BETWEEN THE LINES
BY RICHARD DRY
I grew up in the 1970s in Stonehouse, just off Oldends Lane on the edge of the Park Estate, smack-bang in the middle between two main railway lines. Looking north from my bedroom window, the Stroud to Gloucester line sat raised up on an embankment to the right, while on the left the Bristol to Gloucester line ran at ground level. Behind our house between the lines was the recreation ground – the Rec – complete with Stonehouse Magpies football ground. Beyond that was a small farm, and beyond that, a mile or so away, a scrubby no-man’s land that us kids called Ants Bank. Peppered with ant hills (hence the name), stunted hawthorn bushes and animal bones, Ants Bank tapered to a point where the two lines met; the Stroud line gradually descending to meet the Bristol. For a 10-year-old kid it was a thrilling place to be. The closer to the convergence, the more exposed we were. When pinging sounds from the tracks alerted us to approaching trains, we dived for cover behind the nearest bush. To stand between the lines where they joined was almost a rite of passage.
As I recall, traffic on the Stroud line consisted predominantly of passenger trains: a mixture of intercity Class 47s and local 3-carriage diesel multiple units, or ‘Bug Sets’ as we disparagingly called them. The Bristol line was busier, and carried more freight. I remember purposeful-looking Class 45 Peaks hauling long double-deck wagons loaded with new cars and vans from factories in the Black Country. And occasionally there was a coal train, which slowed as it approached, ready to pull into sidings behind our estate. Because here was the coal yard, and spanning it all the steel-and-timber Silver Bridge. We spent hours on and around that footbridge, watching in fascination as a little black shunter marshalled the wagons, or, when there was no-one around, scaling the fence and clambering over the filthy wagons or looking for slow-worms under the lumps of concrete that lay strewn about beside the tracks. Most exciting of all was to lie flat on our bellies, heads poking out of the bridge latticework as a train thundered beneath, its roof almost close enough to touch. The bridge rattled and shook, and we were slapped in the face with hot, cloying diesel fumes. And we loved it!
Clearly visible from the Silver Bridge was the Oldends Lane crossing, which was originally manned by a surly bloke whose miserable lot it was to physically close and open four large hinged gates day-in, day-out to the relentless demands of the timetable. In the later 1970s, both the man and his little hut disappeared, to be replaced by automated barriers and a raucous jangling bell. I dread to think what it was like for people living nearer the crossing, because that bell kept us awake at night for weeks before we got used to it, and even then it remained a peripheral irritation. But the sound of a passing train was never that. Far from it. In fact, to this day I find it somehow comforting; a subliminal reassurance that in spite of everything the world is still turning, still going about its business.