Shadows in the Steam

by David Brandon

  In 1908 the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway was reorganising its engineering works at Brighton. Sidings at Horsted Keynes took on the appearance of an elephants’ graveyard as an antediluvian selection of the company’s locomotives was stored there. Most of them were superannuated engines that would be called in for scrapping once the works resumed its normal activity. There is something extremely ghostly about the sight of the inert, rusting hulks of steam locomotives stored out of use in this way. No wonder that a locomotive not in steam is called a ‘dead engine’.

  The ‘Bluebell Line’ in due course became the ‘Bluebell Railway’, a very successful steam-operated heritage line. It started operations in 1960 and has gone from strength to strength. Work is now (December 2008) well advanced in reopening the northern section to East Grinstead, which means that trains will soon be running once more through Sharpthorne Tunnel. This tunnel is the longest on any of the UK’s preserved railway lines.

  In the 1960s several hundred steam locomotives gathered in sidings at Barry Docks awaiting scrapping. Some were there for years, silently rusting away. A ‘dead’ locomotive is one not in steam, and there are dead engines as far as the eye can see. Now do you believe in railway ghosts?

  WEST MIDLANDS

  Coventry

  The first regular trains through Coventry ran on the Rugby to Birmingham section of the London & Birmingham Railway in 1838. Later on all the lines that served the city came under the control of the London & North Western Railway. This company therefore enjoyed a virtual monopoly of Coventry although they had been forced grudgingly to accept the arch-rival Midland Railway having running powers over the line from Nuneaton.

  The busy Warwick Road runs on a large bridge over the western end of Coventry Station, and round this area there used to be extensive sidings and associated goods sheds, offices and other buildings. One of the buildings in this area had the reputation of being haunted. After being sold out of railway use, this building found new life as a recording studio, and it was reckoned to contain not just one but two ghosts. One was the spirit of a railwayman who has the habit of turning lights on and off unwontedly, and opening and closing doors and windows, casting a rather frightening shadow of a man’s head and also invisibly brushing past staff and visitors to the studio. There is no actual evidence of who he was, but his presence in this particular building has led to the suggestion that he must have been a railwayman. The second ghost is that of a young man associated with the recording studio who died as the result of injudiciously mixing drink and drugs. This ghost was thought to tamper with the sophisticated electrical equipment in the studio with the result that very odd extraneous noises would be heard on some recordings. Between them the two ghosts were able on occasion to produce a distinctly unpleasant atmosphere, and several eminent figures from the world of pop music have commented that they do not like working in the studio because they have felt threatened by a presence or, should we say, two presences.

  Coventry Station looking northwards. The Warwick Road Bridge crosses the end of the station in the distance.

  WEST YORKSHIRE

  Clayton

  The Midland, the Lancashire & Yorkshire and the Great Northern railway companies were deadly rivals in parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, never more so than in the area to the west of Bradford towards Halifax and Keighley. When one company sought parliamentary approval for a line, one or other of its rivals would immediately set about planning a line of their own in the vicinity. This meant, for example, that there were two rival routes between Bradford and Halifax and Bradford and Keighley, admittedly serving different intermediate places.

  The Great Northern did not have the pick of the routes joining Bradford to these other important towns because the Lancashire & Yorkshire already had a route via Low Moor to Halifax and the Midland had a line to Keighley via Shipley and Bingley. The very high ground to the west of Bradford around Queensbury (over 1,100ft above sea level) did not attract much in the way of interest from early railway promoters until the Bradford & Thornton Railway Co. was incorporated in 1871 and absorbed by the Great Northern in the following year. A line had already been built from Halifax to Ovenden and the Great Northern decided to extend this line to Queensbury to connect with the line from Bradford. At the same time as thereby gaining access to Halifax, the Great Northern announced its intention of building a line from Queensbury to Keighley. The lines concerned opened in sections between 1878 and 1884, quite late in the day for new railway construction.

  These schemes had as much to do with railway imperialism as they did with serious commercial considerations. To this day much of the territory which these lines penetrated remains predominantly rural. The lines which converged on Queensbury were immensely expensive to construct, with several tunnels, numerous massive viaducts and such fearsome gradients that the Great Northern footplatemen called this part of the line from Bradford to Holmfield ‘the Alpine Route’. No expense was spared in the building of these lines, and yet there was little hope of generating much intermediate business. At the more urbanised Bradford and Halifax ends of the lines, the introduction of electric trams soon leached away much of the local traffic. The Queensbury lines cost almost £1 million to build and can never have repaid the initial investment. Normal passenger services were withdrawn in 1955 and the lines west of Horton Park were closed completely by 1965, with a stub surviving for freight purposes at the eastern end of the line until 1972.

  In the late 1940s a young man who lived in Clayton used to catch the train to Great Horton where he worked in a mill. One freezing cold and clear moonlit night he stood on the platform at Great Horton after work waiting for the local train to take him back to Clayton and his dinner and a roaring fire. The train heaved itself up the gradient into the station, dead on time. As usual it was hauled by one of the sturdy little Ivatt 0-6-2 tank engines and consisted, as always, of two rather ancient compartment carriages. He chose an empty compartment and climbed in to the reassuringly familiar dusty and well-worn surroundings made comparatively cosy with their steam-heating. At least it was a lot warmer than standing on the platform.

  With a pop in its whistle, the engine set off climbing hard to Clayton, the next station along the line. As the train entered a deep cutting, the hitherto warm and welcoming compartment suddenly became freezing cold and, to his horror, the young man looked up to see a woman’s face pressed against the outside of the window. And what a face! It was twisted into a grimace of pain and terror which itself managed to be utterly terrifying. He sank back into his seat, his own face a mask of shock and fear. Thankfully the face at the window vanished just before the train staggered into Clayton Station. Shaking like an aspen, the young man leapt out of the compartment and almost fell into the arms of a porter on the platform. As a regular traveller, he was on first name terms with the man.

  There was something comforting both in the solid feel of the station buildings and in the solid appearance and demeanour of the porter to whom the frightened young man gasped out his story. The porter calmed him down and told him that he had seen the ghost of ‘Fair Becca’. It transpired that the young man was only the latest of many travellers on the line who in the hours of darkness had had a similar experience. Becca was a married woman who, many years previously, had enjoyed an extra-marital affair which her husband had found out about. Having an insanely jealous nature, he was not the sort to sit down and talk it through. He told her he was going to kill her, and that’s precisely what he did. Left with the perennial problem of all murderers, that of disposing of the body, he didn’t use much thought and simply dumped it down a well where it was only a matter of time before it was discovered. Fair Becca’s ghost haunted the stretch of line between Great Horton and Clayton, close to the place where she was murdered.

  Haworth

  Haworth, famous for its associations with the extraordinary literary Bronte sisters, and Branwell, their boozy brother, was a station on the branch line from Keighley to Oxenhope. This
line climbed steeply from the northern terminus at Keighley following the River Worth, and the company under whose auspices it was built was not unnaturally called the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. It opened in 1867 and was taken over by the giant Midland Railway in 1881. That company had operated the trains right from the start.

  In fact the line had an inauspicious history even before it opened. A cow is said to have eaten the engineering plans related to the line. Presumably they were the only copy because the start of construction work was delayed. The building of the short Ingrow Tunnel undermined a newly built Methodist chapel which collapsed leaving the railway company having to pay compensation. Shortly before the line was due to open great storms caused the Worth to go into spate and wash away a bridge near Damems. On the rearranged day for the line’s opening, the inaugural train had to have two goes at climbing the 1 in 58 out of Keighley. It was completely defeated by the gradient between Oakworth and Haworth and the only option was to split the train in two. Happily both portions managed to make it to Oxenhope, but a legend of unintentional and understated comedy had already been created which the line found it easy to live up to.

  The old goods yard at Haworth houses much of the rolling stock and equipment for the preserved Worth Valley Railway, and the vicinity has gained the reputation of being haunted by the ghost of a man with the strange name of Binns Bancroft. He was a coal merchant who ran his business from the railway yard at Haworth in the late nineteenth century. He seems to have been a busybody because he insisted on supervising the shunting operations when the pick-up goods train arrived to drop off wagons of coal for him. Despite not being a railway employee he often actually undertook the quite hazardous job of using a shunting pole to unhook moving wagons, and he dashed about the sidings issuing instructions to the men on the engine and to the guard. They regarded him as a perishing nuisance. His zeal eventually got the better of him and he died after being crushed between two wagons. This was in 1882. The verdict at his inquest was ‘death by misadventure’.

  Some people reckon that Binns Bancroft’s body may have been buried but his soul goes marching on. The figure of a man has been seen in and around the yard, sometimes with a shunting pole in his hand and gesticulating as if he was perhaps directing shunting operations. Many people claim to have seen a figure answering this description, but any attempts to approach him merely cause him to fade away. Items have been moved around in the yard at times when the public have been excluded and when none of the volunteers have been around. They have sometimes been hidden away and it has been the Devil’s own work to find them again. It seems that Binns Bancroft is as capable of being a nuisance dead as when he was alive.

  As with so many branch lines, the Keighley & Worth Valley enjoyed its best years in the 1930s. Cuts were made in services during the Second World War and again in the 1950s, but an enhanced service operated by diesel multiple units was introduced in 1960, by which time closure of the line had already been threatened. Earlier economies had included the use of a three-coach gangwayed set of carriages which enabled the guard to issue tickets on the train. The regular guard was a man of splenetic and misanthropic character whose ticket machine enabled him to issue tickets for a range of destinations beyond the branch line itself, but for reasons of his own he preferred not to do so. On one occasion a woman passenger asked him for a return to Bingley, not very far away on the line between Keighley and Leeds. He grumbled that he did not know the fare and would have to return to the guard’s van to consult his faretable. She stuck to her guns, he went off and returned audibly griping about the inconvenience to which he was being put. The ticket was sold and money changed hands but he told her next time she wanted to do the trip to Bingley and back, she should go by bus.

  Passenger services were withdrawn in 1961 and freight followed within a few years. However, the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Preservation Society had been established and they bought the line, restoring services and its Victorian atmosphere, and creating a successful tourist attraction.

  Damems is a stopping place on what is now known as the Worth Valley Railway. It has a short platform and the station building was so small that local legend said that a nearby farmer once requisitioned it for use as a hen hut. Damems was widely regarded as the smallest station in the mighty and widespread empire operated by the Midland Railway. A ghostlike figure wearing the uniform of a railwayman has been seen in the vicinity on a number of occasions.

  The Worth Valley Railway is quite a place for the aficionado of the supernatural. One of the features of the line which juvenile passengers in particular love is Ingrow Tunnel. How is one to explain the sight of smoke, having the appearance and smell of that produced by a steam locomotive, pouring out of the entrance of the tunnel? This phenomenon would be entirely understandable if a steam-hauled train had just passed through but makes absolutely no sense when it occurs on days when none of the locomotives are steam-driven.

  Huddersfield

  Huddersfield is a product of the Industrial Revolution and its early prominence in the use of steam power in the woollen industry meant that a canal was built linking the Calder-Hebble navigation to Lancashire through the heart of the Pennines. Traffic began in 1811, but the Huddersfield Narrow Canal suffered because the nature of the terrain it passed through which limited its size. By the 1820s there were calls to build a railway to replace it. However, in the speculative binge that established so many railways in the 1830s, Huddersfield missed out and the town was not really on the railway map until 1847. However, the station which was eventually built was an absolute tour de force. It was described by Sir John Betjeman as ‘the most splendid station façade in England’, and he went on to liken it to an enormous classical country house. It became an important centre of operations for the Lancashire & Yorkshire and London & North Western railway companies. It is still busy.

  This station, which is better outside than in, was haunted by the ghost of a man who worked there as a platform porter. Unfortunately he was hit by a train and received injuries which meant that he was incapacitated and had to leave the railway service. It was reckoned that he had been negligent and so he was due no compensation. When he died, probably in the direst of poverty, he apparently returned to his former workplace. For many years when anything went wrong on the premises – a derailment, a minor bump between trains or even parcels falling onto the track and being squashed under a passing train – then a vindictive, gloating laugh would be heard reverberating around under the station’s overall roof.

  Otley

  There are no trains today at Otley. The station opened on 1 February 1865 and closed on 20 March 1965. It was on the former Midland Railway and had been served over the years by trains between Leeds, Ilkley and Skipton, and others from Bradford to Harrogate.

  A few miles to the east of Otley ran the Leeds Northern Railway which connected Leeds with Harrogate, Ripon and the north-east of England. This line was opened from Leeds to Thirsk in 1849 and eventually came under the control of the North Eastern Railway Co. The terrain between Leeds and Harrogate is extremely hilly and provided many challenges for the engineers. At Bramhope they had no option but to build a long tunnel, two miles and 241 yards long, to be exact, piercing the watershed between Airedale and Wharfdale. 2,300 men and 400 horses were employed on the works which took four years to be completed. Severe difficulties included constant flooding, and the pumps had to remove no less than 1,600 million gallons of water. There was a human cost to all this. Twenty-three men lost their lives in the building of Bramhope Tunnel and countless others received serious injuries.

  In the churchyard of All Saints at Otley is a remarkable monument. It was paid for by the contractor, the sub-contractors and the navvies who chipped in with a whip-round. It takes the form of a replica of the northern entrance to Bramhope Tunnel. The full-size tunnel entrance is remarkable enough, consisting of two mock-Gothic towers complete with arrow slits and battlements, and these are reproduced faithfully at both ends of th
e replica which stands about 6ft high with a short stretch of tunnel in between. Curiously it does not mention how many navvies were killed or the names of any of them, but it does mention the contractor James Bray and displays a number of biblical quota-tions. A cynic might conclude that it is more a monument to Bray than to the men who died doing his work. They are buried close by and for many years it was rumoured that this fenced-off bit of churchyard was haunted by their ghosts. Unfortunately, the authors have been unable to discover whether these ghosts themselves were scaled down versions of the prototype. Big or small, the ghosts were real enough to the local schoolchildren who would run past the churchyard as fast as their legs would carry them, not daring to glance towards the monument.

  There was something of a craze for adorning railway tunnel mouths with features loosely derived from medieval military architecture. Many early travellers were nervous about their trains plunging into these subterranean passages. Doom and gloom merchants prophesied that tunnel roofs would collapse onto passing trains with all the passengers being crushed to death. Giving the tunnel entrance motifs from centuries-old buildings was no mere whimsy but was done to suggest permanence and thereby to allay the fears of timid passengers.