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(Your not going to do it)!
From an old yarn of mine! As I gaze down the 1-37 bank at carriages with engines slung underneath (The DMU)! I reflect to my passed cleaner days of pushing heavy trains up this very bank! Eight drive wheels up to the prancing Maunsell types to later the Bulleid! If passengers could see my drivers attention in getting over that hump!? Sheer adhesion fighting the power of steam! Memory floods back! My miss reading of the bend to show ants on a distant platform! The Ants Getting bigger! My driver stands behind me, (Your not going to do it) he says? The vacuum gauge is flat to the boards! One and a half carriages overshoot the platform! If someone had stepped out into space? I still cringe! Shed duty turns were through the night! I would rather the wheel reverser! 12 roads at 72A shed! Put this here, Put that there! All outer shed engines had places to be come morning! But left blacked out with 100 PSI of steam and boiler filled to the gunnel in water! Even the sight glass drain cant show the true extent! Be it a ship! Then it would sink to be sitting on the Ocean floor? Then, If 3 cylinder, Then 6 strokes of steam Cylinder with the cocks open for water carry over! (Water doesn’t compress)! And reversal brings the panic of steam brake, Hand brake and fart about with the steam reverser for a moments calm panic Lol! Thump something with a NOT to be moved board on it has its consequences! Ask fireman *****, Or J’ *****. (Long stories)! Just don’t ever get to (Your not going to do it stage)! I did it! But luck gazed down on me! Just as I gaze down in the city! At the DMU! People in shop doorways ask for spare coins? Did Frank Sinatra sing buddy spare a dime! Not seen that before? Hope you kids look after the joint? You don’t want Rail comments of only (one sentence) do you?? Mind you, Management must bless me? I do go on so!
