Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  STANDING ON the platform of Donabate Station the other Saturday morning waiting in the frost for a ‘train’ that was half an hour late, can you wonder that I fell to considering once again the dreadful mess into which our railways have been permitted to fall? When the ‘train’ was led in by our old friend 493, I laughed bitterly. This engine is about 17 years old and is suffering badly from condensation. It has been in this deplorable state for 2 years, yet absolutely nothing has been done to remedy what amounts to nothing more or less than a grave public scandal. Excuses there may be, ‘explanations’, no doubt all very plausible. The foreman welder is on his holidays but is expected back aMonday, when we hope etc. etc. Meanwhile thousands of foot pounds have been lost on the drawbar. It is all too dreadfully typical of the dawdling mentality that has made our name a by-word among steam-men the world over. I have written elsewhere and in no uncertain terms about the matter of the Slieve Gullion’s valve-ports, the Kestrel’s chronic ‘blowing’, the scandal of the Queen Maeve’s piston valve lining. All very boring, no doubt, but of importance to thinking Irishmen. The Donabate engine was choked with dirty feed water and so long as there are plenty of good emulsions on the market, there can be absolutely no excuse for this. It is not good enough, it is not fair, and more than that I will not say.

  I have noticed from the newspapers, with not a little disquiet, that Reynolds is buying horses. If this is a purely personal and private activity, well and good. But if here we have the seed of a ‘brilliant’ and ‘resourceful’ plan to have our trains drawn by cart-horses during this appalling ‘emergency’, then I must enter an instant demurrer and neither the hired rough, the bribe, or the soft word will abate one tittle of the public agitation that it will be my portion to foment. I am absolutely sick of the caprices of amateur meddlers. At no time has any personal approach been made to me in connexion with emergency engineering problems, although it is common knowledge that I have a plan that will solve—and permanently—the difficulties which arise from bad coal, duff, turf, timber and all manner of inferior fuel. A false pride prohibits this approach, while all the time the public suffers—if not in silence, at least stoically.

  Will it be credited that I have had to build privately, and from the resources of my own purse, the proto-engine of this salvation? Will it be believed that under sacks in my back-yard stands the solution of our transportation chaos? Such, however, is the fact.

  The picture of my engine, which I reproduce here, will be self-explanatory to genuine steam men, though I can imagine hurried recourse to text-books and drawings at Amiens Street and Kingsbridge. Technical details I will not enter into here but this much it is admissible to say—that the solution of the whole problem lies in the immediate erection of overhead electrical conductors throughout all our systems. This is no plan to banish steam—those who know me will have no doubt on that point. It is a plan to banish coal. Steam will be raised by electrical heaters and all existing locomotives can be converted to this process with hardly any expense.

  Simple, eh? Perhaps. But not quite simple enough for the shameless men who to-day control our railways. Incompetence, waste, inefficiency, obsolete technique, botchery and ignorance, these are the criminal vices I assail. And it is a big day’s work to tackle alone and single-handed. My other hand I lost in the Great War.

  But I fight on.

  RATHER CURIOUS thing happened to me (there) the other day. In a pub I happened to run across some G.N.R. chaps and we fell (I hurt the bad knee again, got the cap unscrewed Lansdowne Road 1924 when playing for Ireland) we fell to discussing the ‘Gullion’ as we call her. I inquired how she was, how behaving. Umm. Embarrassed pause. Come now, I said, seek not with gilded phrase to soften what may be ill news. The worst that ye may know I can with fortitude bear. The truth, I pray ye. Alas, the ‘Gullion’, it seems, ‘blew’ at Donabate on Friday week. The week before that she ‘blew’ at Laytown, that most curious priestless locality. Coming down from Belfast a month before she ‘blew’ four times in three miles, even though being worked on the low pressure cyls. only. Rafferty, it appears, had a terrible time with her, and when he got her into Amiens Street eventually, up all night with her, boiler-tubes stuffed and the whole engine absolutely crippled with ‘catarrh’.

  Feed water? I queried.

  No no no. She gets special feed water, orders came down from Glenavy that no expense was to be spared. Special feed water flown every morning from Swindon, England.

  I inquired whether they were using the patent emulsion I had prescribed last September.

  Absolutely. Never missed a day. Man told off to look after nothing else.

  Piston valve liners?

  No no. They are checked before and after all runs. A sample of her condensed steam was bottled and went off to Crewe for analysis. Absolutely nothing found wrong.

  Mysterious, you will say. If you like. But it is not my fashion to call a thing ‘mysterious’ and leave it at that. I asked question after question, many of them surprising my interlocutors because they seemed unduly obvious and simple. Tiny clues began to emerge and soon a theory took shape in my mind. My questions now were directed towards corroboration. Yes yes. Quite. I stood up. Possibly my look was ominous, for my friends grew deathly pale as they waited for my verdict.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘there is but one remedy. She must be re-boilered.’

  You could have heard a pin drop. Then, as if by instinct, three glasses of steaming malt were raised to the thin lips and swallowed with enteric convulsion horrible to behold. Eyes looked into other eyes. At the back of the mind of all was the cold dread that never again would the ‘Gullion’ take the road.

  Could … could it be done successfully? What … what would it cost? Would I … do the drawings?

  How charming and child-like can man be when he trembles in the shade of fear! How engaging, how simple! And how pleasurable it is to re-assure, to pacify, to renew hope!

  Yes yes, it could be done. The steam-men of yesterday did bigger things without holding themselves prodigal of talent. The cost? Well, I could promise that it would not break the Company. At that time and in that place details I did not propose to enter into. We would meet another day, not in the gilded luxury of a public house parlour, but rather in the stern environs of my lodgings. This much, however, it was admissible to say. Out of a one thousand pound note the Company must not expect much change. Nor did such rough estimate include fees or five per cent for Conditions of Employment Act. Three and a half on the drawings plus one and a half for supervision, that would be the limit of my personal demands. My interest in the ‘Gullion’ was frankly … not financial. They smiled. They were new men.

  Alas, there I go. I talked earlier of a ‘curious experience’ and now I have not space to describe it. But to-morrow I tell all.

  (Tube Beak, Con, Tin Nude)

  TO-DAY, I continue yesterday’s notes on the sick ‘Gullion’. I wish to make my position absolutely clear. Ambiguity in such matters one cannot risk.

  First things first. The ‘Gullion’ must be reboilered, and immediately. No person dares to doubt this. The fact is accepted by all. Very well. Some people will tell you, unctuous and smooth of tongue, that all is well, that the damage has been done—in a word, that all’s right with the world. I disagree, I disagree profoundly. It was from a chance conversation I had with some railway chaps in a public house that it emerged that this engine was in a certain condition. Is that good enough? Is that in accord with the public conscience? Is this the world we expected to live in under Home Rule? Would it have been the British way?

  All that I take leave to doubt.

  My views on the Irish steam man of to-day are well known. Statements already made, not once but often, I will not re-state. Suffice it to say that your driver of to-day conceives that a social stigma attaches to a well-filled Repair Book. He simply will not notify defects in his machine. He will dissemble and hide and pass off serious things with a laugh. A knock in the bearings—what of it?
Come day go day, God send Sunday. A little short in the oil system. She’ll right herself, she’ll be game-ball to-morrow. We’ll do a little priming outside Balbriggan and then we’ll see what happens. Anyway, we won’t have her to-morrow. We’ll get Rafferty blamed.

  It is a fundamental weakness in the character of our people. One looks to the Churches in a matter of this kind. Single-handed I can do little. But there is one idea in my head I most earnestly commend to the consideration of Glenavy. It is simple, not very costly and might well yield wonderful results for Steam and Ireland. Beyond all doubt it is worth trying. We cannot in this matter afford to be timorous or conservative. We must attempt the bold remedy. If we fail, what of that? It is not shameful to fail.

  In the quiet stretches behind the North Strand we must—and at once—set up a little steam clinic. There I am prepared to give my services gratis six days a week. The whole thing must be absolutely informal. Drivers must be told that half a mile up the line there is a little house, a simple structure of dressed stone, with perchance a rose bush at the door; a little haven where advice may be had on the intimate little troubles of our noble and hard-working locomotives. No scolding, no questions, no ‘why-was-this-allowed-to-happen?’ And no snobbery. Must a man stay away because, forsooth, his charge is an undersized, dirty 2–4–2 tank, caked with coal-dust and rattling in every bolt after a lifetime of shunting? Most certainly not. I will gladly see them all, and no disorder too trivial. A great sickness begins with a small sickness. That is the watchword of modern locomotive therapy.

  I must not forget to tell you of the ‘curious experience’ I had (there) the other day. Went home late one night to the lodgings, put on the green eye-shade, and got to work on the new boiler drawings. Within reach was the inevitable glass of Pernod. Frankly, I got all mixed up. Drawing the boiler-tubes involved several parallel horizontal lines. Whatever I was thinking of, I found that I had inscribed on these lines the text of a rather lovely violin sonata. Nor did I realise what had happened until the following morning, when I came down to find the boiler drawings on the piano, neatly inscribed ‘Slieve Gullion Boiler: Maestoso: Andante Grazioso: Presto.’ And the whole, by your leave, dedicated to Kreisler!

  Dear me!

  WHAT OF steam for 1944?

  Suffice it to say that I have plans. I am writing a book on steam and it will be published in due course by that mysterious Mister Pranter who is so frequently mentioned in The Bell.

  Readers often correspond with me on steam matters. The younger generation, I find, knows very little about the great art. Thus I am often chided, forsooth, for being ‘too technical’. Bah! As well ask Einstein to provide simpler sums. Quod scripsi scripsi. Not one jot or tittle will I abate.

  Yet ignorance can have charm. A young lady has written challenging me on the subject of railway disasters. ‘Would not a plan to avoid even one be more important than a thousand thermic syphons?’ But of course. Most certainly. Nobody suggested anything to the contrary. Indeed, I dealt personally with this very matter many years ago, Drawings, specifications, everything. Take, for example, my scheme for avoiding head-on collisions. It is the essence of inexpense and simplicity.

  The patent apparatus I illustrate opposite tells its own ingenious story. Two trains colliding head-on do not telescope each other and kill hundreds of people. They are instantly switched off the track upon which at least one of them had no business to be and run harmlessly past each other, ploughing harmlessly into the earth and coming to a stand-still. Some of the ladies may be shaken, perhaps the fireman has scalded his hand … but the great thing is that there is absolutely no blood.

  Nor in my researches did I neglect the only other sort of a collision that is possible between trains. I refer to the case where, owing to inexcusable signal-box bungling, a fast passenger train is permitted to overtake a slow local on the same track. What then?

  Simple. Let the end of every slow train consist of the patent ramp-car I have illustrated. The fast train will not (as you might have imagined) run along the top of the slow train and eventually crash down on top of the slow engine. Quite no. The steepness of the ramp, allied with its motion, is sufficient to slow up the fast train and compel it to roll back again on the tracks. Thus hundreds of more lives are saved and man moves on in the coil of his dark destiny.

  All these plans were shown to the old D. & S.E.R., the most ruffianly railroad concern ever to exist in any country. ‘The Manager directs me to state that the Company are not interested in enclosed drawings and can take no responsibility for same.’

  Do I speak bitterly? Maybe.

  RECENTLY, at the Myles na gCopaleen Central Research Bureau, we were up all night with a low pressure centrifugal feed pump. Tangential acceleration of the fluid we were using caused ‘blowing’ in the filaments, and soon a transverse flaw developed in the automatic facing chuck. We substituted a ‘cold’ three-jaw chuck lined with colloidal graphite (160 c.c. per ft. lb. pressure at a temperature of 385°C.) and ‘ramped back’ the discharge metre, which, of course, is cast integrally and cannot be dismantled for running adjustments. At 4.30 am. it became clear that we were going to win through, and that ‘Old Martha’, as we call her, would survive. But what a night!

  FOOTPLATE TOPICS

  Coming back to the cognate subject of railway working, I should not like it to be taken from my remarks a few weeks ago that I would like to go down in railway history as a ‘full regulator man’. In my railway days you would not always find me with the lever pulled right up; still more rarely would you find me yielding to the temptation to work on the ‘first port’ and cut off late. Sometimes, when conditions suited, you would find me blowing down to reduce priming, but never when the design left me open to the danger of having my valve jammed open. And none knew better than I when to shut off my cylinder oil feed when drifting. I could write a book on how to economise on locomotive working in the present difficult times, but our self-opinionated and pig-headed railway bosses would probably ignore it. Recently I saw shunters doing things in the Kingsbridge yards that brought a blush of richest wine-hue to my wind-scarred railwayman’s cheek. Nothing but a strong informed public opinion will remedy these wasteful abuses. All up to Foster Place at 7.30 this evening, please. Fraternal delegate from the Swindon shops will attend.

  Incidentally, for a fee of fifty guineas and expenses I have offered the G.N.R. Company to ride the entire road and check carefully the drivers’ repair books. I have not had what is usually called the courtesy of a reply. (And by the same token there is a very bad patch out there beyond Skerries, it would need to be looked after before something happens.)

  One thing that I would put down with an iron hand, G.S. as well as G.N.: and that is toping and card playing in the cabins of express trains. There is nothing so easy as to over-ride a red if you are worried by a lone jack in a misère hand. Or, indeed, exercised by the prospect of destroying your fireman with a sudden trump in the middle of his cast-iron seven hearts. There is a time and a place for everything.

  Keats and Chapman

  WHEN Keats and Chapman were at Greyfriars, the latter manifested a weakness for practical jokes—‘practical jokes’ you might call them, indeed, of the oddest kind.

  One afternoon Chapman observed the headmaster quietly pacing up and down in the shade of the immemorial elms, completely submerged in Dindorf’s Poetae Scenici Graeci. It was late summer, and the afternoon stood practically upright on the scorched lawns, weaving drunkenly in its own baked light. Sun-struck pigeons gasped happily in the trees, maggots chuckled dementedly in the grasses, and red ants grimly carried on their interminable transport undertakings. It was very, very hot. Chapman, however, had certain fish to fry and mere heat was not likely to deter him.

  He wandered off to an old tool-shed and emerged very casually, carrying a small bucket of liquid glue. He took up an unobtrusive position near the pacing headmaster, and waited patiently for his chance. The headmaster approached, turned, and moved again slowly on h
is way. Instantly Chapman darted out, ran up noiselessly behind the pedagogue, and carefully emptied the bucket of glue all down the back of his coat. In a flash the young joker was back again in the shadow of the elms, carefully studying the results of his work. The headmaster continued his reading, wondering vaguely at the sound of aircraft; for the shining brown mess on the back of his coat had attracted hordes of wasps, bluebottles, gnats, newts, and every manner of dungfly. Chapman from his nook decided that the operation had been successful.

  But the end was not yet. Two fifth form bullies (Snoop and Stott, as it happened) had observed the incident from the distance, and thought it would be funny to turn the tables. They approached Chapman under cover, leaped on him, gagged his mouth, and lifted the little fellow in their arms. The pacing headmaster paced on. When his back was turned, the two fifth form ruffians ran up behind him, jammed Chapman on to him back to back on the gleaming glue, and were gone before the wretched headmaster had time to realise the extraordinary facts of his situation. That a howling small boy was glued to him high up on his back did not disturb him so much as the murderous punctures of the wasps, who were now angry at being disturbed.

  There was hell to pay that evening. Nobody would own up, and every boy in the school was flogged with the exception of Chapman, who was regarded as a victim of the outrage.

  After Keats had received his flogging like the rest, he was asked for his opinion of the whole incident, and particularly what he thought of Chapman.

  ‘I like a man that sticks to his principals,’ was all he would vouchsafe.

  KEATS and Chapman once paid a visit to the Vale of Avoca, the idea being to have a good look at Moore’s tree. Keats brought along his valet, a somewhat gloomy character called Monk. Irish temperament, climate, scenery, and porter did not agree with Monk, whose idea of home and beauty was the East End of London and a glass of mild. He tried to persuade Keats to go home, but the poet had fastened on a local widow and was not to be thwarted by the fads of his servant. Soon it became evident that a breach between them was imminent. Things were brought to a head by a downpour which lasted for three days and nights. Monk tendered a savage resignation, and departed for Dublin in a sodden chaise. The incident annoyed Chapman.