Read Online On the Slow Train by Michael Williams - Free Book Online

going,’ says Father Nicholas, a blunt but charming man who comes from Millom in Cumbria, and whose father was the manager of Barrow steelworks. ‘I’ve been here twenty-six years and I always wanted to be a monk and I’ve never doubted that I did the right thing. But our community is a small one. The youngest is forty-five and the oldest over ninety. The one thing I pray for above all is that it will be enlarged. We have a few possibilities . . .’ He looks doubtful. And what about the Isle of Wight Steam Railway? ‘I’ve never been on it, although I would like to have done so. You see, I have never had enough money for the fare.’
    As well as looking after guests, Father Nicholas is the abbey bee-keeper and runs a bookbindery in the basement. He shows me a magnificent copy of Oscar Wilde’s
Ballad of Reading Gaol
, ornamented with a gallows with the rope represented in relief in braided leather. Appropriate fare for a community of monks? I don’t know. ‘But do come to compline.’ This is a night service, one of the five acts of worship held in the church every day of the year, starting at 5 a.m. I wonder how the monks find the time to do all the mundane jobs necessary to keep the monastery running. Walking to the darkened church with the moon reflected on the slate roof and listening to the same Gregorian chant that has been sung for more than 1,500 years is a humbling experience. The rule of St Benedict states that every monastery guest should be ‘received as Christ’. I think that the monks haven’t failed in their duty when Father Nicholas waves me off to the bus stop in the morning.
    It is ironic that the Southern Vectis Omnibus Company – the monopoly bus service provider on the island – was founded by the Southern Railway back in 1929, as it was instrumental in killing off large parts of the railway in the 1960s. You can see why as I get off the bus at Wootton, the terminus of the preserved Isle of Wight Steam Railway, which once ran all the way from Ryde to Newport and Cowes. The modern two-tone green buses run every nine minutes and carry slogans such as T HE SLEEK WAY TO TRAVEL . C OOL OR WHAT ? ‘Cool’ is a term that could never be applied to the railways of the Isle of Wight and it’s no wonder the Cowes line was seen off by the buses. But enough of the line remains to catch a train back along the five and a half miles to Smallbrook Junction. I buy a ticket from a man in a baggy uniform with a remarkable resemblance to Charles Hawtrey, and in the platform a little former War Department saddle-tank locomotive is fussing around its train – the familiar
blink-blonk-hiss
of the Westinghouse brake pump gives the impression that it is impatient to leave.
    The Isle of Wight Steam Railway is almost unique among heritage lines in that the volunteers who run it got their act together almost immediately after closure and have a vast collection of authentic Victorian rolling stock. ‘Why then the relatively modern steam loco?’ I ask Charles Hawtrey. ‘Well, she’s reliable for a start,’ he tells me. ‘And our star loco,
Calbourne
, is in the works having her boiler done.’ No. 24
Calbourne
was one of the last locos to work on the line before British Rail closed it. He tells me a story about how the volunteers acquired it. ‘The wildlife artist David Shepherd wanted to save a steam loco from the scrapyard, so he went to the office of Ian Allan, the trainspotters’ book publisher, to ask for advice. The publisher told him, “David, if you’ve got £500 to spend, why don’t you buy an 02 tank engine”. And do you know, she’s been running for us twice as long as she ran for BR!’
    The train jogs along through a silver birch wood, the leaves just tinged with autumn red. It’s the perfect period-piece slow train straight out of Philip Larkin’s
Whitsun Weddings
: a warm