley the 3d to compensate him for the price of the paper he bought Harding, but is turned down. Convinced he has to rid himself of the coins, he slips them into Hurdley's great coat in the staff room, which Hurdley puts on before biking home again....
The final twist comes years later. By now the writer is a doctor, working as a psychiatrist, and one of his first patients is Michael Elliston. He tells the doctor a bit more about what happened than he revealed in his original confession....
The gas-lit station at night with its snow, fog, smoke and steam is a great setting. A first-rate ghost story which leaves just enough loose ends.
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