| I.4.035 |
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Men, like Jack Morrison, who worked for the railroad received in return their daily bread
and shelter. Theirs was an enviable occupation – in peace time very few trains ran - but it
was also highly sensitive and restricted. As Morrison was fond of saying: 'We spend our
whole lives going from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere through nothing
but trees. At the other end it's just like where we started.' Morrison wasn't complaining
though. He had uneasy feelings about what happened when you complained and started
rumors flying. Mostly Morrison liked to talk about his big locomotive that ran on steam and
wood, and what he liked to do in his spare time was to polish up the mechanisms and
keep them in good working order. With a War on things were pretty tough. He was even involved in a train wreck. 'Train ran into the back of another a forty miles and hour. engineer and stoker killed just like that!' He snapped his fingers descriptively. 'Engine written off! Track ripped up! They sent me out on the relief. Three hundred miles I moved that mother. Then I saw things I shouldn't have had to see. Screaming devils crawling all over the track. They even tried to climb into the cab. Never seen so many dead 'uns in my life.' Morrison told this story with disgust. He was speaking to a man he could trust: his stoker. The pair were standing on the footplate of his locomotive. 'For things like that they send you to the War.' 'There's another of the bastards!' The stoker pointed. 'Will you look at that? What's he think he's doing, creeping up beside them sheds? What does he think he's invisible or something? Does he think we can't see him?' Normally Jack Morrison, the engineer of locomotive #84 waiting to haul the train of freight cars that would carry the Drummerton Brigade on its journey to the War would have looked the other way but he was so annoyed that he blew the locomotive's whistle which was against the rules during daylight hours and attracted everyone's attention. |
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