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and ended up back on the train on the other side. One day up at Garsdale station, the wind caught the turntable and it spun like a top for an hour before they could get the loco off.’ Folk memory still recalls the bitter winter of 1947 when the line was closed for eight weeks, buried under twelve feet of snow. Even bonfires were unable to clear the rails. The line was shut again in 1962, when the Edinburgh to London express was stuck in the snow for five days. Passengers lived off tea and biscuits till they were rescued.
    Even at the height of summer this is a wind-lashed landscape of sparse heather, peat bog and raw limestone pavement. Now on this late autumn afternoon we could be anywhere north of Reykjavik. The train’s underfloor engines take on a more determined note as we climb through Kirkby Stephen, once grand enough to have a first-class waiting room. Now it is unstaffed, but with a plaque saying that Prince Charles unveiled the restored station buildings and a little notice on one of the doors proclaiming B IBLE V OICE . This marks a tradition going back more than a century in which local vicars came to these remote stations, carrying altar cloth, chalice and a portable organ, taking advantage of the railway to spread the word of God in remote places. These days, a local couple, Martin and Liz Thompson, run a short-wave Christian radio station from here, broadcasting the word to remote villages around the world, including to India in Hindi. There are other radio connections, too, since nearby is the birthplace of Lord Thomas Wharton, who in the seventeenth century wrote the words of ‘Lillibullero’, the much-loved signature tune of the BBC World Service.
    Kirkby Stephen is a handsome town built of the local ‘brockram’ stone – a mix of sandstone and limestone, which imparts a rosy hue at sunset. But passengers alighting here need a good pair of walking shoes since the town is a mile and a half away, and half a mile lower, meaning a daunting climb from the village to the station. The Midland’s engineers were far more interested in sweeping their long-distance passengers smoothly on to Scotland than bothering with the local communities along the way, and very few of the stations are close to the communities they purport to serve.
    Soon we are at Ais Gill summit, marked by a large maroon sign, the highest point on the line at 1,169 feet above sea level and 1,000 feet higher than Leeds or Carlisle. The train has been climbing for forty-nine miles and in steam days it was a welcome chance for the firemen to mop their brows and ease off the shovel. But the climb was partly the cause of one of the most horrific accidents in British railway history. On an autumn day in 1913 two loaded passenger trains set off from Carlisle just eleven minutes apart. Both had difficulty raising steam because of a poor batch of coal, and the first train lost power and came to a halt. The driver of the second had climbed out onto the running board of the locomotive to refill the oil boxes, while the fireman struggled to inject more water into the boiler. Both failed to notice the signals at red and the locomotive slammed into the rear of the first train, killing fourteen and injuring thirty-eight. But there was also a less tragic outcome, since the accident led to the more widespread use of the Automatic Warning System, which long since has been a standard way of automatically applying the brakes when a signal is passed at danger. A memorial to the dead, newly restored by the Friends of the Settle and Carlisle Line, can be found in Kirkby Stephen cemetery.
    People say there has long been a pall over this area, known as Mallerstang Common. In the eleventh century, the border warfare was so murderous and destructive that William the Conqueror’s men were afraid to survey the area. Legend has it too that England’s last wild boar was killed on the common. Nearby are the remains of Pendragon Castle,