see that there’d once been a railway through here – behind the station house was the remains of the trackbed, and a straight, flat footpath led off in one direction, signposted ‘The Old Station Inn – 5 miles’. A couple of sheds stood to the side of the main building. One, looking just big enough for a man to stand up in, looked as though it had once housed signalling equipment.
‘So, this is it,’ Ken said, sounding excited to be showing her around his pride and joy at last. ‘Obviously Lynford’s in better shape but this place is coming along nicely too. Come on in.’
Tilly followed him into the building. Inside the old station was a mess. There was no other way to describe it. Debris everywhere, broken stepladders, ancient pots of paint, mouldering boxes containing who knew what. Ken led her through to a small room that had a hideous orange floral carpet and an old brown velour sofa on which a tabby cat lay curled up, sleeping.
‘Sit down. I’ll put a pot of water on to boil. We can have a cuppa.’ On a rickety-looking table in the corner was a Primus stove, a five-litre container of water, a box of teabags and a couple of chipped mugs. He set to work while Tilly sat down. The cat sniffed at her and then stood, stretched and calmly walked across and onto her lap, where it settled down once again, purring happily. She stroked it, discovering a feeling of calm as she rhythmically smoothed its fur.
‘Ah, you’ve made friends with our resident moggy,’ Ken said, looking over his shoulder at her. ‘We’ve no idea where she came from. She just hangs out here, and any railway volunteer that’s here feeds her.’
He handed her a mug of tea and sat beside her on the old sofa, chattering away about the railway restoration while Tilly drank her tea, stroked the cat and tried to keep herself composed. Ken seemed totally at home there. He’d been an area manager for a railway company before he retired. ‘Glorified stationmaster, essentially,’ he’d always said, with a laugh. Railways must be in his blood, Tilly had realised, for as soon as he’d retired and moved to Dorset he’d involved himself in this railway restoration project.
‘So, bring your tea with you, and I’ll give you a quick tour,’ he said, clearly longing to show off what he’d been up to.
She pushed the cat off her lap and stood up. ‘Is this where you spend all your time, then?’
‘Mostly, yes. This was one of the stations on the line. The Society – the Michelhampton and Coombe Regis Railway Society, that is – bought it a few months ago. It had stood empty for years, after being used as a holiday home back in the Sixties and Seventies. As you can see there’s an awful lot of work to do here. Come on, I’ll show you.’
She followed him out through a set of double doors that led into what had once been a garden. He stopped a couple of feet away from the door. ‘You’re now standing on what was once the “down” platform. It was only ever a low platform – about a foot above the height of the trackbed. See the step down?’ He walked forward and down a muddy step, and Tilly followed. ‘Now we’re on the trackbed. Look that way’ – he gestured to his left – ‘and you can see the footpath that runs along the trackbed from here to Rayne’s Cross and the reservoir. It goes over the old viaduct which has amazing views, so it’s quite a popular walk. And Rayne’s Cross station is now a pub, the Old Station Inn. Lynford is in that direction.’ He pointed to the right where a fence ran across the trackbed and there was no footpath.
Tilly turned and looked back at the station house. There were missing roof tiles, the brickwork looked in need of re-pointing, the paintwork was horribly peeling, and the remains of the platforms and trackbed were muddy and overgrown. It looked the way she felt, she thought, feeling a weird kind of empathy with the building.
‘Why don’t the trains run all the way from Lynford to here?’ she asked.
Ken pulled a face. ‘We’d love to do that, but we’ve had to buy back the trackbed from local farmers, bit by bit. Unfortunately, we’ve been having trouble buying that last piece of the trackbed. Owner won’t sell up.’ He pointed once again to the fence.
‘Why not?’
Ken shrugged. ‘Who knows? She’s got some sort of long-standing grudge against us but no one really knows what it is. Anyway. Come on, come and see my workshed.’ He walked along the old trackbed to just past the station house. Tucked in behind was a large metal shed – it looked like a shipping container. The doors at one end stood open, and inside was what Tilly instantly recognised as paradise for her father. There was a workbench strewn with tools along one side, a couple of rusty railway signals lay on the floor on the other side, and the far end held a large container filled with more rusty metal pieces. Ken picked one up and turned it over, lovingly.
‘This is a track spike. These are used to hold the rail to the wooden sleepers. We’ve acquired thousands of them over the years, and they all need cleaning up before we can use them on a new section of track. And those signals there, those are my next job. Clean them up, get them in working order, repaint them. If we ever manage to buy that bit of land, we’ll be wanting to extend the line to here as soon as possible, and then beyond to Rayne’s Cross. The owner of the pub there can’t wait for us to link up.’
Tilly was only half listening. Her mind was in no state to take in the details of railway restoration. She was gazing instead at the countryside, the gentle rolling hills, copses and hedgerows. ‘Dad? Mind if I go for a walk?’
‘Er, sure. Shall I come with you?’
She shook her head. ‘No thanks. I kind of want to be by myself for a bit.’
‘OK.’ He looked around at the rusty equipment and greasy tools. ‘I suppose this kind of thing isn’t really your cup of tea. Go on then. You could walk the old trackbed towards Rayne’s Cross, then there’s a footpath off to the left through some fields and along a lane that loops back round to here. Takes about an hour. You’ll be all right on your own?’
She heard the unspoken words – you won’t do anything silly, will you? – and nodded. ‘I’ll be fine. See you back here in a bit, then.’
She headed off along the old railway track, half-heartedly trying to imagine what it might have looked like eighty years ago when steam trains ran a regular service on the line. The path was straight and level, its surface a mixture of grass and gravel. It was flanked by overgrown bushes, some overhanging the trackbed. If ever her father and his restoration society managed to extend the track in this direction, they’d have a job to do to keep the foliage under control.
After a while she came across a gap in the hedge on the left, and a stile set into a short piece of fence. Deciding this must be the place her dad had suggested she leave the trackbed, she climbed over, and headed off across the fields, clad in their winter brown and dull green. Here and there a few sheep grazed on the short grass; in the next field two horses in heavy winter rugs stood dejectedly nose to tail under a tree. Tilly’s mind wandered as she walked. She found herself reliving the events that had brought her here to Dorset. It wasn’t healthy to do this, she knew – she should look forward rather than back. But her future was too uncertain to dwell on. It was too depressing to think of it. And so she found herself thinking about Ian, the way he’d left her, her redundancy, and her miscarriages. The way it had all come to a head one day and she’d felt there was no way forward. Her dad didn’t know about all of it, yet. One day maybe she’d tell him the details, perhaps when she felt strong enough to talk about it.
She crossed a couple of fields, following a lightly trodden path. Ken had said it came out on a lane and looped round back to the station. She stopped and looked around, and realised she had no idea where she was, or what direction the station lay. Where was this lane? The weather
