The Blackpool Highflyer

In The Necropolis Railway, young Yorkshireman Jim Stringer came down to Edwardian London to work on the railways at Waterloo, where he became embroiled in shady goings-on that endangered his life.

In this sequel, Jim is back up north, but trouble has followed close behind. Newly settled in Halifax with a wife of firm opinions, 25-year-old Jim is working as a fireman on the locomotives, running factory excursions to and from the coast. One day Jim and his driver Clive are assigned the powerful Highflyer to take a group of millworkers to Blackpool, but his excitement turns to despair when the train is almost derailed by a millstone placed deliberately on the line.

A young woman dies as a result, leaving Jim guilt-ridden and jumpy. For the duration of the blisteringly hot summer, he doggedly sets out to find the culprit and in the process regain his former confidence.

This is one of those books that so perfectly conjures up the time and place in which the story is set that the denouement is almost irrelevant. Likewise, the characters are delightfully drawn: young Jim is proud, naïve, and stubborn, but it is clear that Lydia (‘the wife’ – who he adores) will have the last word if she means to; Clive, the driver, is a suave ladies’ man, obsessed with his appearance, who disappears for curious assignations in Blackpool; and there is a cast of other finely sketched railwaymen, vaudeville artists, millworkers, and pubgoers.

Martin is spot-on with his use of the vernacular as well; ‘give over, you barmpot’, Lydia gently chides her ‘funniosity’ of a husband; ‘sup up, we’re off’ Jim is encouraged as he dawdles over his beer in the pub.

Without over-romanticising the bygone days of the steam locomotives, The Blackpool Highflyer is an affectionate and, in many ways, good old-fashioned story. Martin shows us the gentle understated ways many people had of going on, as well as giving us some caddish rogues at whom to hiss and boo. In addition, and movingly considering the dilapidated condition of our modern rolling stock, he shows how much care and pride went into the upkeep of the locomotives and the stations.