CC 676 at Rainager for Bankura 10th Dec 1992
On the outbound journey the guard had extracted fifty rupees with the promise of a chicken, it would be given to a chef and cooked for lunch on arrival here at Rainager. I expected to see a live chicken somewhere along the way but never even saw a dead one, not in the care of the guard anyway. Eventually a couple of skinny wings arrived on a banana leaf with some rice.
How long we were here for I cannot remember though it can not have been too long or I most certainly would, for as can be seen there is not much here to hold the attention. It is a curious place for the railway to end, a small village with the station set in fields to the south of it. The locomotive ran round the train on arrival, watered again and brewed up. People turned up for scraps of half burnt coals from the raked out ashpan, maybe the chance of some hot water from the boiler and the activity at the station attracted the attention of the younger males from the village. The condition of the locomotives boiler did not lend itself to have much spare hot water to offer, though the converse was true with the fire, the boilers condition and that of the firebox required the fire to be raked through often.
The train was booked to leave at 15:35 so most of the return journey would be undertaken in the dark and I had already decided I could not bear to sit with the guard all the way back to Bankura. So, I went up to the loco and was soon invited up onto the footplate where the alcoholic predicament of the guard was revealed.
North British build CC pacific no.676, a veteran export of 1907, waits to return to Bankura at the Rainager terminus on the afternoon of the 10th of December 1992.
CC 676 at Rainager for Bankura 10th Dec 1992
On the outbound journey the guard had extracted fifty rupees with the promise of a chicken, it would be given to a chef and cooked for lunch on arrival here at Rainager. I expected to see a live chicken somewhere along the way but never even saw a dead one, not in the care of the guard anyway. Eventually a couple of skinny wings arrived on a banana leaf with some rice.
How long we were here for I cannot remember though it can not have been too long or I most certainly would, for as can be seen there is not much here to hold the attention. It is a curious place for the railway to end, a small village with the station set in fields to the south of it. The locomotive ran round the train on arrival, watered again and brewed up. People turned up for scraps of half burnt coals from the raked out ashpan, maybe the chance of some hot water from the boiler and the activity at the station attracted the attention of the younger males from the village. The condition of the locomotives boiler did not lend itself to have much spare hot water to offer, though the converse was true with the fire, the boilers condition and that of the firebox required the fire to be raked through often.
The train was booked to leave at 15:35 so most of the return journey would be undertaken in the dark and I had already decided I could not bear to sit with the guard all the way back to Bankura. So, I went up to the loco and was soon invited up onto the footplate where the alcoholic predicament of the guard was revealed.
North British build CC pacific no.676, a veteran export of 1907, waits to return to Bankura at the Rainager terminus on the afternoon of the 10th of December 1992.