Grayling Junction - Chapter Five and a half

From the Spade to the Grave

Within the passing of less than a year the newly formed Jenks-Grayling Tin Mine had risen like a wound from the barren ground, reclining across the landscape as an untidy collection of wooden shacks comprising an engine house, stamping mills and storage sheds. Deep underground shy tin lodes were furiously picked clean as the owner insisted his operation run year round.
By diverting a section of the river – long since reclaimed by the earth – into a curving delta he had provided the mine with waterwheels designed to power the engine house and stamping mills. The raging thunder produced by the vertical timber hammers of the stampheads as they pounded the tin against slabs of mortarstone, could be heard reverberating through nearby Randallstown as the shattering crack of the ore echoed westward to the sea.

Flushed with success the mine began selling tin in substantial quantities and trade was opened with the Worthing Sawmills east of the red mountains as Jenks-Grayling set about building himself a town. Tempted by new work a trickle of strong individuals arrived from Randallstown and as a result houses began to spring from the ground like wooden mushrooms, the majority crowned with auspicious tin roofing. As the residents, mostly mine workers and acquaintances of Grayling himself competed with one another, tin roofing quickly became passé and houses began to be decorated with elaborate tin front door plaques. Tin guttering could be seen winding along the edges of housing; in addition were tin windowsills, tin banister trims, tin fireguards and so on. Content with wrapping tin around anything that remained inert long enough, Grayling quickly realised that he could multiply his good fortune by exporting vast deposits of tin far beyond the reach of his town.

As his ingenuity flared the Pelican Point Docks came into existence along the perspiring lips of the estuary. Pelican Point Docks were named by Mayor Grayling (a title gained with a determined majority of one) who was unbending in his belief that he had passed the time of day one morning with a plump pelican who had hinted, with a subtle nod of bill, that he should build the docks and waste no time in doing so. Buried beneath the patina of legend lies the truth of the matter, that of the genesis of the docks owing rather more to the lingering emphasis of late-night rum – a taste that had come with Mayor Grayling‘s new wealth – than to an overly communicative water bird. Whether the bird existed beyond the boundaries of his mind or not is no longer of interest, for the Pelican Point Docks have long since outlived both the man and tale.
Around the same time that the docks were taking shape a narrow gauge railway track was laid in order to transport tin to the docks where Grayling also worked tirelessly to establish a thriving export business.
Having imported copper, work had begun on diversifying into bronze and as the sun set each evening over the newly raised town of Grayling a warm orange glow lingered in the dwindling light, streets and homes animated with glorious hues of ochre and of reddle.

This accomplishment brought with it the reek of nascent wealth, which having fluttered aimlessly through the streets of Grayling was carried on the wind until it caught the attention of the shrewd luminaries of Randallstown. Without preamble the railway extended from the nearby town and as sleeper followed sleeper, vast sections of track slunk one after the other in a gently curving southwesterly direction. The narrow gauge line was the first casualty.

Beneath the burning sun the track frequently grew too hot to touch as the heat teased a gentle humming note from the metal, a vaporous shimmering dogging the track like a colony of flies.
A station building shouldered from the ground, stretching with newness in the sun as it flaunted a broad wooden platform – edged in tin – adjacent to the track.
The railway had arrived in Grayling and from that point on the town passed from brooding adolescent to the considerably more adult, increasingly adept, Grayling Junction.