For YesBut’s Image posted on 19th September 2007, Chewy suggested the caption -
“Woo-woo, ‘I think I can. I think I can.’”
The photograph suggested the following story to me:
I remember standing as a child on this very beach and watching the trains go by. Such excitement hearing their whistle and seeing the steam and smoke belching behind. Seeing a steam train would make my heart beat faster. I just knew the only thing I wanted to be when I grew up was an engine driver. My dream took a bit of a hit when they replaced steam with diesel engines. But I still wanted to become a driver of a inter city train.
When I was fifteen, the time to leave school, and find a job, the railway system was going through a traumatic period, with a contraction of the system and closure of smaller lines. There was no chance of becoming a driver. I had no ambition to do any other job, so for the next forty years I drifted from one job to another. It was pure chance that I got the job of driving the little yellow train.
There is one compensation for being a yellow train driver - in the good old days of the steam engine there was the driver and the stoker on the footplate, but with modern trains, the driver is all alone in his cabin - I on the other hand come face to face with each passenger. Its funny how many of the men tell me that they too wanted to be train drivers. They retell stories of spending hours on cold train station platforms, train-spotting, making notes of the number and names of engines seen. Some of the passengers even buy me an ice cream.
Yes, most of the passengers, are a pleasure to meet, but there is always one who is sent to test your patients. In my case its this pesky kid. Every day he turns up on his bicycle, carrying a plastic gun. He says his ambition is to become a train robber! His mother says he insists on being known as Butch Cassedy.
If the yellow train brought Butch, the bane into my life, it also allowed me to meet Margery. It was a wet Tuesday afternoon, there were hardly any people out walking their dogs, no need passengers. I saw her walking towards me a scarf tied over head in an effort to control her flowing blond hair. She smiled, and my heart felt like a steam train had blown its whistle just for me. I was transfixed by her blue eyes and ruby red lips. We only exchanged a few sentences, before she turned around and walked back to her parked car.
Now, everyday I go to work hoping to see her. I don’t know her name but she looks like a Margery. I live in expectation that she will return to board my train. In the mean time I hold up my hands as Butch Cassedy yet again points his gun at my midriff.
