The Last Train Stops

On the Liss Coast line, the last train leaves Alder Cove at 23:41 and reaches South Liss in twenty-two minutes. A single ticket costs €4.50. And on any night when that train carries exactly one passenger, it stops for seven minutes at Kestrel Halt — a halt closed in 2004, in no timetable, its lamp unlit for twenty-two years. The people on the platform are exactly as they were on the closing evening: the keeper with his lamp, a young coastguard trainee, and a woman of twenty-nine with a suitcase, who has come back to the coast to decide her life. Jonah Pike, 54, has been stationmaster at Alder Cove for twenty-two years. He has written every passenger count in the paper departure log, and he has never ridden: the stationmaster closes the station. He has also known, every night of those twenty-two years, who is standing on that platform. This November, a schoolgirl rides alone and comes back with a lamp count. A harbourmaster rides alone and speaks with his brother, five years before the sea took him. And the relief letter arrives from Pennick, offering Jonah one covered night. A quiet novella about the trains we wave away, told in log entries, times, and lamplight.