THE JOY OF TRAIN TRAVEL AND PORT TALBOT AT NIGHT 60 YEARS AGO…

It seemed a dream. Yesterday was just another day in the filing room, and now, he was sitting on the night Pullman to Swansea, with all his living expenses paid for four weeks.

He had never seen, or been on a train like it. You could actually have a meal while travelling. After a ‘Good evening, sir’ the uniformed conductor had picked up Ian’s small case and shown him to seat Ten F at a table with a little brass lamp topped by a pink lampshade. Laid for five courses, the silver plated cutlery jingled as the train picked up speed leaving Paddington.

Ian was the only passenger to get off the train at Port Talbot. The rain was tipping down as he walked along the deserted and bleak platform and stared at the flames reaching up to the heavens from a series of towers about five hundred yards away. Guarded by Cerebos he mused, as he headed down the exit tunnel, under a sign welcoming him to ‘THE HOME OF THE STEEL COMPANY OF WALES’; the smell of the sulphur was augmented by the stink of urine. Skirting around the closed booking hall, he found himself in a cul-de-sac flanked by goods yards; not a soul in sight.

Notts had telephoned  him earlier that day.

“Sorry I can’t meet you, we are signing the deal off with dinner afterwards. You’re booked into the Berni Inn, best place in town and only two minutes from the station.

He turned into a road of mean Victorian terraced houses with pale lights showing in some of the upper rooms. Further along on his right, illuminated red letters three feet high announcing ‘ERNI INN’ had been fixed to iron bars spanning the first floor of three adjoining houses.

An extract from chapter forty five of – ‘ Go Swift and Far – a Tale of Bath’ The first book of The Westcott Chronicles