Back to Contents. Back to Bibliography. Back to Home Page.
The Iron Way was first published in 1979. It deals with the unreasoning prejudice between groups of people from different societies and with different ways of life. Prejudice which, if unchecked, can lead to violence and tragedy. A fact of life which is timeless and which knows no geographical boundaries.
In a little village in Sussex Kate is struggling to keep her little family together after the death of her mother and the transportation of her father to Australia. She keeps her cottage, looks after her brother and baby sister and finds what work she can. Above the village a gang of Irish navigators is building a new railway. One of them, Conor O'Flynn, decides to leave the navvies' camp and comes to lodge with Kate. Kate needs the extra money he brings in and Jem, her brother, is fascinated by the railway so all should be well.
But not so. The rest of the villagers distrust the incomers, a distrust which soon turns to hatred. For his part some of the other navvies resent Con for choosing to live in the village. All this builds up to a powerful climax when the villagers try to blow up the railway tunnel with ensuing tragedy.
Thought provoking. For older children.
12+
William Thornton, the son of the landlord of the Coach and Horses in Redford, is sent to guide one of the guests who wants to explore the nearby hills. William finds that this guest, a Mr Holtby, is an engineer who is planning a railway. William helps him and hopes to become an engineer himself.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pennines a young girl runs away from her uncle. She makes the journey to Redford on top of a stagecoach and learns all about coaches from the driver, Waterloo Walter.
This book brings in both coaches and the beginning of the railways. For good measure there is also a little about conditions in the mills and the chartist movement.
As an extra bonus it is also a rattling good story.
10+
Three children run away from an orphanage, spend some time on a canal narrow boat and then join a travelling theatre company
10+
This is one of the Sparks series of stories ffor cchildren of seven and upwards.
Dundee and Christmas Eve 1879. Eleven year old Alastair Reid has a nightmare. He dreams he is in a train crossing the new railway bridge over the River Tay. There is a storm and the bridge collapses. He awakes shivering and goes and looks out of his bedroom window. He sees the Tay Bridge before him. It looks so fragile with its latticed girders compared with the heavy plate girders and stone pillars of other bridges. Alastair thinks of his dream again and wonders. Is it a premonition? His father is a railway engineer who has been working on a new line in Australia and is coming home in time for New Year. His journey will end with a train crossing the Bridge. Is Alastair's dream a warning about that crossing?
Three days later, on the evening of Sunday 28th December, despite a fierce storm Alastair goes down to the station to meet his father's train. At the very time he is waiting his father is sitting on the train from Edinburgh. He falls asleep and dreams of Alastair.
This story about the Tay Bridge disaster has a slight element of the supernatural and this helps to turn what otherwise might have read as a factual account into a miniature novel.
A good deal of information is still trickled into the story. The account of Alastair's dream gives a good impression of the trains of the time with their horsehair seats, gas lamps, foot-warmers for the first class passengers, the engine whistle and steam and smoke. The Bridge itself is clearly described both when Alastair looks out of his bedroom window after his dream, and later when, after the disaster, he follows the railwaymen and ventures out on the Bridge and gets to the broken part. Throughout the book there are several little references to the fact that many people think the Bridge is too frail and has not been built properly.
There are some useful historical notes at the end.
A good story into which much factual information is introduced quite naturally.