by Ian Hutson
‘Latte please.’
‘And, gentlemen, that brings us clumsily back to Doh – the prototype frothing machine’s broken.’
Thus the three gentlemen began to explain their observations of the new development with the “workforce” and with the narrow escaping and with the ugly, brutish, migrant population creeping in like an infection from the countryside already again. It quite frayed their nerves beyond bearing.
Branson stood. ‘That then, gentlemen, settles matters. We have done all the preparation that can be done. Cotton mills are built and stand idle, shipyards echo to the sounds of the marine architect pencil eraser and the new railway lines and stations are beginning to become overgrown with weeds. The National Coal Board are returned, full of enthusiasm and group cohesion from their team-building exercise in the Yorkshire Dales and are ready to start work. The Queen Victorian will wait no longer.’ He tapped on the tabletop and lowered his voice for well-educated upper-crust emphasis. ‘One week from today, on the thirtieth, we shall declare the Industrial Revolution open for business. Carpe diem, gentlemen, carpe ruddy diem.’
‘This is no time for carp fishing you blathering idiot!’ expostulated Mr Rolls from behind his hearing-trumpet, only to have his free ear clipped by Mr Royce who mouthed a silent but explanatory apology “Doctor Tourette’s Syndrome, upper class version where decent indecent swear-words are less commonly known and all that high-born well-bred sufferers could shout were things like dashed cad and gosh that’s a bit harsh and Spirit of ruddy Ecstasy on the bonnet? I’ll give you Spirit of chuffing Ecstasy my lad!”
Branson continued, unabashed, unabated, una paloma blanca, and indeed, waving his sheet of paper.
‘I have here, gentlemen, a draft agreement that I propose to send to the Ladies’ Committee for the Hurry-Up, as it were, outlining plans for a commercial locomotion contest to take place at Manchester Railway Station at 0800hrs at the end of this month. The Chancellor of the Ladies’ Committee has on previous occasion given me assurances that there will be no further demands for feminist lebensraum and that they have no ambitions to any influence in other spheres of male-dominated life. It is, quite definitely gentlemen, peace between the sexes for our time.’
Holding the letter aloft he paused in front of a watercolour of the proposed new Aerodrome at Heston, dotted about with fanciful interpretations of “flying machines”, while the old but reliable fore-runner of the press photographer sketched and scribbled for the new “tabloid” newspapers. ‘Peace, gentlemen, for our time. Talking of which, where are the little Railways Department sods? They are most germane to our timetable.’
A few of the members looked unhappy and tut-tutted among themselves, they weren’t happy about accepting a Teutonic link, not happy at all. Branson looked puzzled for a moment but then paraphrased.
‘Important, not German – the little railways sods are key to our plans, we must have speed in our movement of people and goods and the Royal Mails. They are most important to our timetable.’
Oh well, that was different and they couldn’t understand why he hadn’t said so in the first place instead of all of that balderdash about the ruddy Germanes.
Someone pointed tactfully to Stephenson the Younger who was signing off another work of art on the blackboard with a “Kilroy was here” nose and eyes over a proposed brick (railway embankment) wall.
Just then, with the sort of timing only available in cheap and tacky fiction, Trevithick wandered into the room, full of the joys of damped springing and singing to himself. ‘Everybody’s do-ooh-ing a brand new dance now, come on baby, do the locomotion...’ He stopped in his tracks when he saw Stephenson was already present and scratching yet another bloody diagram of a single-flanged wheel. Trevithick stopped in the doorway and addressed the committee with an early version of The Flounce and a waved handkerchief.
‘What is she doing here?’
Stephenson answered on behalf of the committee.
‘She is presenting the winning locomotive design to these nice gentlemen. Shouldn’t you be apologising to the Fire Service somewhere for yet another false alarm raised because you can’t resist a sweaty man in a uniform? I hear that you set your engine on fire yet again yesterday’ answered Stephenson before Branson could get a word in sideways with his tortoiseshell shoe-horn.
‘Well, it wasn’t me that called for a Police escort because the public walked up and stole the wheels while his engine was on “speed” test.’
‘Well your train tilts!’
‘It’s supposed to, you idiot, it helps it go around bends more easily!’
‘Given the speed your locomotive moves at, Sir, rust is more likely to be a problem than balance on the bends.’
‘At least my engine has a patented safety valve. Yours, Sir, has a predilection for boiler explosion exceeded only by your own less than clear complexion!’
With that unbearably pore jibe all sense of civilised restraint disappeared and Trevithick and Stephenson squealed and began slapping at each other like chav kangaroos in a hair pulling contest.
Branson got his word in, finally. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen! Please! We have organised a commercial contest to settle the matter for once and for all. All steam locomotive designs will be presented for trial at eight of the morning on the thirtieth INST at Manchester Railway Station, adjacent platforms and God help the new Transport Police. The eligible devices will be attached to rolling stock carrying coal bound for the dark, satanic, shipyards of somewhere dark and satanic and ungodly and not Manchester but quite a long way away [so that would be Liverpool then].’
Branson strode over to the map on the wall and scribbled out the Stockton and Darlington Passenger Railway with his magic marker, annotating it “accent totally unsuitable” and leaving the Liverpool and Manchester Railway as the only option currently in existence in the world, including all of the still-foreign bits of the world. Sniffing the magic marker appreciatively he turned back to the committee.
‘The judges as appointed by this committee will then make their decision regarding the future of English Rail. The winning design will immediately begin work upon clearing the backlog of passenger traffic and postal deliveries and the contracts will be awarded for taking the strain, so to speak, regionally. Actually, that would look quite good on the banners – “Let the Steam Locomotive take the strain...” – arrange that, would you please Miss Moneyha’penny, and have this letter delivered to Lady Constance Mann-Bighter as soon as possible.’
Miss Moneyha’penny played with her pearls and giggled, as she always did whenever Branson asked her for anything between missions.
Stephenson and Trevithick stopped bitch-slapping and squared off their respective tearful chins instead.
‘Right.’
‘Right then.’
‘I will see you in the Somewhere Dark and Satanic Bar after the contest, Mr Stephenson, and I shall have your usual drink ready and waiting for you. A very small sweet sherry is your usual choice, is it not, my dear?’
‘Hah! I shall see you on the dance floor, Mr Trevithick, and I shall have a drink ready and waiting for you. I believe that your favourite tipple is a Moscow Mule, is it not?’
‘You confuse my preferred drink with the identity of your mother, Sir, and anyway I’m butch darling, as well you know. I build big machines.’
‘You bitch! You’ll never even make it out of Manchester’s Canal Street* – that is your regular place of work Sir, is it not? Your train performs tricks, it’s quite obvious who it learned them from.’
[* Who says that town planners don’t think ahead? Gas Street, Waterworks Street and Mobile Phone Place all fall under the same heading of “inspired foresight”. Teleportation Crescent and 186,001 Miles Per Second Road in Bolton may yet prove to be the exceptions though, since we have no more industrial or scientific entrepreneurs remaining in England in the current era.]
‘Cow! You couldn’t pull a drunken sailor with that collection of old nuts and bolts you call a loc
omotive, let alone a dozen tons of coal. I’m not the one who entered “mistaken identity due to delays in the introduction of town-gas street lighting” as a plea of mitigation before Runcorn magistrates on a charge of soliciting a Grenadine Guard.’
‘You wouldn’t need to plead mistaken identity dear, everyone recognises you the instant you bend down to tie your shoe laces, whatever the ambient light.’
‘Bitch!’
‘Cow!’
With that the kangaroo-spat recommenced and the committee withdrew to the usual safe distance while hair was pulled and several mutually attempted kicks to the groin failed, for tailoring reasons, to make it higher than the opposition’s ankles.
‘Mister Trevithick! I believe that you misheard – this is a trial for serious steam locomotives or devices powered by horses walking on drive belts only. We have discussed this at length and the committee sees no future in the use of oil, especially for transportation purposes. Your English Electric Class 55 Deltic diesel-electrickery device is not eligible.’
‘Haa-ha!’ offered Stephenson in a spirit of conciliation, shouting down the corridor after Trevithick as he ran to the Ladies’ toilets to splash cold water on his face and to try to stop the tears welling.
‘Dear God, why those two ever began to play with train sets is beyond me. I’d have expected them both to be sitting in art college waiting for the price of textiles to come down to tie-dying territory rather than worrying about steam pressures and wheel flanges. I blame their fathers for giving them too strong a male role model and their mothers for being largely absent.’ He turned to Miss Moneyha’penny. ‘Please officially notify all members of the rail transport sub-committee to prepare themselves for the trials.’ She giggled and looked at his knees. Oh god, how she loved his knees, especially between missions.
The committee then dissolved into matters of bunting, valet horse-parking at the station and to finding a technical solution to the building of a “Crystal Palace” that would successfully serve for both scientifical exhibitions and carriage-boot fairs. Half of the committee were in favour of allowing the horses and carriages to park up in lines for the public to browse up and down at leisure while the other half said that they would prefer the carriages to be reversed up to lines of tables supplied by the organisers. It was obvious that the debate would go on late into the night and would almost certainly end in tears. The Chance Brothers arrived to mend the glass in the broken window and Branson quietly slipped out along with Messrs Watt, Telford, Refrigerator, Traction-Engine, Dyson and Cyril Khan, inventor of both the modern heating Aga and the modern Cyril Service.
‘Anyone fancy a take-away?’ enquired Branson, feeling relief that the business of the day had concluded in the well that all that ends well ends in.
‘Great idea. There’s that new sub-continental Indian place over in Viceroy Terrace.’
‘Well what about the Chinese in Tiananmen Square?’
‘Yes - a disgraceful way to treat your own people, simply dreadful. They killed that student in front of the tank, you know – the one with the shopping bags. Anyone else fancy an Organ-Doner Kebab?’
‘I’m not in the mood for anything too spicy or miscellaneous in terms of meat source. What about that place on Bulldog Street?’
‘The English Takeaway?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Yeah.’
Midnight saw them all at Dyson’s flat attacking foil trays of roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, carrots, peas, cabbage and little polystyrene tubs of hot onion-gravy. The trays of spotted dick, treacle sponge and tubs of custard still had their cardboard lids on and were warming by the fire. Empty bottles of beer, cider and mead littered the table. The greaseproof bags that had held the complimentary pork scratchings lay on the floor, torn open and empty now unless you count a slumbering cat, content after a bellyful of pork scratchings as content.
‘So that’s that then. The ball’s rolling. Specialisation and piece-work here we come.’
‘How long do you reckon it will last?’
‘Goodness knows. Someone’s bound to de-restrict the Estate Agent sooner or later and bring it all crashing down around our heads, probably in some sort of “property bubble burst” is my guess, early twenty-first century or so.’
‘If you ask me the banks will scupper it. Before you know it they’ll start lending over and above their gold reserves, robbing Sir Peter to pay Sir Paul and raiding the plebeian pension funds to float the company yacht.’
‘Well gentlemen, that’s all fiscal fun for us for the future. Right now we should make do with the opportunities we’ve got on hand. Anyone fancy going on to a club?’
‘There’s that rave over at Lady Marmalade’s on Ecstasy Place. We could try that.’
‘Lots of wig-wearing, stoned and sweaty society types waltzing around stripped naked to the neck while the orchestra plays in double time and someone waves the candelabra about? Do me a favour! I want alcohol and conversation, not bottled water and dead-eyed social zombies.’
[Stripped to the neck as in without hats, filthy beasts. This trend would later spread down to the waist once Victorian teenagers had invented the six-pack, female breasts and sexual tension.]
‘Oh well, chances are it’s been raided by now anyway. Observatory again, anyone?’
‘Too cloudy. Not the weather, I mean my mind is too cloudy.’
‘Well I’m just going to bed. I’m knackered and tomorrow I have to get down to bloody Shropshire and start work on that new iron bridge thingy.’
‘We should all get an early night I suppose. It’s going to be work, work, work from now on for a while.’
‘Yeah, but think of the money. All work and no play makes Jack rich as flaming Croesus. What are you going to do with yours?’
Whitworth was the only one sober enough to answer. ‘I’m going to build myself a ruddy great house, have a fleet of fast sports-carriages and buy myself a football team. Whitworth Bolt-on Wanderers.’ He peered into the neck of a lead-crystal decanter that proved empty and then threw it over his shoulder in disgust. ‘You?’
‘I’m going to buy Keenyah, build myself a villa with a veranda and watch the sun set every night over a cold gin and tonic and a warm woman. Preferably not the wife. Then I’m going to get malaria and gout and shoot the bloody chandeliers before the locals take over again.’
With that they both finally passed out. A couple of hours later the maid came in to tidy up around them, very quietly. For six more days the same maid crept in, tidied up and crept out again without waking the Hoorays and their desperately snoring livers. Several times the Butler himself had to creep around and affix saline drips and apply heart-massage and anti-bedsore rubs. It was all standard stuff in an upper-crust household.
Finally, the day of The Trials dawned. Neatly done, huh? Couldn’t be arsed filling in the literary gap there. It’s not as though anyone’s ever going to read this nonsense. Slept a week away! Anyhoo...
Branson, holding overall responsibility, arrived at the station five minutes early just so that he could check that all was well. Flinging the reins of his phaeton to a chap in return for a little paper slip with a claim number he strode towards the rail platforms. Of the eleven designs entered and the ten designs that were eligible under the rules, six had turned up.
Two of the absent designs relied upon high-temperature ceramic boilers that had yet to be invented and two more used a ridiculously comfortable and safe ten foot wide gauge quite unsuited to the four feet eight and a half inches used to build the world’s first rail network. This particular narrower gauge had been chosen so that, just in case general mechanisation failed, an average width horse and cart might balance both wheels on the rails and still make use of the lines. Early tests indicated that the cart wheels kept slipping off or the Romans didn’t like it or the brighter horses couldn’t manage to stand splay-legged on both rails at the same time without farting and laughing out loud or something. Still, what was done was done and
it was rather doggedly considered best to let the sleepers lie.
Besides, it was the only gauge that would fit down the servant’s corridors in most stately homes, so it was adopted on a nod and a crisp unmarked fiver to Mr O’Railway, the Irish chap who was doing most of the building works.
Sadly for the trials, the much-vaunted MagLev Gas Turbine locomotive from Messrs Jetson Engineering Ltd could not be demonstrated because no-one could be found to play a wobbly steel sheet with a violin bow in order to make the necessary sound effects.
Branson handed over a stern look in payment for his twopenny Platform (Shoes) Ticket and began the process of making his heart sink like a large passenger liner* with multiple water-tight compartments, multiple lower-class passenger-tight compartments and an anti-iceberg salt dispenser on the bow augmenting the chap with the long heated bargepole.
[ * Changes were in fact made to the design before her maiden voyage and small passengers were allowed too, whether or not they had water-tight compartments.]
He strode out to inspect the competitors.
Platform One held the Stephensons’ engine design, apparently named “Tinkerbell”.
Platform Two was graced by an engine bearing the nameplate “Toto”, the brainchild of Braithwaite and some Swede, Son of Erics, who would later invent a “mobile” telephone of all things. Timothy Hackworth was polishing something at Platform Three that he’d christened “Ivor, my engine”. Burstall’s hairy legs were poking out from under a big Flying Scotch Man (no change there then) at Platform Four and Brandreth (not Giles) was posing next to his entry at Platform Five, the “von Ryan’s Express”.
Most of the weightier The Press were being dwarfed at Platform Six by Trevithick’s one hundred and one ton Deltic, finished in full chrome, polished, given Art Deco detail flourishes and secretly code-named “Big Choo-choo with the fantastic engine-sound” down both sides and on the nose. Actually, thought Branson, the engines did sound lovely and they were audible to the rear too, and not just down both sides and on the nose.