On high, where the navvies made tracks

Ribblehead station, firstly, its benches chained down not for fear of thieves - nor yet of the Hurtle Pot Boggart, of which more anon - but because the Helm wind would sweep them like so many autumn leaves into the bitter air.

The gale lashed, cat o' nine tails, across the platforms, the hailstones threatened grievous bodily harm, the walk to the new visitor centre had perforce blindly to be undertaken.

Phil and Wendy Kinch, formerly railway workers in Kent, are resident wardens up there now, bringing Ribblehead's resolute population - there's also a pub - to five. In 1868, Phil recalls, just four braved permanently that part of bleak Blea Moor. Two years later it was 2,500, in 1876 it was four again. In the meantime, they built a railway.

There were shanty towns with names like Sepastopol, Inkerman and Jericho. It was amid those primitive, often sub-human conditions that the navvies and their families lived, and where all too often they died.

SO down to the tiny, half-hidden church of St Leonard's, Chapel-le-Dale, where lie the navvies of Blea Moor. Ebenezer Smith, Vicar in 1869, presided over a parish of 10,500 acres, 160 souls and (if local folklore were to be credited) the Hurtle Pot Boggart and sundry subterranean trolls. He conducted an average three burials each year in the adjoining churchyard.

Between May 1870 and May 1878, 247 bodies were interred, of which just 25 were what might not have been termed indigenous. Of the remainder, 129 were children under 16; 74 of whom had died between birth and 12 months.

Construction accidents called the men folk - John Thompson may not have been wise to dry a bundle of dynamite in front of a brazier in the tunnel - smallpox and other privations carried away the remainder.

Still they finished the railway: it remains one of the great wonders of the world.

DENT station, of which we wrote recently - the old joke, remember, about the station being five miles from the village because they wanted it near the railway - is even closer to heaven than Ribblehead, or its stupendous viaduct. Highest in England, it is 1,150 feet above sea level - the lonely, lovely station house now privately occupied, and long for sale. Neil Ambrose, its owner since 1984, commuted for two years to Wakefield. He's now been moved to Derby, which really isn't neighbourly at all.

There are views to Whernside and across Dentdale, an isolated pub called the Sportsman about a mile and a half down over. The only other house, now empty, was reckoned the first in the country to have double glazing, and a damn sight better test of its effectiveness than old Ted Moult's floating feather. A notice by the roadside gives details of bus services, which may be summarised as twice a year on Sundays in June, so probably best not to wait.

Halifax Property Services in Settle are asking £195,000 for that particular station in life, but are doubtless open to offers. The hail fell as violently as ever.

WHAT'S called the Coal Road leads narrowly from Dent down to Garsdale station, formerly Hawes Junction, where the turntable was stockaded to prevent it spinning into orbit.

Though it hailed no longer, one of Mr Bob Dylan's hard rains fell fiercely, nonetheless. There'd be a train quite soon, up and over Ais Gill summit and these days barely drawing breath.

More greatly cared for of late, Garsdale has seen better times, nonetheless. Either side of the war, the white walled room beneath the water tower became not just a social centre but a place of worship too, an earlier Northern Echo visitor - winter 1953 - observing that the red and black seating around the walls had in an earlier incarnation belonged to an LMS saloon.

Dancing, he noted, was to station master Cobb's accordion, the ceiling festooned with tinsel stars. "These dances are such warm, happy, affairs, with the stoves going strongly, that the railway gangs never have to worry about the water tanks freezing above."

Though water tank and steam engines have evaporated, the Church of England deanery of Ewecross still claims the church of St John the Baptist in Garsdale, though we were wholly unable to locate it. The Methodist "plan", if we read it aright, continues to service chapels at Hawes Junction, Garsdale and Garsdale Street. If no longer a water tank, there's an At Your Service column there, for certain.

AS the western region lads remind us, it's God's Wonderful Railway, after all. While awaiting the last train from Newcastle to Darlington, however, faith may severely be tested. The last train is scheduled for 10.42pm, though the timetable may just as well say "after dark". Last Tuesday, with little recourse to present difficulties, it was ten past midnight before it got away.

The train's electrics had failed in Newcastle, frozen passengers finally herded - the word is entirely appropriate - onto a filthy service just in from Kings Cross.

Amid the debris, that night's London Evening Standard had lead the front page with the headline (below) "Misery trains firm is sacked." It was Connex, which ran the South Central line, but it certainly won't be the last.

...and finally, thanks to all those who responded to the piece a couple of weeks ago about cigarette cards. Until we became rather carried away on the Settle and Carlisle line, it was meant to form the basis of today's column.

That section of the network will be closed from this Sunday until December 3, whilst long planned re-laying takes place. Though the shanty towns are gone, those who make tracks up there - and elsewhere on the railways - deserve both gratitude and high reward.

Probably we'll return to fag cards next week. For the moment hail and farewell, as probably they say - nine months a year - on Ribblehead railway station.