Retired from service

Our local antiques shop specialises in railwayiana, domestic bygones, secondhand books and old maps. It's a cosy jumble of a place with an open fire so I popped in to warm up on the pretext of looking for books from my younger son's reading list.

These old railway lamps were perched on a shelf above the hearth. Quite a variety, battered and rusty, they looked as if they had done good service through the years until the 1970s/80s when locomotives were provided with electric headlamps.

These were fuelled with paraffin (kerosene) and positioned on the engine according to a code that signalled what sort of train it was - goods, express and so on. Or they would be used by the guard or the engine driver or the linesmen as they went about their duties. Now they are collectors' items.

I didn't find any books for my son but, inevitably, one for myself: The Stolen Village, about a 17th century raid by Barbary pirates on the tiny harbour of Baltimore in Southern Ireland, which resulted in almost all the villagers being captured into slavery in North Africa. It could easily have happened along this coast too.