Whiteout by Jonah
Those who have read my previous stories will need no introduction to Simon and Garret and their family. Those who haven't - why not? This is the latest in the series that began a couple of years back with "A Letter from America" and it fits in right after "Christmas in New England". If you haven't read the others, don't worry. It will stand on its own. It is a story of love - the real sort. Some of its characters are gay, though that doesn't matter. They are good people. They are not, however, real people. This is a work of fiction and every character is also a fiction - created by me, except for Garret, who was created by Jacob Lion, in the USA. I want to thank Jacob for permitting me to use his characters. This story is brought to you, free of charge, by Nifty. Nifty brings all these stories to you free of charge and he doesn't charge us authors either. The cost is borne by himself and our donations. To keep this site going please consider donating to Nifty at https://donate.nifty.org/
Chapter 11
Sunday came and went. It included a trip to Horsham St. Faith for Church. In fact the days continued to come and go. When you get older you get used to the days doing that, but we were young. Some of us were younger than others but, when you're young, life is an adventure. OK so we'd had more than our fair share of adventures but our adventures that particular week consisted mainly of going to school and taking Ross to see how his mother was progressing. She was progressing.
On Monday I had a very alarmed Ross on my hands because, when we arrived at the IC ward, his mother's bed was empty. We were directed to a convalescing ward two floors up where we found her sitting up and excited to see us. She was forming longer sentences than she had in IC so her lung was obviously coping better. She still got out of breath after quarter of an hour or so, but it was progress. On Tuesday she had moved again. This time she had abandoned the Emergency Centre and was in a ward in the main building - or rather, she wasn't. We arrived on the ward to be told that she had been taken down to physiotherapy but was expected back shortly. Five minutes later a porter wheeled her in in a wheelchair.
"Do you want transferring to your bed Alice, or would you rather sit up till your visitors have gone?
She opted to stay put so we sat on her bed and were able to chat. I was surprised that physio had not tired her out, but it was another ten minutes before she began to tire.
Each day brought a new development. until, on Friday I told her that we might not get in on Saturday because of railway work, but would be in on Sunday. The nurse said we could come in on Saturday evening if we wished but Alice said she would see us on Sunday.
Saturday dawned .... no I'm not fooling anybody, am I? By eight o' clock on Saturday it was sunny though cool. Ross, who had elected to accompany me, breakfasted with me and we then drove to Sheringham. Parked up in the staff car park I found that the pilot diesel was sitting on the end of platform 1 with a tool van and two brakevans attached. I repaired to the ops. office and found Harry in residence.
"Are you with the permanent way today Simon?"
"So far as I know."
"They're across in the messroom. By the time you've prepped your diesel they'll be with you. They got those sleepers dropped off last week, once the snow had gone, so they'll be making a start on putting them in. The plan is to start with the stretch from Golf Links to Bridge 304. There seem to be more sleepers want changing there than the whole of the rest of the railway put together."
I headed for the loco and grabbed some oil fillers. Ross started again on the side rods and axleboxes while I climbed up and did the rockers. Once we'd checked the levels in the engine and exhausters, and inspected the generator belts, I put in the battery switches and primed the oil pump. I'd no sooner started the engine than bodies began to emerge from the messroom and climb on the brake vans.
""I see you're double manned on here already this morning," said Dennis, as he joined us in the cab.
"Yes, I am. This is Ross, he's only been up here once before. Ross, this is Dennis Holder - he's in charge of the permanent way department and he's going to tell us what we're doing this morning."
"Are you ready to move yet Simon?"
"When you are. " I dropped the air brake handle. "Ross just unscrew the handbrake will you."
As Ross began to turn the handle Dennis said.
"We've got about two dozen sleepers to change between Golf Links and 304. We'll go straight up to 304 when Pete give us the tip, then we'll start working our way back here."
"Is Pete on the front brake?" I asked, sticking my head out of the window.
"Yup! You'll see him in a moment."
I slipped the loco in reverse gear and looked forward.
"Ross, " I said. "Did you learn all those shunting signals?"
"I reckon so."
"What's stop when you're riding on a vehicle."
He waved one arm up and down.
"And when you're not?"
He raised both arms.
"Right, you're going to have to keep your head out of that window. If you see any signal at all from that front brake, I want to know about it. If I don't react for any reason, that's the brake handle and it goes straight down. You know where the whistle button is if you need to use it?"
He nodded just as a hand appeared from the front brake van.
I lifted the brake handle and pressed the whistle button.
"Clear this side," called Ross.
I clicked the power controller to ON and carried on watching forward.
"Have you got possession Dennis?"
"Yes. Didn't Harry tell you?"
"I'd have asked you whether he did or not. It's your possession, not his" I replied.
He leaned forward and peered through the big rear window on Ross' side of the loco. He could see nothing except the end of the tool van so I guessed that he only did it to avoid acknowledging that he should have told me about the line being under engineering possession. It only meant that I didn't need to obey signals and the signal boxes were unmanned.
I shut off and let the train drift toward the level crossing. I could see the lights flashing and could hear the distant sound of the pee-wees so I sounded one long blast on the whistle and let the train keep rolling. As soon as I judged the front brake van was over the crossing, I opened the controller again. As soon as the couplings were all slack I opened it some more. We were blasting alongside the golf course now and the engine was pretending to work hard. We passed the fixed distant signal and rounded a gentle curve. We were on a high embankment but soon the beginning of the cutting came into view.
"Slow down signal,," called Ross.
I closed the controller and let the train roll. Once the bridge came into view I braked gently.
"Slow down," repeated Ross. "Slow down......slow down...... slow... Stop!"
I dropped the brake handle halfway then dropped it fully. We were at a stand and the train was resting on the diesel on the uphill grade. Another few yards and the gradient would have tipped the other way but this was fine. I walked across to Ross' side and looked down to where wooden sleepers lay on the lineside. The last one I could see was just about level with the tool van. Men were already dropping down to the ballast from the brake vans.
Dennis disembarked and as Ross and I looked on, thee men had a ladder against the tool van and two men were climbing into it. Shovels, crowbars and half a dozen jacks were dropped off. At a shout from Dennis everybody stood clear of the train. The ladder was taken away and Dennis began signalling us to propel forward.
"Nip over there and make sure there's nobody there," I said. Ross shot across the cab.
"Clear this side," he called.
I pressed the whistle button, clicked us into reverse gear and released the brake as I opened the controller. We pushed the train on until the end of our loco was clear of where the men were standing.
"That'll do you Simon," called Dennis. I dropped the brake handle and said,
"Handbrake on."
As soon as Ross had screwed down the handbrake I pulled on a pair of work-gloves and threw another pair to Ross.
"This is where we get our hands dirty, and the reason why we got you safety boots last week."
We climbed off and walked forward to where the men were working.
""Sixth one down," said Dennis. We carried on walking counting the sleepers as we went. Sure enough the sixth one had a white cross painted on it. I located two jacks and slid their toes under the rails on each end of the sleeper. Using a crowbar as a jack-handle I pumped until the jacks were taking the weight of the rail.
"Rght! Now we want the ballast out so grab yourself a shovel."
Ross was unused to heavy manual labour but, to be fair, he set to with a will. Behind us, two of the permanent way gang had already cleared the ballast around another sleeper, had unscrewed the chairs and were using a pair of sleeper tongs to drag the sleeper out, but they were more experienced than we.
It took about ten minutes to get the sleeper completely free of ballast. I took a T-bar spanner and, fitting it to the head of a chair screw motioned Ross to hold it with me. Applying our combined force we used the slack in the spanner to impact the screw into movement. Once it was moving I advised Ross to move the spanner to another screw. We loosened all six screws like that then unscrewed all but one at each end. As soon as we took those out the sleeper dropped into the void we'd created in the ballast. I had to grab a pair of sleeper tongs and Ross and I struggled to pull out the sleeper. We manhandled it clear so that we could get a new sleeper into position.
With a chair-screw and a lump hammer we tapped out the remains of the old nylon ferrules from the chairs. Next, we dragged the new sleeper into position, lining up one end with the other sleeper ends. I lifted the sleeper while Ross packed ballast under each end then Dennis turned up with a track guage which he placed on the rails. Expressing satisfaction he gave permission for the gentleman with the big power drill to drill our sleeper. As soon as he had we dropped in new ferrules, screwed in the chair screws and shovelled in the rest of the ballast. With our seven man crew, plus Ross and I, we could do four sleepers at a time like that. That is four two-man teams and one man on the drill. Dennis just supervised. Within an hour we had done a dozen sleepers and the train was about two-hundred yards away. The tools had simply moved up with us.
"Another hour and we stop for dinner," said Dennis.
"Half an hour," I told him. "We're overworking the youngster, and there's only two hour's work left to do anyway."
"Suits me," said Dennis. "If you two don't think you're up to it."
"Dennis, mate," I said "Go on like that if you want to walk back to Sheringham. In an hour we'll be quarter of a mile from the train. None of your men will walk quarter of a mile. You'll all wait here while me and Ross go fetch the train. I can easily arrange for you to walk though if you're that keen."
"No, no. You're right Simon. Half an hour it is."
So, two more sleepers each it was, meaning that we'd changed eighteen sleepers. Ross and I walked back to where we had left the train and climbed on the locomotive. Ross released the handbrake and we drew slowly down to where the gang stood waiting. They made no attempt to reload the tools but all climbed onto the brake van. In good order I drew the train back to Sheringham, stopping just short of the coaches in platform one.
Within a minute there was no sign of any Permanent way gang. They all disappeared to their messroom. Ross and I repaired to the station buffet, stopping to remove our overalls first. In the closed season the buffet still operates though not to the extent that it does in high season. They were happy to warm up a couple of Cornish pasties for us and provide us with tea.
Having partaken of that we returned to the train, sounded the whistle and waited to see if any gang appeared. They did so within about a minute so we took the train up to where the tools lay on the embankment. We changed more sleepers but, working more quickly, we were at the level crossing within the hour.
It was not four o' clock when we shut down the loco in platform one and reported to the ops office to sign off. By five o'clock we were back in Norwich, and reporting to Garret at the hotel.
"We could go and see your mum you know. We're back earlier than we expected."
"Nah," said Ross. "She's expecting us tomorrow. Can we go after Church?"
"Of course we can." I told him.