The story of how a crew, beset with turmoil, overcame their locomotive's design flaws. It is written from the perspective of the fireman.
The matter of favourites on the Portethwaite line was a highly opinionated subject and could easily depend on the day.
But it can be agreed by all of the staff that The ‘Brigitte’ was the most polarizing.
When built by Anstis Works, she was designed with aesthetics first and practicality second. None could deny that she was a beautiful engine and passengers came to see her as an icon of the railway and the valley. But any crewman that worked with her on a rainy day saw past the dazzle and might start to resent her.
It mostly came down to her cab. She was built a few miles west of Brighton, and it clearly shows as her outline was influenced by the Stroudley appearance of a cab thinner than the tanks.
A necessity on the LBSCR due to the tunnels at Hastings, but nothing short of impractical on the narrow gauge, for a rainy day meant soggy sleeves for both men on the footplate.
Another abnormality of The 'Brigitte' was her lack of sanding gear, or any sanding pots to speak of. Both of her colleagues possessed sand pots, and No.2; The ‘Bowen Cooke’, even had a sanding mechanism.
Crews would bring with them a small container of sand; not too big or it would eat up precious space in the cab, not too little or they would run out before they got anywhere. If this failed them, the solution was always to use the bucket of sand kept in the guard’s van. It was meant for tackling fires and this practice would likely be frowned upon by Mr and Mrs Health and Safety of today.
However, I recall one trip where even this wasn’t enough.
It was mid-spring and we were now working to the summer timetable, but despite that it had been raining heavily for the last couple of days.
With sleeves rolled up and hats firmly secured around our heads, my driver and I were rostered to take The ‘Brigitte’, 4 coaches and half a dozen wagons to the lake. A load like this was never usually a problem, but we had the misfortune of needing to stop on the gradient at Rockfahm Halt.
We tried to restart but No.1 slipped and stalled and soon I was walking alongside the engine with our pot of sand, trying to throw it onto the railhead whilst avoiding having my hands cut off by the valve gear.
Eventually underway, we steamed into Hardbrooke at 10 minutes past the hour; only 5 minutes late but with the good fortune of the next 3 miles being downhill.
I spent those next few miles building up my fire. The proceeding 4 miles after Butary were the most punishing and we would need all the steam we could manage. Cautious not to slip, my driver slowly eased her out of Butary and we immediately climbed towards the lake. The gradients went from 1 in 77 to 1 in 50 throughout the journey in a sneaky and unceremonious way.
It was one moment we were going fine along a ridge overlooking the river, the next moment the wheels had lost all grip and the train quickly dragged to a halt. Checking the pot, I found to my horror, we had used it all on the climb from Rockfahm halt to Hardbrooke.
Then I remembered, we still had the guard’s bucket of sand in the van. The ridge the train was on meant we could get out of the cab, but we couldn’t walk down the train. I signalled to the guard to bring the bucket to this end. Striding down the corridor through the carriages as far as he could, it was then we encountered our second problem: the first coach in the train was unlike the others. Instead of having balconies at either end and a corridor in between, it had separated compartments.
By now we already had the attention of the passengers, as they all popped their heads out of the windows. Thinking quickly, we employed them to pass the bucket between them from the guard to the engine.
We had to hurry, for as it got further up the coach, it got heavier with all the rain soaking into the sand.
That was when disaster struck; from one burly gentleman it passed to an older gentleman who couldn’t quite match. It dropped, slipped from his hand and tumbled down the ridge, scattering clumps of sand everywhere but the rails we needed it on.
In a moment of dumbfoundedness, my driver could do nothing but quip, “It’s a good thing the guard won’t be needing that sand for fires then.”
We tried to start the train again on our own, but it was no use. The heavy load threatened to pull us back and The ‘Brigitte’ wouldn’t grip.
In a last act of desperation, my driver told me to start digging a hole on his side. “Is now the time to start digging our graves?” I remarked.
“If we can’t use sand, we’ll use dirt. Dig up as much dry dirt as you can and throw it under the wheels.
I got busy frantically digging, and when I came across dry stuff, I threw it under the engine’s wheels. It worked well although at one point I slipped on the mud and only just caught myself.
When you’ve experienced your head next to the whirling and untamed rods of an iron horse, you rather wish you had dug those graves ‘just in case’. Each time she lost her fitting, she lurched and swayed alongside me. It felt like I was a horse jockey and at any moment she would ride up on her trailing wheels and leep towards me. But my driver was a skilled man and steered her to grip the hill.
Leaping onto the footplate with a shovel looking like a space, I held my breath as she galloped up to speed and towards where the line levelled out.
Understandably none of the passengers bound for Ekend really minded that we’d blasted past the halt. It was either that or complain to the snorting beast pulling their train.
There was little time to shunt the wagons and get the train turned around. We refilled our sand pots from the station supply at Leakbeck, and I washed my shovel off under the water crane.
The train arrived back home behind schedule, but fortunately we could eat into our down-time before the next trip.
The rain continued for several days after that and we didn’t retrieve the guard’s bucket until a week later on our day off. Safe to say, the guard really wouldn’t have been putting out any fires with or without it.
(I know I don't post much here, but having a full on story is one worth posting)
Character art by @colloquial-kayak
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