The Railway Children

by Rob Marshall

The trains don’t stop here anymore. Old, now silent engines, rusting railways sidings, buddleia spouting from station walls and birches shouldering through the sleepers. I can still see the suicide tangled under steel wheels and what haunts me most are his yellow socks, bleeding sunlight into the void. Under smoky skies, in the way silence enters an empty room, death stole a son, brother and lover. The trains don’t stop here anymore, but we’re all commuters, traveling along windswept platforms, looking to draw lines under the terminals in our minds. I wouldn’t choose to die in yellow socks.

6S

Rob Marshall, author of Dream Maker, is the 18th pale descendant of England’s first trainspotter.