lockfield

a single platform between two cuttings. the lamps were converted to electric in some year nobody recorded, and the new bulbs are the same warm orange as the old gas. nothing about the place announces itself except the sign, and even that is small. you pass through it before you know you have.

the village is hidden behind an embankment, three lanes deep. most of its houses were tenants of the lock, when the canal still ran; now the canal is a green ditch and the houses face away from it. the train is what they wait for. the train and the post.

there is no stationmaster. the platform is in the care of a retired signalman from the next stop down, who walks here once a week to test the lamps and read the small printed notices for ones he hasn't seen.

field note: between the last train at 22:18 and the first at 05:42, the platform belongs to a tabby cat with one ear, who sits exactly under the southern lamp. nobody knows her name and she will not be touched.