legends · 4 min read ·
Train Register
A signalman's register records a passenger train that passes without being accepted, and comes earlier each night.
**Moorfield Signal Box — Train Register, Night Turn (Signalman: A. Pike)**
*Columns: time offered, time accepted, train description, time passed, time clear.*
- **Offered · Accepted · Description · Passed · Clear**
- 22:10 · 22:11 · 4 Empty coaching stock · 22:19 · 22:21
- 22:46 · 22:47 · Up goods, 22 wagons · 22:55 · 22:58
- 23:30 · 23:31 · Down mail · 23:36 · 23:38
- 00:05 · 00:06 · Light engine · 00:10 · 00:12
· · ·
**Signalman's remarks.** Quiet night. Wind from the west, rain after midnight. Lamp in the box burning well. Three trains on time, one light engine in the wrong order, which the controller says is his mistake.
**3.12 a.m.** Bell rang on the block instrument. Two beats, a pause, one. *Is line clear for passenger train.* Bell from Cutler's box, three miles up, which has been shut since 1968. The instrument is dead. The block shelf shows no train.
I did not answer. After a minute the bell rang again: two beats, a pause, one.
· · ·
- **Offered · Accepted · Description · Passed · Clear**
- 03:12 · — · Passenger · — · —
- 03:20 · — · Passenger · — · —
*Remarks: no response given to either bell. Line blocked. Down signal at danger.*
· · ·
**3.41 a.m.** Third bell. This time I looked out. Rain stopped. Moon behind cloud. The up line was empty, the rails bright with wet. I could hear the sound of a train a long way off, coming slowly down the grade from Cutler's. A heavy sound, a lot of wheels, a lot of weight. No engine beat. No steam. Only the wheels, running easily on a track that had been in use for a century and had never made that sound.
I stood at the window. The sound came close. It went under the box. It went by without a light or a whistle, and the boards of the box shook, and the lamp swung on its hook. A long train. I counted the wheel beats. At two hundred and forty I stopped counting and went back to the desk.
· · ·
- **Offered · Accepted · Description · Passed · Clear**
- 03:41 · — · — · 03:47 · 04:19
*Remarks: train passed without being accepted. 32 minutes in section. Description: unknown. Number of coaches: not seen.*
**4.20 a.m.** Next box on the Down line, Harrow Crossing, rang to ask where it was. They said a passenger train had come through their section at 04:19, no lights, and been seen going on towards the junction. They said it was packed.
I asked what they meant. The signalman said: "Every window. Every seat. Standing in the corridors. All of them looking forward. Not a face turned to the side."
· · ·
**Entries for the following nights**
**Night of 14th.** Bell at 03:12. Not answered. Train passed 03:47. Sound of wheels. Weighty. Slow.
**Night of 15th.** Bell at 03:12. Not answered. Train passed 03:44. Faster.
**Night of 16th.** Bell at 03:12. Not answered. Train passed 03:41.
*Remarks: the train comes earlier each night. At this rate it will pass at 03:12 on the 21st. That is when it is offered.*
· · ·
**21st.** The bell rang at 03:12. Two beats, a pause, one. I put my hand on the instrument. For the first time in eighteen years of signalling, the needle swung to *Train on line.*
I did not accept. I put the Down signal to danger, as the rule book says, and pulled the lever over, and the arm dropped, and out on the line I heard the wheels begin to slow.
They slowed. They stopped. A long way up the line there was a squeal of brakes. And then a long silence in which I could hear the rain begin again.
I sat at the desk with the register open. I did not write the entry. I looked up at the window, and at the platform, and at the line. In the dark, where the train had stopped, nobody got out. There was no sound at all. The signal arm was down, and the line was clear, and the train, with all its passengers, was standing at the signal.
The door of the box opened behind me. The latch is on my side.