The pier railway is a little electric train that runs the length of the deck for the tourists, and its controller logs every trip and every passenger the conductor counts on. The track was shortened after a storm took the last hundred yards of pier. Every night at half past one it logs a trip. To the old sea end, the one that is water, and back. Out, it logs no passengers. Back, it logs twenty six, and the train is in its shed, and its seats are wet.
I am the pier railway's driver, which is a job for one, and the train runs itself once a night and I am not on it.
The railway.
A little electric train, four open carriages, on a narrow track down the middle of the pier, shore end to sea end and back, for the tourists, a pound a ride. The controller logs every trip, with the distance and the passengers, because the conductor, who is also me, counts them on with a clicker that feeds the log.
The track is shorter than it was. The storm, in the eighties, took the last hundred yards of the pier, the end pavilion and the track with it, and the pier was rebuilt to a new end with buffers, and the old end is sea.
At half past one the train logs a trip.
The trip.
Out: the full old length. The log has the distance, and it is the distance to the old end, a hundred yards past the buffers, past the end of the pier, over water. Passengers out, nought.
Back: the same distance. Passengers, twenty six.
The train is in its shed at the shore end with the door locked and the power off at the board. In the morning the seats are wet. Salt. The floors of the carriages have sand on them, and weed, and on one seat, most mornings, something left behind, the way people leave things on a train: a child's shoe, a hat, a handbag with nothing in it, and they are old things, from a summer a long time ago, and the lost property box is full of them.
What has been checked.
The controller, replaced. It logs the trip.
The shed, at half past one, by me, inside it, in the dark, with the door locked and the power off. The train moved. The motors, which had no power, ran, and the train went out of the shed, through the door, which was shut, and along the pier, and I ran behind it, and it went the length, past the shelter, past the theatre, to the buffers, and through them, the way it went through the door, and on, over the water, lit, because the carriage lights were on, a little train going out over the sea on a track that is not there, to where the pavilion was, and it stopped there, in the air, over the water, with its lights on, for the time it takes twenty six people to get on a train, and it came back.
I stood at the buffers. It came through them, and past me, and the carriages were full. I could not see them. The seats were down, as seats go down with weight on them, all of them, and the sound was the sound of a full train, of people, of a child, and the train went into the shed and stopped and the lights went off and I went in after it and the seats were wet.
Who.
The storm took the end of the pier on a night in the eighties and the pavilion at the end had people in it, because it was a dance, and most of them had got along the pier before it went, and the pier's book has the number that had not, and it is twenty six.
The train had been in its shed. It did not run at night. The people at the end had had to walk, and the storm had taken the end before they had all walked it.
It is running for them. Every night. To where they were. And they get on, and it brings them back, and they get off at the shore end, in the shed, and leave their things on the seats, as people do when they have had a shock and are glad to be on land, and in the morning the lost property box has another hat.
What is done about it.
The trip is on the railway's log every night with twenty six passengers and no fares and the council has asked me why the pier railway carries twenty six people a night for nothing after hours, and I have said, it's a rescue, and the council has asked what I mean, and I have said, read the book for 1987.
What I do.
I drive the train.
It runs itself. It does not need me. But a train has a conductor, and a conductor counts them on and counts them off and says, mind the step, and nobody has said that to them.
So I ride it. At half past one I am in the conductor's seat in the last carriage, in the shed, in the dark, and when it moves I go with it, along the pier, through the buffers, which I have done and I am not going to describe, and out over the water to where the pavilion was, and it stops, and I stand up, and I say, all aboard, this train for the shore, and I click them on. Twenty six. I cannot see them but I can feel the carriage take them and I click the clicker for each, and I say, mind the step, and the train goes back, and at the shore end I say, all change, everybody off, you're home, and the seats come up, and I click them off, and the log in the morning says twenty six on and twenty six off, which it never did before, because nobody had counted them off.
The lost property box has stopped filling. They are not leaving their things. A person who has been counted off a train and told they are home takes their hat with them, and I have put the box in the pier office with a label, and the label says, from the last train, and nobody has asked.