The Ghost Train
By Summer Reading Challenge Reporter, Ruairi
Evans
The trains were finishing their day of hard work and the
tired drivers were ready to go home for the evening. One driver, called Tony,
was heading home when, suddenly, he heard a quiet, spooky and echoing noise
somewhere in the fog.
Tony set off on his tank-engine to find out what that noise
in the dark, misty night was.
His train tooted to the sound, but then, whatever was in the
fog tooted back!
As Tony’s train chuffed in the dark, Tony saw a junction up
ahead which lead to a dark and lonely stretch of track.
“Hmm…” thought Tony. “I wonder what will happen if I go that
way.” His curiosity, got the better of him and he headed down the horrible
line.
The train steamed through closed stations and passed broken,
old signals and then, Tony made a shocking discovery. Ahead, parked on a
parallel train track, was a decrepit and battered train.
Tony stopped his own train and a man emerged from the fog
that surrounded the other steam tank-engine.
“What are you doin’ ‘ere at this hour?” the mysterious man
asked.
“I heard a noise and came to find out what made it,” said
Tony.
“Oh, maybe it was a ghost train,” said the strange man,
laughing.
Tony laughed but he sounded nervous.
“You’d best head home,” said the man, who seemed to be clung
to by the night fog. “The track up ahead is damaged.”
“Thank you,” said Tony, and he headed home. When he later
told his work friends about the night’s events, they went pale.
“It was a ghost
train!” said on of the men. “That was Old Bill you talked to. His train crashed
on that line years ago and some say he wanders the track forever more, tooting
his broken train’s horn and warning others away.”
Tony laughed, thinking they were joking. But when he drove
his engine down the line later that day, he saw that there was no lonely
stretch of line where it had been the previous night. There was just a memorial
plaque which read:
In memory of William “Old
Bill” Jones
A friend to all those
on these tracks
Tony shivered at the realisation that he had been saved by a
ghost, but smiled as he realised that the man he had spoken to had indeed been
a “friend” by warning him of the broken tracks that would have been the end of
him and his engine.
