The railwayman whose log never trembled

Company form 14-B, Brunheda halt

Service message, 11:40. Down mixed running eight minutes late out of Tua. Water column tended. Mailbag ready for the 15:10. Nothing further.

On the reverse, in pencil, another hand entirely: seven times seven, then times eight, then times nine, each sum tried twice and corrected once. Below them a name — Graça — practiced three times, the tail of the ç growing surer with every attempt.

The halt kept the village's hours, and a child did her homework at the telegraph counter while the trains were entered. The form was filed by the same hand that set the signals. It was kept for the wrong side.

B. Taveira, factor

Station log, Brunheda halt — 2 to 3 February 1964

2 February. 18:42, last service down, passed on time. 22:30, lamps out. 3 February. 00:34, telegraphed for the doctor, two stations down; no service before the first train. 01:48, night freight due; signals set. 01:56, freight held the regulation minutes; released, correct. 06:12, first train up; the doctor aboard.

The entries are in his usual hand, telegraphic and correct, and do not tremble anywhere on the page. The company's inquest read this book and returned one line: procedeu segundo o regulamento — he proceeded according to regulation.

The reorganizations later destroyed whole years of this man's flawless books by retention schedule. This volume was kept because the inquest had flagged it. Thirty-nine years with no missing day survive mostly as the one night he would have cut out.

B. Taveira, factor

Graça,

Your train left at 18:07, to the minute. I gave it the flag myself — if the line must take you, let it take you from my hand, and correctly.

Write by the morning mail and it reaches me on the 15:10; I catch the bag it rides in, so in a manner of speaking your letters will come to me the way you went: through these same hands.

The garden is well. Study. Mind the city's clocks; they are not to be trusted like ours.

Your father

Graça,

The 15:10 brought your letter with the church's hour in it. I have arranged the relief man for Saturday; I come down on the morning train and return on the last. The garden is well. The tomatoes your mother staked are early this year.

I will say it here, because tomorrow I will stand straight in a borrowed collar and manage nothing: your mother would have sewn the dress herself, and she would have been proud past all bearing. I dispatched you to the city six years ago, to the minute, and it was the correct thing, and it has cost me every evening since.

He is a serious man; the ward sister you quote approves of him, and so, therefore, do I. Marry him gladly. I will be on the platform at Campanhã like any passenger — but know that of all the trains I ever sent out of this valley, you were the only one I wanted to call back.

Your father

Halt of Brunheda — 30 June 1988

05:50, signals set for the morning mixed. 06:12, mailbag taken on the fly. 15:10, passenger service, two down, one up, doctor's visit noted. 18:42, last service passed, on time.

18:50, lamps out. Log closed by the undersigned, who entered his first movement in this book's grandfather on 3 March 1949 and has nothing to report.

Nothing to report, in thirty-nine years, except everything. The halt is left in good order. The garden is watered.

B. Taveira, factor

Company service order — Bragança stretch, December 1991

Traffic on the line above Mirandela is suspended from the 15th of the month, all categories. Staffed points on the affected stretch are closed and their equipment withdrawn. Traffic books are to be ruled off, dated, and surrendered to the district office.

Postal traffic for the localities of the affected stretch passes to road carriage. Season tickets are refunded at the issuing counter. Staff are reassigned per the annexed list; tenancies of closed premises are addressed under separate cover.

The villages on the annexed list had not moved. The wells, the schools, the platforms stood where they had stood since the rails came. The order is not about them; it is about a line that was leaving — and below Mirandela, an old station man read it like weather coming up the valley.

For the Direction of Operation