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BEST RAILWAY STORIES TEN of the BEST Selected Short Stories Edited by L BEST RAIL- Best Railway WAY edited by •es l,. 'I'. t:. ROLT STOIUES Storl .. ., edited by L.T.C. ROLT FA.BEil Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com BEST RAILWAY STORIES TEN OF THE BEST Selected Short Stories edited by L. T. C. ROLT edited with an introduction by JOHN WELCOME Though the railways nowadays are often sources of frustration and irrita­ tion, they still retain a unique dash and When it comes to editing a collection of distinction-the aura of speed and short stories, John Welcome is hard to power, the flavour of a romance that beat as his highly successful series of is all the more potent for being a little 'Best' anthologies-Best Secret Service out-of-date. This fascinating collection Stories, Best Crime Stories, Best Racing of stories captures its essence superbly & Chasing Stories to name but a few­ and is as colourful, as lively, and as have proven. But often his insatiable varied as the railways themselves. appetite for good tales has brought him Death, mystery and disaster rise through up against one that won't fit into any the steam of the stories by-to name a particular category; and so he presents handful-Dickens, Conan Doyle, Free­ here a number of very varied stories man Wills Croft and Robert Aickman · which might be termed, as he says 'the and comedy, politics and fanaticis~ best that I had to leave out'. And very rattle through those by 'Q', Raymond good they are too. But then W. Somerset Williams and Doug Welch. Maugham, Michael Arlen, Damon L. T. C. Rolt- and there is no one Runyon, Saki and the others knew just better qualified to do so-has put to­ how to put it down on paper. gether an anthology to keep the traveller 25s net awake from Euston to Inverness, or a man from his own pillow far into the night. Jarket design by Felix Kelly If you would like to receive our announcement catalogues regularly, please write to Faber and Faber limited 24 Russell Square London WCI 25s £1.25 Downloaded netfrom https://www.greatestadventurers.com BEST RAILWAY STORIES Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com Best Railway Stories edited with an Introduction by L.T. C. ROLT FABER AND FABER 24 Russell Square London Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com First published in 1969 by Faber and Faber Limited 24 Russell Square London WC 1 Printed in Great Britain by Purnell and Sons Limited Paulton (Somerset) and London All rights reserved SBN 571 08847 3 WIGAN U .. :.·· WITflDkA\.L, HOOK SA· .. --~- ... ---- © Introduction and selection By Faber and Faber 1969 Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com CONTENTS INTRODUCTION by L. T. C. Rolt page 9 THE SIGNALMAN by Charles Dickens ,15 THE FRACAS AT PADDINGTON by Anthony Trollope 30 .007 by Rudyard Kipling 39 THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS by A. Conan Doyle 57 THE STORY-TELLER by "Saki" 89 PIPES IN ARCADY by "Q" 95 PoissoN o' AVRIL by E. <E. Somerville and Martin Ross 1o6 5.27 TO DUNDEE by A. J. Cronin 119 DEATH OF A TRAIN by Freeman Wills Croft 133 THE GARSIDE FELL DISASTER by L. T. C. Rolt 139 THE TRAINS by Robert Aickman 149 NINETY-EIGHT UP by John Masters 194 THE STRIKE by Raymond Williams 203 LAST JOURNEY by Leo Tolstoy 213 THE YELLOW MAIL STORY by Frank H. Spearman 218 MRs. UNION STATION by Doug Welch 234 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 255 7 Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com INTRODUCTION "A slight delicate looking man with pale face and refined features, light red hair and dreamy blue eyes. Such is a brief description of Thorpe Hazell, book collector and railway en­ thusiast, a gentleman of independent means whose knowledge of book editions and bindings was only equalled by his grasp of railway details. At least two railway companies habitually sought his expert advice in the bewildering task of altering their time­ tables, while from time to time he was consulted in cases where his special railway knowledge proved of immense service and a private notebook of his cases would have provided much interest­ ing copy to publishers." Thorpe Hazell, railway detective, was one of the odder charac­ ters whose acquaintance I made when delving for material for this book. Unfortunately, however, his creator, V. L. White­ church, commits the cardinal error of making his detective appear ridiculous. Violin playing, cocaine injections or the keep­ ing of tobacco in a Persian slipper are the appropriate foibles of a master mind, whereas Hazell's unfortunate habit of eating Plasmon biscuits, rolling his eyes and performing other grotesque physical exercises in moments of intellectual stress is merely an absurdity which becomes boring with repetition. So, although Hazell's casebook, Thrilling Stories of the Railway, is an interesting period piece, I regretfully decided that none of his cases could qualify as a "best". Readers anxious to discover how Hazell solved the mystery of the disappearance of a wagon from the middle of a goods train in the course of its non-stop 9 Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com L. T. C. ROLT run from Didcot to Newbury are referred to Dorothy L. Sayers collection, Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror, Part I, where the story is reprinted. Hazell's casebook was joined among the discards by a far more distinguished work, none other than Thomas Hardy's novel A Pair of Blue Eyes. In this case the reason was that, although railways have an important place in the plot, the most skilful surgery could not extract any portion of suitably sustained rail- ' way interest to stand on its own. From these two examples the reader will gather that the quest for material for this book, though vastly entertaining, was by no means easy. The reason lies in the curious fact that the English­ man's love of railways finds expression in non-fiction and only very rarely in the imaginative realm of fiction. When I accepted at the outset that a "story" must by definition be fictional, I made a rod for my back. In America such a job would have been simple. I could fill a book three times over with American rail­ road stories. I think this is because railways played so funda­ mental a part in shaping the political map of the American continent that they have become an important part of its folklore. Of all the great Victorian novelists, Charles Dickens was the most consciously aware of the dramatic significance of railways. They feature often in his novels - there is the famous account of Mr. Dombey's railway journey in Dombey & Son, for example - but, although it has been anthologised many times before, I make no apology for including here his famous ghost story The Signalman which first appeared in the Christmas number of "All the Year Round" for 1886. Its setting is the cavernous mouth of Kilsby Tunnel and it has become the classic railway story. Railways feature rarely in the novels of Dickens' equally pro­ lific contemporary Anthony Trollope, but as a counterweight to The Signalman I have included a light-hearted extract from The Small House at Allington (1864). In Trollope's brilliant thumbnail sketch of the platform-superintendent at Padding- 10 Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com INTRODUCTION ton we have the Victorian railway official to the life in all his majesty. A recent anthology of railway writing (mainly devoted to non­ fiction) includes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost Special. Here I have selected his Sherlock Holmes story The Bruce­ Partington Plans. For although the crime itself is unconnected with railways, they play an essential part in the ingenious dis­ posal of the corpse. The story was written in 1917 but it is set in the period before the Inner Circle lines had been electrified. Otherwise there would have been no thick coating of soot upon the sills of that dark house in Caulfield Gardens and therefore no clue to substantiate Holmes' theory. Experienced fiction writers can commit the most appalling gaffes when they venture into realms of specialised expertise. Even the late Ian Fleming, who took particular pains in this respect, occasionally erred. Perhaps this is one reason for the lack of good railway fiction. Railwaymen cannot write fiction, while laymen hesitate to invade their province. There are exceptions, of course, on both sides. Freeman Wills Croft was a railway civil engineer before he became a writer of detective stories, while Raymond Williams is the son of a Welsh railway signalman. Hence the railway detail and atmosphere in their stories are absolutely authentic; only the station names are disguised. Mr. Croft's "Pullover" on the Great Western main line east of Exeter is a bit of a puzzle, but enthusiasts will have no difficulty in identifying "Glynmawr" with Llanvihangel at the summit of the long bank out of Abergavenny. Wishing to dispose of a character in his long novel Hatter's Castle, A. J. Cronin had the happy notion of putting him on board the ill-fated train that was lost in the Tay Bridge disaster. For a non-railwayman he handles the railway detail remarkably well, though he mixes his metaphors badly in the excitement of the dramatic ending. Structural engineers blench at the idea of steel girders (they were iron girders anyway) snapping like twigs and cast-iron columns bending like willow wands. II Downloaded from https://www.greatestadventurers.com L. T. C. ROLT Among laymen writers the one who could, above all others, be relied upon to get his expertise right on whatever subject he wrote about was Rudyard Kipling.
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