Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/150

110 railway coupled together with the engine." That hardly applies to the dandy; but, wait, there is another of the several definitions which may apply. "That which is drawn or dragged along or after, as the hinder part of a beast," seems suitable, if we consider that the dandy is inseparable, figuratively speaking, from the horse. Granting that a horse is a "beast," there was nothing beastly about our placid tractor, nothing fiery or untamed even—and we congratulate the editor of Bradshaw: when at work dandy and horse are one, a train.

After all we did not stop at Glasson on the outward journey; the passenger neatly skipped from his seat beside the engineer on to the lonely platform; the engine preferred to keep on the move. On the return journey, a few days later, the dandy was full inside, for it was market day at Carlisle. When we reached Glasson there was a crowd of perhaps half a dozen waiting on the platform, and whilst the driver attended to the receipt of fares the engine left the metals and browsed contentedly on the bank. Perhaps there were a couple of dozen passengers in all, inside and out, but in summer there are at times so many as fifty; the overflow sits with the heavy luggage on the top. With our light loads the horse alternately trotted and cantered, keeping well in the centre of the four-foot way, and striding over points without striking a shoe against the metals. It knew its work and acted as if it had an easy job, for the gradients, if any, are of little moment.

From information culled from a communicative fellow passenger, and from that man of many parts—engineer, fireman, guard, station-master, ticket collector, pointsman, and porter—I gathered as we slid smoothly over the well-known lines that the Port Carlisle Railway is about fifty years old. Immediately we left Drumburgh we ran into the bed of an old canal, and along this bed