A sample, free to read
The opening of Issue One.
Kinnaber is one night in August 1895, told by four who were there. It opens with a newspaper man on the West Coast train, sent to time everything and wire from Aberdeen. This is how it begins.
The Railway Dispatch · Issue One
Kinnaber
The Race to the North, August 1895. One night, told by four who were there.
I. The correspondent. Euston, half past seven. Thursday, 22nd August 1895
The editor's instruction ran to fourteen words, which for him was a speech. "Go up on the eight o'clock from Euston tonight. Time everything. Wire from Aberdeen."
I had timed trains before, as a hobby rather than a trade, and I knew what was wanted. A good watch, a notebook with the mileposts written in beforehand, a window seat on the near side, and the sense to keep quiet about it. Railway servants do not like a passenger with a watch. They think, rightly, that he is looking for something to complain of.
Euston at half past seven was not the Euston I knew.
The Tourist Express was not in the timetable at all as a thing you could book a seat on and be sure of; it was in the newspapers, which had been printing the arrival times at Aberdeen every morning for a fortnight as if they were the cricket. Seven-twenty. Seven. Five-thirty on the Sunday. Then this very morning the East
The story continues
Another 3550 words or so in the booklet: three vehicles and a crowd that is not travelling, a hundred and twelve entries in the notebook by Crewe, an engine called Hardwicke that nobody looked at, a guard who asks him to put the lamp out, a headlamp across the Montrose Basin with the road already set, and a fireman who never looks up from the fire. With the story come the route chart, the signal box diagram, the crossword, two cards and the postcard.
£7.99 a month, or £23.97 for three months or £87.89 for twelve, paid once; or one parcel on its own for £8.99. Free UK delivery: every price includes postage. Payment is by card through Stripe. Cancel a monthly membership from your account at any time.
The correspondent is ours, and so is everything he says. The race, the eight o’clock departure, the three carriages, Hardwicke over Shap and the 8 hours 32 minutes to Aberdeen are not, and the sources are listed with every parcel.