Taking The Tunnel by James Adams

Author:James Adams [Adams, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2017-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

PART II

THE ATTACK

CHAPTER XIII

Driving a tunnel train had given Harry Ritchie a new status and a new home. For twenty years he had been driving the Network SouthEast Intercity trains from Waterloo to Poole and Weymouth. It had been a monotonous job, hours spent with his right arm gripping the dead man’s handle, but he was one of the few British Rail employees who actually loved their work. Ever since his childhood spent with notebook and pencil on the platforms at King’s Cross, Charing Cross, St Pancras and Waterloo he had been in love with trains. He had experienced the evolution from steam to diesel to electricity and his love affair had never faded. Unlike most other children, Ritchie had never lost his ambition to be a train driver, nor had he ever regretted his chosen profession. While working from Waterloo, he had lived with his wife Rosie and their two children in a small house in Amies Street, Battersea. His friends thought he was mad to buy the place because it backed on to the main railway line through Clapham Junction, the busiest rail crossing in the world. But he liked to sit in the back room listening to the rumble and thunder of the trains and watching them clatter past, taking people on journeys of hope or disappointment, love and despair. Trains were life, and they filled Harry Ritchie with a thrill each time he drove one.

When the Channel Tunnel was being constructed, he saw this as the ultimate opportunity. The new Class 373 trains were going to be the most modern trains in the world and they looked wonderful, with their yellow and grey livery and low-drag arrowed nose giving a powerful and elegant aerodynamic shape. The cab, he was sure, would be the last word in high-tech luxury and the idea of driving at 150m.p.h. under the Channel filled him with excitement.

He had determined to be reassigned and had written both to British Rail and to Alastair Morton, the head of Eurotunnel, the company which was responsible for making the Tunnel a reality. His boldness had been well rewarded. They had been looking for someone to represent the human face of the new train and Harry Ritchie was the answer to any public relations man’s prayer. He was a devoted and reliable train driver; he had all the experience any nervous passenger could want; he was an enthusiast for the new system; and he was neither overweight nor divorced. Indeed, he ran most mornings, went to Church and had been married to the same woman for fourteen years. This paragon was paraded before the media as part of the publicity blitz leading up to the Tunnel’s opening. Harry had had his fifteen minutes of fame; his picture in every newspaper. The News of the World’s Sunday magazine had done a profile of him together with a picture of his wife Rosemary and children, eleven-year-old David and nine-year-old Becky.

For a short while the Ritchies were celebrities. It was that publicity which had drawn him to the attention of the researchers from the White Lotus.

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