Dwain Pipe
Junior Acolyte
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2017
- Messages
- 49
Quite recently I was chatting to a chap who was a train driver back in the 70’s and 80’s. Rather than passenger trains, he predominantly drove freight trains and specifically coal trains. His job was to collect coal from pits in the North of England and take it down to ports in the South of England where it would be taken across to mainland Europe. He usually travelled through the night, despatch the coal in the early morning and then head back north. Occasionally he’d be driving the train alone but mostly there’d be 2 drivers sharing the workload. Also, they’d be expected to take the journey using non passenger tracks so not to disrupt any passenger trains using the main lines. This would take them on some quite remote and underused routes.
One evening him and another driver we’re heading south with their load on a line somewhere around Cambridgeshire. There were woods either side of the track and no station or sidings for miles but it was a route they’d travelled on many times. In the distance they saw a signal set at ‘stop’ so began to slow the train down. The signal didn’t change as they approached so they came to a complete halt. After waiting for 10 minutes or so the signal still hadn’t changed so his mate hopped out the cab to use the signal phone to call through to the main signal control box to ask if there were any issues. After a few minutes he returned saying the phone was completely dead. Now they were a little concerned as they’d no option but to wait which could significantly delay them. They were chatting for a while, when they both noticed a bright light in the trees at the side of the track. Initially they thought it was someone with a torch, maybe a poacher, however they quickly noticed that it was actually a ball of light about the same size as a tennis ball. The light came out of the trees and up to the side window of the engine (interestingly, though it was bright it didn’t light up their carriage at all) it stayed there for a few moments then moved around to the front, slowly went past the front windscreen and then continued into the trees on the opposite side before disappearing from view! Maybe coincidentally or maybe not, the signal then changed to allow them to pass through.
Unlike many of these stories where the protagonists don’t speak about the occurrence again, these two guys would talk about it every time they saw each other, right up until his mates death in 2011. He took his train down that route many more times but didn’t have any other similar experiences again.
One evening him and another driver we’re heading south with their load on a line somewhere around Cambridgeshire. There were woods either side of the track and no station or sidings for miles but it was a route they’d travelled on many times. In the distance they saw a signal set at ‘stop’ so began to slow the train down. The signal didn’t change as they approached so they came to a complete halt. After waiting for 10 minutes or so the signal still hadn’t changed so his mate hopped out the cab to use the signal phone to call through to the main signal control box to ask if there were any issues. After a few minutes he returned saying the phone was completely dead. Now they were a little concerned as they’d no option but to wait which could significantly delay them. They were chatting for a while, when they both noticed a bright light in the trees at the side of the track. Initially they thought it was someone with a torch, maybe a poacher, however they quickly noticed that it was actually a ball of light about the same size as a tennis ball. The light came out of the trees and up to the side window of the engine (interestingly, though it was bright it didn’t light up their carriage at all) it stayed there for a few moments then moved around to the front, slowly went past the front windscreen and then continued into the trees on the opposite side before disappearing from view! Maybe coincidentally or maybe not, the signal then changed to allow them to pass through.
Unlike many of these stories where the protagonists don’t speak about the occurrence again, these two guys would talk about it every time they saw each other, right up until his mates death in 2011. He took his train down that route many more times but didn’t have any other similar experiences again.