Steam

              Black overalls, cap,
              driver's black box,
              tea-tin, thin, home
              for breakfast he trudged,

              legs giving slightly
              at the knees from
              balancing on the footplate,
              in erotic, destructive love

              with his engine.
              I used to pass him
              on my way to school.
              When he was my age

              he'd cleaned the white
              toxic moss from the brick
              arch, worked in dark
              oily holes on fire bars,

              until they paid him more,
              allowed him to roast and/or
              freeze in his own sweat,
              shovelling coal, watching

              the gauge, watching
              for signals through black
              dust flying and settling
              in his bronchial tubes,

              sometimes in heat waves,
              sometimes rain or days when snow
              drifted into the corners
              of the cab. Then, as a driver,

              under pressure of time
              and his own politics
              he was a Marxist boiler
              without a safety gauge

              until he realised he couldn't
              get into his lungs or
              strip them down to take out
              forty years of coal waste.

              He enjoyed a smoke,
              a Goldflake. Enjoyed it,
              so that must be what
              cheated him of retirement.

              Though, strangely,
              it was TB
              they tested us for,
              after the funeral.

Sent to me by my sister Margaret. People today think it's tough out there.
Maybe it is but what's the compensation price today for a pair of lungs.

Sandringham Class"FORD CASTLE"

Just for interest sake a friendly railway enthusiast
tells me the engine standing here is an old Sandringham
class named "Ford Castle". The castle was owned by a Baron Joicey
It was built in November 1930 as "2817" then renumbered in1946
to 1617. It then became 61617 when British Rail came into being
The added 6 I believe denoted the old LNER Region, which is where
I did my spotting. I did "spot" Ford Castle but my favourite "Sandies"
were Doncaster Rovers and West Ham United (if my memory serves me correct)