 Linda backs down to the tall square watertank at the end of the Blaenau platform. |
We
had hardly rolled to a
stop at the Blaenau platform before Linda cut away from the
cars. After navigating the turnout at the far end of the platform,
the trim little engine drifted back past the coaches and rolled quietly
to a stop below a tall, square watertank. There driver Paul Davis--
a generous fellow-- spelled the fireman from his proper task, and mounted
the engine to refill the tank. After pouring an astonishing volume
of water into the big saddle tank, Paul finally hauled away the dripping
hose and reset the cap over the fill hole. Fireman and driver
scrambled back on board, and then Linda set off down the track
towards a distant turnout. The backing move brought the crew back
out onto the main behind the train, and then it was but a straight pull
forward to make their coupling with the cars. Brake tests and
checking the running gear occupied a few moments, then all was in readiness
for Linda to lead her carriages tender-first back down the
hill.
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|
 The driver provides a well-earned drink. |
Leaving
Paul and Linda to complete the
return journey without me, I set out to explore Blaenau. "Nothing in the world can be
as gray as a gray day in Blaenau," German travel writer Peter Sager once said, and
the truth of that lay glistening all around me under the persistent Welsh rain. Gray
houses with gray roofs huddled on gray streets under the gray sky, the whole of it bounded
by towering gray mountains of broken slates. From the dual-gauge train station
a single high street led along the floor of the valley. Narrow lanes of worker's
cottages branched off to either side, running a block or two up or down the hillside until
they fetched up hard against one of the piles of broken slag which surround the town on
every side. Up on the mountainsides one could still see the lines of the inclined
planes, with ruined winch-houses standing gaunt at their summits. The planes dropped
down into the town and slashed brutally right across the streets-- I could only imagine
the dust and the din as the loaded wagons were winched right past the worker's cottage
doors. Now abandoned and fenced off, they lay like military trenchlines cutting
neighbor from neighbor.
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|
 Pulling forward to rejoin her train, Linda is dwarfed by the towering slate-tips. |
In its
heyday a century ago, Blaenau was a
town of 11,000 inhabitants, nearly all of whose lives depended on the slate trade.
18 pits directly employed some 4,000 quarrymen. Every day except Sunday, they
descended through dank tunnels down to the slate veins, where long galleries spread out
along the face of the slate in great stepped terraces. There the miners hung from
chains against the working face, drilling holes and setting explosives. After the
charges were detonated, the loose slates were shoveled into wagons, which were then
winched back up to the surface via subterranean inclined planes. Up top the stones
were split and dressed into standard sizes, while the rubble left behind-- six pounds of
slag for every pound of finished slate-- was tipped into the great heaps which still gird
the town.
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|
 Coming up to a coupling at the Blaenau platform. |
Quarrying
was dirty, dangerous work. It was said
that if the blasting didn't get a man, the choking slate dust would. The fine powder
accumulated in the lungs, leading to respiratory infections and silicosis-- Blaenau
recorded some of the highest incidence rates of tuberculosis and pulmonary infections in
all of Great Britain in the 1920s and 30s. Yet when demand for slate was high and
wages filled the men's pockets, Blaenau was a proud town. Nonconformists to the
core, Blaenau's mining families once supported 26 different chapels. Reading clubs,
fraternal orders, bands and the famous male choruses provided solace from the hard work of
the mines. And wages wrung from the rock passed on to the merchants, grocers and
publicans whose establishments lined the high street. The stores are still there, a
veritable museum of small-town commerce from a bygone era-- a butcher's shop with cuts of
fresh meat hanging in the window; a confectioners' with sweets set out in bins; and of
course, the inevitable pubs with names like the "Miner's Arms." Yet over
most of them there hangs a tired air. The slate trade has collapsed, and the mines
are nearly all shuttered. Today Blaenau's population is half what it was a century
ago, and unemployment hovers around 18%. It is a town of old men and women-- the
young leave in droves, for there is no work to be had.
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|
| Before
I left Blaenau I wanted one closer look at
the famous commodity which had been this sad, proud town's blessing and curse. A
short hike up a street of low cottages brought me to the foot of the nearest slag
pile. The entire huge mound was wired off to prevent trespass, but broken slabs and
fragments tumbled from the fencing to spill out across the sidewalk and into the edge of
the lane. I hefted a piece on my hand: it was heavier than it looked, with edges
sharp enough to cut an unwary finger. As I turned away, my camera slipped from my
grasp. With a thud and a tinkling sound, it smashed lens-first into the
slates. A five-dollar UV filter took the brunt of the blow, leaving the lens itself
undamaged: all things considered, a cheap escape. Even so, I felt as though I had
been assessed a kind of toll. It was not in Blaenau's nature to accept my gawking
and my pity without exacting some small price for herself in return.
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