The Last Train Horse

What it looks like, and what it does

A grey shire horse in the beam of an inspection torch, head down, shoulders working, breath steaming. Harness traces running back into the dark and ending in air. Hoofprints in dust on the sleepers. A faint smell of coal.

Walks the line from the old terminus to the old junction and back. Rests at the platforms. Does not look at people, but slows for them.

What is known

Reported by inspection crews on the abandoned Cranmere branch: a grey horse walking the sleepers at the pace of a dray, harness taut.

The traces draw tight, and the horse leans. Crews who followed it say it stops at each old station, rests, and goes on. The branch never used horses. The only horse recorded on it hauled the funeral cars after the line's one disaster, in 1893.

What it can do

• Hauls a load that cannot be seen or weighed
• Keeps to the line in total darkness without a light

Where it stops

• Cannot be led off the track
• Stops when its name is called, and has been heard to answer

An encounter

Pritchard's torch found a horse ahead of her, pulling. She walked behind it for two kilometres, because it seemed wrong to pass. At the old platform it stopped, and she read the brass plate on its collar by torchlight. “Captain.” She said the name quietly. It turned its head, and she saw it was weeping.

Gwen Pritchard, track inspector, Cranmere branch, Whitley tunnel, A night inspection, April

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Hoofprints in tunnel dust were photographed over four winters. Shoes are of a pattern not used since 1900.
• rumor: That whatever it is pulling is getting lighter.
• interpretation: It may be taking the dead of 1893 where they were going. It may not know they arrived.

Still unresolved

The collar plate reads CAPTAIN and a date that is still in the future.

Where it has been recorded

• The Cranmere Branch (confirmed) — Recorded by Gwen Pritchard, track inspector.

Stories about it

• Harness Without a Train (Grotesque encounter, 4 min) — A porter at Calder Station finds a draught horse waiting at the old platform barrier with its harness buckled to nothing, and the horse will not move until someone climbs up and takes the reins.

Connected entities

• The Weight on the Stair — Both carry a load that no instrument can place. One ascends and one pulls. Neither has put it down.
• The Roll Call — Both keep a line running for the dead underground. Both are watched by people who bring them tea.