Settle-Carlisle line and Beeching cuts feature in rail veteran's new short story book

“You could literally breathe in the railway atmosphere from the smoking engines on a Sunday when they were all being prepared to go out on the road on the Monday morning, so that depending on which way the wind was blowing, you would get the slightly sulphurous smell of the engines coming over from the shed.”

That didn’t seem to put him off. He went on to spend a long career working on the railways in Yorkshire and his native Lancashire (the county which Bolton used to fall under) and is credited with pioneering the community rail movement.

Now, the former train guard and signalman has released a book of short stories, Last Train from Blackstock Junction, informed by his decades of experience in the industry and put out by Sheffield-based Platform 5 Publishing.

The 12 tales include a ghost story set in a lonely signal box in Bolton, in 1900. Another set on the Settle-Carlisle line, addresses the issues of racism said to be prevalent in the 1970s.

Other stories are about modern life on today’s railway, including From Marxist to Managing Director – the story of a young Yorkshire female political activist who years later ends up running a train company, partly inspired by Jan Garrill, who is chief executive of the North and East Yorkshire-based Two Ridings Community Foundation.

Some are set in the age of steam and explore life on the footplate as well as the rise of the trade unions and the Labour movement. The title story is set at the time of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s and is about the attempts of a group of young boys to save their local station.

Sir Peter Hendy, chairman of Network Rail, has provided a foreword and says: "As you read these stories, you’ll find some history, some romance, some politics, a little prejudice – sadly - and some humour; you will in fact be in the world of railway men and women.”

After graduating with his sociology degree from Lancaster University, Dr Salveson began his career in 1974 at Horwich Loco Works - the setting of a previous novel, The Works, in 2020 - before becoming a goods guard at Blackburn and signalman at Astley Bridge Junction, Bolton.

He spent less than a year in British Rail’s chief civil engineers office in London before returning north in the early 1990s to live in the Colne Valley for 25 years.

Speaking about his earlier career, he says: “I became very much a trans-Pennine man, really, with one foot in Lancashire and one foot in Yorkshire. That’s reflected a bit in the stories.

“One of the stories is about Lancashire and Yorkshire solidarity. There is this sort of jokey rivalry between the two counties, but usually in the face of common adversity there is a bond there.”

The Settle-Carlisle line is the backdrop for one of the collection’s more uncomfortable stories, about a young Asian recruit rising the ranks but also facing racism in the industry. The decision to include some of the language heard on the railways in the 1970s was “very difficult”, says Dr Salveson.

“I did talk to some Asian friends, asking them what they thought, and I talked it through with the publisher. I think to be honest, quite a lot of your big mainstream publishers, they wouldn't publish it, because we’re so frightened of (printing) even something which is obviously against racism. It’s as though if you ignore it, it didn't happen. But this was the reality for a lot of people,” he says. He adds: “It wasn't as bad as some people experience but it's that sort of low level abuse, sometimes hardly spoken and whispered and shared in the mess room. I can certainly remember it as a young white man, all of this on unalloyed, unbridled racism from some people. But not everybody. Some of the old guys who’d been on the railways all their lives, they were very accommodating and very welcoming and very open.”

Later on in his career, Dr Salveson became general manager of the Association of Community Rail Partnerships, was head of government and community strategies at Northern Rail, external relations manager at Grand Central Railway and a group advisor for society and community rail at Arriva UK Trains.

Having earned a PhD on the social and cultural history of Lancashire through dialect literature, he is a visiting professor at the universities of Huddersfield and Bolton, where he now lives.

Dr Salveson, who turns 70 tomorrow, was a pioneer of the community rail movement, examples of which might include groups who tend to station gardens or businesses running ticket offices which are no longer viable.

In addition to his fiction works, Dr Salveson has written numerous non-fiction books, publishing a number through is own Lancashire Loominary publishing business, and in 2008 was awarded an MBE for services to the railway industry.

Now, Dr Salveson hopes his stories can help to inspire a new generation of rail workers. “I do hope that the book is read by people from outside the railways, not just railway enthusiasts, and if it can inspire a few young people to think about a career on the railway, I’d be very pleased with that.

“It's still a good place to work. Actually, in many ways, it's better than it was back then. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a regional director at Northern who worked his way up from the ranks himself and he was saying that if you look at how much more open and diverse the railways are now, we have come a long way."

Last Train from Blackstock Junction and other railway stories is out now.