60009 The Union of South Africa Approaches Chippenham at speed

On 3 July 1938 4468 Mallard ; the Nigel Gresley designed streamlined pacific, set a world speed record of 126 mph (202.8 km/h), pulling six coaches and a dynamometer car. In honour of this 75th anniversary I have included my poem about Mallard's sister engine 'Union of South Africa'

 

Five hundred tons of steel

Cast iron, coal,

Bone, wood, glass

  Water, Blood, brass

Brain tissue and fire

Travelling at 75 miles an hour

(The limit for steam trains

On Network Rail)

But Enough sheer energy

To suck the breath from your body

To smash you to cells

To reduce you to nothing more than a red mist

Or to make the hairs on the back of your neck

Stand up and wave.

Thrown down the track with unimaginable power

60009 The Union of South Africa

Approaches Chippenham.

There is only the lulled hubbub

Of the evening station

A parked car waiting for some late commuter

Two station staff

Talking quietly

Then, for a second

The watchers of the night

See a brief whisp of light

See the single small light

As some distant planet….

Boiler pressure is 250 psi

Walschaerts gear on the outside cylinders, and

Gresley's conjugated gear for the inside cylinder.

 Kylchap double-blastpipe exhaust,

and Westinghouse QSA Brake Valves.

Mere words that sum up

Something cataclysmically alive

Now, listening out

 hear that unmistakable

Syncopation in the distance

we may not know what it means

No louder than a sewing machine

Click-a-click-a-click-click

6 beats per revolution

At 16 seconds just as our hearing begins to register

The faint sound is interrupted

By the four chimes

And the mechanical voice of the station announcement

Stand well away from the edge of platform 2. 

(We know this is only a machine speaking

Because there is no anticipation in the voice

No expectation

That this thing

This living thing

Is hurtling towards it)

Stand well away

Those who

Are in the know

Have heard the staccato

Off beat

Have turned and

Are watching the single small light

Growing from the distance

No adequate warning of what is coming

Stand well away from the edge of platform 2. 

The approaching…

One of the significant features of the Gresley A4s

Was the specially designed chime whistle

Removed and melted down in the war

Because they sounded too much

Like air raid sirens.

But all remade and replaced

So that its voice is unmistakable throughout the known univese

Stand well away from the edge of platform 2.  The approaching…

But the electric voice is smashed to pieces

By that hungry howl

That wells up from the bowels of hell

And would snatch you away

If you were standing any closer

It screams as if in a deep ecstasy

And just when you cannot stand anymore

The train

Is on you

Past you

A flash in the station lights

And already the carriages are

Crashing by

This is as close as we ever shall be to the pounding heart of God

And the long, long whistle

Modulates through Doppler

Down, down until you are almost sick

With the dragging at your guts.

With the breathless hush

As at the end of a great symphony

We stand watching

The winking light

Of the tail of the last carriage

Distant

Already fading

“That was loud enough Gareth”

“ I should think.”