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How the station used to be.


How it is now



Looking the other way showing the station masters house then and now.



 
There's a whole culture of railway ghosts out there. I've read a few books on the subject. Most old railway staff have a tale or two to tell. There're some on here, didn't we have a thread on it?

Did'nt notice it, sorry, but if some Mod would like to merge the two it would be great.
 
Another 'jinxed' locomotive.

I know of at least one passenger loco, or rather set, of a loco and carriages, with a 'jinx' reputation. Staff groan when they see which set they're working because they know everything'll go wrong.
 
The Garstang and Knott End was a slow, bucolic, sleepy sort of organisation. no gruesome accidents of which I am aware, and probably never any full passenger trains for that matter. Which doesn't mean it has no ghosts, but if it does have any they are there for other reasons than being killed in a train crash.

I think there was a fatality in the very early day of the line near Nateby when
someone walking the track was run down by a train but not much else.
 
The link didn't stand out so I didn't recognise it. I always underline links in case people are looking at the site on phones.
Apologies. Thanks for the tip about underlining links - I'll try and keep that in mind.
 
Apologies. Thanks for the tip about underlining links - I'll try and keep that in mind.

Heh, no need to apologise! Thank you for the link. I've already bumped the thread! :D
 
I think there was a fatality in the very early day of the line near Nateby when
someone walking the track was run down by a train but not much else.

Sadly a lot of incidents like that happened in the early days of railways. Then people learned (though some have now forgotten) that if you take on a train the train is going to win.

There were also constant accidents to railway workers that rarely got reported on up until about 1900.
 
I know of at least one passenger loco, or rather set, of a loco and carriages, with a 'jinx' reputation. Staff groan when they see which set they're working because they know everything'll go wrong.

What is it Scargs?
 
Here. Great documentary.

Thread here. There are several more related threads around here somewhere, too - I think.

Thoroughly enjoyed watching that. Obviously pushing the infra-sound hypothesis a lot, but sounds believable up to a point. The penultimate account, where the witness described the patrol man still walking the tracks "because he doesn't realise he's died" really sent a shiver down my spine.
 
Thoroughly enjoyed watching that. Obviously pushing the infra-sound hypothesis a lot, but sounds believable up to a point. The penultimate account, where the witness described the patrol man still walking the tracks "because he doesn't realise he's died" really sent a shiver down my spine.

The story that always gives me the shivers is the one that takes place at Hyde Park Corner - where (impossibly, apparently) the escalator starts itself up in the early hours, and the teller's companion asks him if he saw...gulp...'the face'.

I think it's something to do with them being shut up in their little office inside a big, empty - but apparently not empty - space. And the fact that to get out of there they would have to enter that big, empty - but apparently not empty - space
 
With the current prominence on the board, of the railway-ghosts theme -- I’m a keen railway enthusiast; and log on often, to a message board dedicated to that hobby. Said board plays host to a thread which over some seven years, has grown to a length of fifty pages – its title, “Are our railways haunted?” It contains many accounts of allegedly ghostly doings on Britain’s railways. I feel that I’m a poor excuse for a Fortean, in that (while open-minded about things ghost-ish), I don’t find ghost stories immensely absorbing; have only dipped here and there, into aforementioned large-scale thread.


A certain proportion of the thread consists of “rubbishing” – sometimes downright insulting in tone -- by people who are certain that ghosts do not exist (with the implication that anyone who in any way gives any head-space to ghosts, is a moron). One has the impression that a guiding principle of scientific-rationalist folk is supposed to be, that they should bring out material to back up their opinions, and not just (as they accuse their unscientific opponents of doing) flatly and unequivocally spout dogma; but I suppose it tends to be, “if it’s their dogma, that’s different”.


I’ll try and give a link; but I’m not hugely clever with computers, and my linking attempts seem often not to work.


www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=27768


Should the link fail: Google “RailUKforums”: when you get to the “menu” of the board’s sub-forums, select the sub-forum “Railway History & Nostalgia” – thread concerned is, “Are our railways haunted?” – in the sub-forum index, about ten places down from the top.
 
As a slight aside to that excellent documentary, given that infrasound is generally classed as being sound below normal human hearing < 20hz, and that there is some evidence that exposure to such sound can produce feelings of nausea, anxiety, depression and even hallucinations, could exposure to whale-song, typically within the range 16 to 18hz, account for some maritime Fortean tales?
 
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With the current prominence on the board, of the railway-ghosts theme -- I’m a keen railway enthusiast; and log on often, to a message board dedicated to that hobby...

Ah yes, I think in the past the RailUK forums have been linked to before on these threads and there's been some really great stuff on there.

I'm not what you'd call a railway enthusiast per se - but I like travelling by train and love railway stations (well, some of them) for their atmosphere and people watching opportunities. And I've always found that whole world particularly suitable for a haunting.
 
Ah yes, I think in the past the RailUK forums have been linked to before on these threads and there's been some really great stuff on there.

Indeed -- plenty of fascinating material -- even a sub-forum dedicated to railways abroad, for those with an interest in such.
I'm not what you'd call a railway enthusiast per se - but I like travelling by train and love railway stations (well, some of them) for their atmosphere and people watching opportunities. And I've always found that whole world particularly suitable for a haunting.

Very much so ! Even if it were known for certain that ghosts did not exist, and the whole thing was strictly for entertainment; when railways came along, plenty of creative folk would have come up with ghost stories set on that scene.
 
...Even if it were known for certain that ghosts did not exist, and the whole thing was strictly for entertainment; when railways came along, plenty of creative folk would have come up with ghost stories set on that scene.

Two of my favourites:

Marylebone Station, looking along Melcombe Place on a winter evening, life bustling away under the canopies - but looking oddly antique and otherworldly, as if Poirot and Captain Hastings were just about to rush out and hail a cab.

Corrour station: absolutely alone, watching the train disappear into the mist. The feeling that I was being watched - two enormous saucer eyed dogs staring at me from a window in the stationmaster's house.

(I never saw Poirot, but the dogs at Corrour were real...I think!)
 
Corrour station: absolutely alone, watching the train disappear into the mist. The feeling that I was being watched - two enormous saucer eyed dogs staring at me from a window in the stationmaster's house.

(I never saw Poirot, but the dogs at Corrour were real...I think!)

Just out of interest -- you having left the train at Corrour, in seemingly unpropitious circumstances: where did you go / what do, next? Presumably you spent the succeeding night either in tolerable conditions; or self-chosen not-very tolerable ditto ?
 
Just out of interest -- you having left the train at Corrour, in seemingly unpropitious circumstances: where did you go / what do, next? Presumably you spent the succeeding night either in tolerable conditions; or self-chosen not-very tolerable ditto ?

The first time I was at Corrour I'll admit that the weather was so bad that I got straight on the next train south and went back to Tyndrum. However since that abortive trip I've alighted at Corrour to walk around Loch Ossian (an isolated place, but a relatively easy walk - I'd recommend it) and also as a starting point for walking up to Loch Treig and then west towards Ben nevis.
 
The first time I was at Corrour I'll admit that the weather was so bad that I got straight on the next train south and went back to Tyndrum. However since that abortive trip I've alighted at Corrour to walk around Loch Ossian (an isolated place, but a relatively easy walk - I'd recommend it) and also as a starting point for walking up to Loch Treig and then west towards Ben nevis.

Thanks ! Re yours of Wed., I felt concerned for you -- though plainly you'd survived the experience (unless you were posting from the Great Beyond)...
 
Thanks ! Re yours of Wed., I felt concerned for you -- though plainly you'd survived the experience (unless you were posting from the Great Beyond)...

Thanks. But I'm pretty hardy.

Having said that - that week or so was not the best time I've had in the great outdoors. It was the same trip during which I read virtually the whole of Heart of Darkness in one sitting (literally) in incongruous circumstances; an experience the relation of which caused Yithian - if I recall correctly - great and lasting amusement.
 
I've done that! It's the best way to read it.

Not like this, I hope (from November 2007):

I may have mentioned this before but one of the most surreal (and unpleasant) episodes of my entire life involved reading virtually the whole of Heart of Darkness wrapped in a sleeping bag on a campsite toilet in Spean Bridge, Scotland. For over a week I'd been wild camping in the Highlands - no hot and cold, no showers, no toilet block - and I was fine. Fit as a butchers dog in fact. And then as a bit of a rest I decided to immerse myself in the untold luxuries of a proper campsite only to be infected with a horrendous and incredibly virulent stomach bug which had been loosed on the whole place by a sick family of tourists. I'm not going to indulge in cheap innuendo by telling you what nationality said tourists were....but they were German.

After an hour or two the toad who'd been creeping under the door to stare at me every ten minutes or so disappeared, only to arrive ten minutes later with a friend. By the end of the night I was reading excerpts out loud to an audience of four or five very attentive toads. The horror!
 
What is it Scargs?

Tonight I learned that it's Virgin Set 45 or 46. There've been several deaths on it.

One passenger appeared to be asleep at the terminating station.

A staff member gave him a shake - 'Sir, we've arrived, time to wake up!' - but he wasn't waking up, then or ever. :(
 
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