Waggons & Their Uses.
PB needs just the one skip waggon in order to drag itself reluctantly through the required operations of its existence.
The Skip is firstly pushed with hopeful anticipation into the unnecessarily large building where loading takes place.
The load usually consists of stone that is required for the huge garden rockery at The Big House, an unstately home owned by Lord and Lady Spokeshave.
For every skip load of good stone, there are three loads of bad stone; this is deemed to be stone of the wrong shape, colour or smell by the Spokeshave entitled. This is reluctantly used though as footings for the new Winter Gardens that they have decided upon or is given as Christmas presents in and around the nearby hamlet of Much Dithering.
Once fully loaded but not too full as that requires extra power from Ernie and the Locomotive, the skip is pulled back and after some unseen fiddling is then propelled towards the Tipping Point.
Upon approach to the Tipping Point, speed is reduced to match that of a sleepy slug that wished it hadn't bothered to get up that morning at 5am in order to shave and see if there was any cabbage left.
As the Skip is inched forward the edge of it comes into contact with the Tipping Point and with luck tips itself with all the grace and determination of a wave crashing down on a beach at Tywyn or maybe Great Yarmouth on a weekday afternoon.
The reversing Locomotive drags the Skip thoughtfully back to repeat the operation or more often than not to pause for Earl Grey; who has happened to pop in and see what's going on as he likes "playing trains".
The Skip Waggon can be seen here, on the right in the photograph. (Use of the Other Waggon, seen on the left, will be described on another day)
Many years before taking up the ministry in the village of Titfield, the Rev Weech once took a month sabbatical to Barry Island.
