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Updated: June 23, 2025
"Those who remember this express at York in the icy winter of 1879-80, when the few travelers who did not remain thawing themselves at the waiting-room fires used to stamp up and down a sawdusted platform, under a darkened roof, while day after day the train came gliding in from Grantham with couplings like wool, icicles pendent from the carriage eaves, and an air of punctual unconcern; or those who have known some of our other equally sterling trains these will hardly mind if friendship does let them drift into exaggeration when speaking of expresses."
It was encouraging to find no suspicious watcher at booking office or barrier. He passed through unobserved and entered an empty first-class compartment in the 7.30 to Southampton. There were ten minutes to wait before they were due to start minutes which dragged interminably. But at last the green flag dropped, the couplings tightened and the train began to move.
The empty trucks going west again made the longest trains, as they could be laden with nothing but a little wire-netting for settlers who were fighting the rabbits, and were easily distinguishable from other "goods," as when they clumsily and jerkily halted the clanking of their couplings and the bumping of their buffers could be heard for a mile or more down the valley.
The builder's God, materials his Elect; His Son's the rock on which it is erect; The Scripture is his rule, plummet, or line, Which gives proportion to this house divine, His working-tools his ordinances are, By them he doth his stones and timber square, Affections knit in love, the couplings are; Good doctrine like to mortar doth cement The whole together, schism to prevent: His compass, his decree; his hand's the Spirit By which he frames, what he means to inherit, A holy temple, which shall far excel That very place, where now the angels dwell.
On the contrary, a number of open trucks were adapted for troop traffic, being roofed over with a covering affording protection from the sun but with sides left open. These trucks had neither continuous brakes nor screw couplings.
I looked up, and already the mist was rolling back like a curtain from the great slopes of rock above, sliding in smoky wreaths across the climbing pines, while as the brightness increased we could see the torrent, whose voice now almost drowned the clash of couplings and the clamor of wheels, frothing green and white-streaked among mighty boulders in the gorge below.
Then he heard the growing clangor of a locomotive's bell, then other whistling and the approaching rumble of steel wheels upon steel rails, the groan of brake shoes gripping, the rattle of contracted couplings, the impact of car-bumpers. The excitement grew among the working gangs.
There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch of the couplings, as C sprang in. I grasped B 's hand, and jumped on to the footboard of the moving train. "Good-bye, old chap." "Good-bye, old man." B had gone to the front. I never saw him again. Three weeks later I was sitting at déjeuner in the Metropole, when a ragamuffin came in with the London papers, which had just arrived by the leave-boat.
Another serious defect lay in the construction of the shafts, and in the mode of fixing the couplings, which were constantly giving way, so that a week seldom passed without one or more breaks-down.
At last, he told himself, he had a job where he could show what he was good for. He walked up and down whistling shrilly. A train pulled slowly into the station. The engine stopped to take water and the couplings clanked all down the line of cars. The platform was suddenly full of men in khaki, stamping their feet, running up and down shouting. "Where you guys goin'?" asked Fuselli.
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