brightonterrier-blog

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A selection of posters, documents and ephemera from the Leakbeck & Portethwaite's working life

Firstly, A poster and reference for goods rates on the railway for a variety of different commodities and freight. The L&P followed an early railway practice of charging for the use of their wagons as well as the transport itself. This incentivised the use of Private Owner wagons.

Secondly, two timetables. Pink for summer seasons, blue for winter seasons. In summer there is a minimum of 3 trains each way with Market Day seeing 6 trains each way with 2 locomotives in steam.

Winter sees minimum of 2 trains each way, the departure from Leakbeck alternating from Monday & Thursdays to Wednesdays & Saturdays. Timetables like these would be printed on a small cardboard for storage in a passenger's pocket.

Thirdly, a minimalist poster advertising the railway from the mid 20s, just after Cyril Porter took over management. No.2 Bowen Cooke adorns the head of the poster and gives as much information as an average tourist would need to know.

Fourthly, the far more detailed railway poster-cum-timetable, showing prices, extra travel information and notice of parcel travel.

Lastly, a poster in the traditional sense offering scenes of the waterfall towards the top of the line. The poster advertises Leakbeck, although the waterfall is reached by getting off at Ekend Halt, almost a mile just before Leakbeck. It is another item that mentions the bus service, as the L&PR was not directly connected to any mainline railways. Any passengers might be forgiven for believing they could catch a bus from Market Rasen all the way to Leakbeck.

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Dodgy Designs & Dirt

The story of how a crew, beset with turmoil, overcame their locomotive's design flaws. It is written from the perspective of the fireman.

The matter of favourites on the Portethwaite line was a highly opinionated subject and could easily depend on the day.

But it can be agreed by all of the staff that The ‘Brigitte’ was the most polarizing.

When built by Anstis Works, she was designed with aesthetics first and practicality second. None could deny that she was a beautiful engine and passengers came to see her as an icon of the railway and the valley. But any crewman that worked with her on a rainy day saw past the dazzle and might start to resent her.

It mostly came down to her cab. She was built a few miles west of Brighton, and it clearly shows as her outline was influenced by the Stroudley appearance of a cab thinner than the tanks.

A necessity on the LBSCR due to the tunnels at Hastings, but nothing short of impractical on the narrow gauge, for a rainy day meant soggy sleeves for both men on the footplate.

Another abnormality of The 'Brigitte' was her lack of sanding gear, or any sanding pots to speak of. Both of her colleagues possessed sand pots, and No.2; The ‘Bowen Cooke’, even had a sanding mechanism.

Crews would bring with them a small container of sand; not too big or it would eat up precious space in the cab, not too little or they would run out before they got anywhere. If this failed them, the solution was always to use the bucket of sand kept in the guard’s van. It was meant for tackling fires and this practice would likely be frowned upon by Mr and Mrs Health and Safety of today.

However, I recall one trip where even this wasn’t enough.

It was mid-spring and we were now working to the summer timetable, but despite that it had been raining heavily for the last couple of days.

With sleeves rolled up and hats firmly secured around our heads, my driver and I were rostered to take The ‘Brigitte’, 4 coaches and half a dozen wagons to the lake. A load like this was never usually a problem, but we had the misfortune of needing to stop on the gradient at Rockfahm Halt.

We tried to restart but No.1 slipped and stalled and soon I was walking alongside the engine with our pot of sand, trying to throw it onto the railhead whilst avoiding having my hands cut off by the valve gear.

Eventually underway, we steamed into Hardbrooke at 10 minutes past the hour; only 5 minutes late but with the good fortune of the next 3 miles being downhill.

I spent those next few miles building up my fire. The proceeding 4 miles after Butary were the most punishing and we would need all the steam we could manage. Cautious not to slip, my driver slowly eased her out of Butary and we immediately climbed towards the lake. The gradients went from 1 in 77 to 1 in 50 throughout the journey in a sneaky and unceremonious way. 

It was one moment we were going fine along a ridge overlooking the river, the next moment the wheels had lost all grip and the train quickly dragged to a halt. Checking the pot, I found to my horror, we had used it all on the climb from Rockfahm halt to Hardbrooke.

Then I remembered, we still had the guard’s bucket of sand in the van. The ridge the train was on meant we could get out of the cab, but we couldn’t walk down the train. I signalled to the guard to bring the bucket to this end. Striding down the corridor through the carriages as far as he could, it was then we encountered our second problem: the first coach in the train was unlike the others. Instead of having balconies at either end and a corridor in between, it had separated compartments.

By now we already had the attention of the passengers, as they all popped their heads out of the windows. Thinking quickly, we employed them to pass the bucket between them from the guard to the engine.

We had to hurry, for as it got further up the coach, it got heavier with all the rain soaking into the sand.

That was when disaster struck; from one burly gentleman it passed to an older gentleman who couldn’t quite match. It dropped, slipped from his hand and tumbled down the ridge, scattering clumps of sand everywhere but the rails we needed it on.

In a moment of dumbfoundedness, my driver could do nothing but quip, “It’s a good thing the guard won’t be needing that sand for fires then.”

We tried to start the train again on our own, but it was no use. The heavy load threatened to pull us back and The ‘Brigitte’ wouldn’t grip.

In a last act of desperation, my driver told me to start digging a hole on his side. “Is now the time to start digging our graves?” I remarked.

“If we can’t use sand, we’ll use dirt. Dig up as much dry dirt as you can and throw it under the wheels.

I got busy frantically digging, and when I came across dry stuff, I threw it under the engine’s wheels. It worked well although at one point I slipped on the mud and only just caught myself. 

When you’ve experienced your head next to the whirling and untamed rods of an iron horse, you rather wish you had dug those graves ‘just in case’. Each time she lost her fitting, she lurched and swayed alongside me. It felt like I was a horse jockey and at any moment she would ride up on her trailing wheels and leep towards me. But my driver was a skilled man and steered her to grip the hill.

Leaping onto the footplate with a shovel looking like a space, I held my breath as she galloped up to speed and towards where the line levelled out.

Understandably none of the passengers bound for Ekend really minded that we’d blasted past the halt. It was either that or complain to the snorting beast pulling their train.

There was little time to shunt the wagons and get the train turned around. We refilled our sand pots from the station supply at Leakbeck, and I washed my shovel off under the water crane.

The train arrived back home behind schedule, but fortunately we could eat into our down-time before the next trip.

The rain continued for several days after that and we didn’t retrieve the guard’s bucket until a week later on our day off. Safe to say, the guard really wouldn’t have been putting out any fires with or without it.

(I know I don't post much here, but having a full on story is one worth posting)

Character art by @colloquial-kayak

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i drew @brightonterrier-blog's OC once and killed him here's belle

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may i share with you the best video on the internet

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Honestly, this shit with Hogwarts Legacy is just like what happened with Chick-fil-A like ten or fifteen years ago. Some of y'all might be too young to remember it, but it went almost exactly like this shit today, only the target was technically gay people (not like we aren't all lumped together when push comes to shove, but gay was the political scapegoat in US politics at the time, as trans people were still on the fringes of social awareness).

It came out that the people who own Chick-fil-A were donating to organizations in other countries that were actively working to get gay people there killed, and were also very monetarily invested in stripping gay people of any legal rights they'd amassed in the US. So a lot of queer folks were asking for allies to boycott Chick-fil-A to show solidarity.

And it turned into a giant fuckin circus for bigots to rally around. There was even a support Chick-fil-A day, I remember it because I was a server at the time and our restaurant was empty most the day - while the line for Chick-fil-A down the road was like a mile long consistently.

But while that was obviously annoying, that wasn't what hit people the hardest. Cuz we expect clowns to wear the shoes, right, it's not shocking.

What disappointed people, or really demoralized a lot of young queers at the time especially, was the allies who would still go there. Because they like the sandwiches or fries or whatever. The people who'd march with them in the parade or be supportive of marriage equality, who would then turn right around and give their money to people who were trying to actively harm their friends.

Because the chicken was good.

I remember a friend of mine being really just absolutely broken up over that, trying to understand some of her friends reasoning and at the time I couldn't give her an answer. I could now, though.

And it's this:

Talk is cheap.

It costs nothing to say things. A person can say whatever the hell they want, any feel good flowery thing, and it doesn't really cost them.

But when they are asked to actually give something up - or put their money where their mouth is and just....can't do it. Well then there isn't much else for them to say, is there? At least nothing that's worth anything.

Some people had to find out the hard way that the choice between a chicken sandwich and funding people who did not believe in their dignity as a human being was, in the eyes of certain allies, apparently really hard. Too hard, in fact.

These allies would march in the colorful parades and go to the bars for drinks, but in the end, you couldn't actually depend on them to inconvenience themselves. They were fair weather allies, and they were there for the party and that's about it . They wanted entertainment, and it didn't matter if that came from having fun gay friends or a tasty sandwich.

This is the same thing, really, or pretty close to it.

These types of people just wanna have fun. Either you, their friend or whatever, are fun or the game is fun, and if you stop being fun by incidentally making them feel a little guilty about where they spend their money , then they might just choose the thing that doesn't make them currently uncomfortable.

And I'm not saying these people who say trans rights online but who also really, really want to play wizard game and already have are horrible people or anything - they're just not very good. They have no real character. And unfortunately there's not much you can do to change that, other than investing time and energy in people who do.

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They really should teach people how to cook in school.

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"Passing the former terminus and along the extension, both Driver, Fireman and Guard could have sworn they saw Robert Jones fall into the river.”

“Guard didn't stop the train as he claims that new fella; John, dived in after him." -1947