Читать книгу A Life of Pride - Alan G Pride - Страница 11

With my Mum Ethel, at Uncle Jim & Aunty Maud’s home in Adelaide

Mum didn’t want me to miss out on family holidays just because Dad wouldn’t go, nor to be stuck at home all the time herself, so she’d take me to Adelaide by night train to stay at her brother James Barnes’ house. We’d leave at 9 p.m and arrive in Adelaide about 7 the next morning (today, the trip takes only a few hours). There’d be stops for the steam train to take on coal and water, while we joined the bedlam at the station cafeteria with all the passengers ordering at once, hopefully getting a meal before the train was ready to leave.

These trips introduced me to the magic of steam trains, their noise and smell and visible machinery whirling and thumping. The love of Steam has never left me. A high point of my childhood was the time when we returned to Broken Hill on the train and I walked up the platform, as usual, to look at the engine. Lo and behold, the driver was one of our neighbours. He asked if I wanted to ride the rest of the way home in the engine compartment! I couldn’t get in there fast enough. The 300 miles back from Terowie with the driver and the fireman were my idea of heaven. This was a big engine, similar to a ‘Pacific’ class, but even bigger – called, I think, a ‘W’ class in South Australia. I even helped stoke coal into the firebox and hold the throttle. The driver gave me a big wad of cotton waste to wipe all the oil and dirt off my hands; I loved it so much that I kept it in my bedroom for years, inhaling the oily, smoky smell like a fine perfume. I’m sure that such an impromptu adventure would be impossible for a kid of today, safety and insurance rules being what they are.

My love of trains did get me into trouble on one of the Adelaide holidays. My cousin, Geoff Barnes, was good company for me and we’d sail his little yacht, the Ripple, at club events, Geoff working the main sail and rudder while I handled the front sail. But when he wasn’t around, I would get bored and walk down to Cheltenham Station to watch the steam engines. They ran on a suburban line out to Port Adelaide, a tank-engine pulling several timber carriages. Eventually, I couldn’t resist the urge to jump in a carriage and ride ticketless to Port Adelaide, up to Central and back eventually to Cheltenham, head stuck out of the carriage all the way so that I could inhale the lovely coal smoke.

There on the platform was my Aunty Maud, with a look of thunder on her face. “Where’ve you been?” she demanded. “On the trains by yourself?”

“'Course not!” I answered, with as innocent and round-eyed a look as I could manage (it often won over Mum). Little did I realise that those round eyes were surrounded by a mask of coal dust as black as face-paint! Did I get into hot water for that escapade, and for lying about it!