UNDERGRADUATE PACE
The Rails Run Over the Hill
By GRAHAM DUKES (St. John's College, Cambridge)
MONO observant travellers between London and Cam- bridge, Elsenham Junction, set amongst the trees a few miles south of Audley End, is something of a legend. "Elsenham—for Thaxted Line" say the signboards, and the Thaxted branch railway begins at the end of the " up" platform, curves abruptly out of the station, runs up the side of a hill, and disappears over the top. For those who do not know the place. the name of Thaxted is one to conjure with. What could there be in such a place but a windmill, a fine old parish church, acres of thatch, and a troupe of morris-dancers ? But Thaxted lies over the hill, and for the hurrying traveller there is no time to alight and enquire for the branch-line train. Even were he to do so, he might be disappointed, for the train to Thaxted makes no pretence of connecting with any other. The engine, an old gentleman who is always fearfully out of breath, and whose funnel is just a little too far forward to make him handsome, shunts for a living in the yards at Elsenham, and goes off to Thaxted four times a day.
It is a hard journey for him up that hill, and the wheels of his two coaches grind and squeak over the sharp curve. But once at the top and round the first corner, he is out of sight of the signalman down at Elsenham: he is tired after the climb, and, being now his own master, he must stop to recover his breath. "Mill Road Halt" is the official title, but there is only a shed with a nameplate, a table-top platform, and a new tin notice-board to inform the odd passenger who may care to know these things that the Railway Executive is not a common carrier. Here, too, it is time for the guard, with his tramway punch and ticket-rack, to come round for the fares. "Thaxted, Sir ? " But that is understood nowadays, for no one travels to the halts, and the tickets there are frayed and dirty. "What do we do with them?" says the guard. "We give 'em away. as souvenirs."
A moment longer, and then we are away again over a level- crossing and round a curve which is the joy of the journey, with the carriages rolling continually from side to side and keeping up as best they may. A fit of wild exuberance is upon us • the engine has abandoned his laboured " Hoo, Hoo, Hoo " for a cheerful " Hooha. Hooha, Hooha." Yet it is the pleasure of a moment, for the old fellow has winded himself again on a gradient, and here is Henham Halt, where he may rest for a while. Not that it is anywhere near Henham—that delightful village with its winding main street is a clear mile away to the north-west—but the man who chose the site for Henham Halt knew a lot about the limitations of old engines.
There is an element in all this rocking and bouncing on the Thaxted Line of one of the more hazardously conceived Festival sky-rides ; perhaps some long-deceased carriage-builder, in a moment of weakness, chose to support these coaches only on a central line of flexible springs running from end to end, and perhaps (who knows ?) the platelayers may have joined in the fun with a mischievous little bump in the rails here and there. But there is no denying that it is all in the spirit of early railway adventure. The apprehensive passenger who has entrained at Elsenham is unlikely to find comfort in the sight, just beyond ffibleys, of three derailed wagons at the bottom of an embank- ment, rusting away with their wheels turned grotesquely to the sky. For a light railway this is pleasantly fortunate in its rolling-stock, though the seats were designed with a dogged British disregard of anatomy and a seeming unwillingness to compromise with nature. Yet the padding is soft, the upholstery clean and less dismal than it might be, and the woodwork is brightly polisbed. There is a set of gay little luggage-racks, surely never meant for anything more substantial than a parasol or fan, and a gallery of coloured prints from L.N.E.R. days.
From Benham we are off again, through a wood and into Sibleys (for Chickney and Broxted, so we arc told), where there are coal-wagons, an old cattle-platform and a loading-gauge. Then we are out of Sibleys, over a sizable embankment and bridges, through Cutler's Green without stopping, and suddenly we are running up to the water tank and the little black-and-white station on the wrong side of the track at Thaxted.
.At Xhaxted ? Perhaps not, for Thaxted is still over the hill, with only its church spire and the vanes of a windmill, as wc might have guessed, to guide us into the parish half a mile away. There may be the odd passenger who will mop his forehead and grumble that the train has taken him no further, and, in truth, had the rails run across just two more fields, we should have been over against Watling Street. But we cannot expect too much. Look at our old engine, unharnessed and happily snorting about and.playing with his goods wagons. He is getting on in years, and even if the rails were to run all the way to Thaxted and twice around the Parish Church, we could not, in fairness, expect him to bring us farther than we have come already. Let him play, and we must take the winding road to the town by foot, for it is a rewarding walk, or in the car which, four times a day, comes over the hill to meet the train.
What then of Thaxted ? The church and the windmill we have seen already from the station ; the first thatched cottage is just around the corner, and, as if to complete our picture, there is a notice on a wall of a forthcoming dance of the Morris Ring through the streets of Thaxted.
From the distance, if the wind is in the right direction, we may hear the old gentleman whistling his way back to Elsenham, provided, that is, that he is willing to go back to Elsenham. More than once he has chosen to break down at Thaxted, and to sit there, crossly blowing off steam, while his passengers have been loaded, shame to say, into a taxi, at the expense of British Railways.
It is perhaps no wonder that they have been getting a little tired of him lately. The Railway Executive have described his journey as "uneconomic," and one lay, not very far away now, he will be puffing out Thaxted for the last time. Hordes of horrid little boys with loco-spotting badges, and long-faced men from the Light Railway Transport League, will be there to bewail the passing of the last train, and no doubt the worthies of Thaxted will turn up to shake the engine-driver's hand. The Thaxted train will roll unsuspectingly away over the bridge to the breaker's yard ; his road will become the present of occa- sional bad-tempered freight engines impatient for the high life of the main line. The vulgar motor-buses of the Hasty Age will reign alone ; and only rust and silence and weeds between the sleepers will tell the traveller hurrying to Cambridge that Thaxted has caught up a little with time, and that some part of the grace and leisure has gone out of life, where the rails run over the hill.
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