THE ORDEAL OF CLARA CHUFF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 759, 5 February 1954, Page 19

THE ORDEAL OF CLARA CHUFF

HEN Peter (who was eight) and Pinky (who was six) squeezed through the hole in the hedge at the bottom of the garden, there was nothing they liked better than to go right across the field to the railway cutting on’ the far side and-yes, wait for the trains to go by. That was where they met Mr. Forty-Fifty-a goods engine-and discovered that he could talk. (Trains, he told them, never speak unti] they’re spoken to, and even then not always.) And it was Mr. Forty-Fifty who told them about Miss Clara Chuff, Clara was "just a yard engine in’ a junction" up

north," a funny little thing with only’ four. little wheels tucked underneath her .and her connecting, rods always a bit loose (you could hear her clanking half a mile away). And she had a long funnel, too, with a funny wire bonnet thing like a round birdcage on top: Trucks were the bane. of, Clara Chuff’s life. Trucks (as Mr. Forty-Fifty

said) have no sense at all. You've got to be everlasting pulling and pushing them about. With an engine at one end and a brake van at the other, you've got some control .over them, but. turn them loose in the sidings and they run about all over the place, get lost, hide in the sheds, jump the points, get their brakes out of*order. And that was the trouble with Clara Chuff-she had no contro] whatever. In the end they had her so confused that Henery and Joe Sutcliffe decided something had to be done about her. But when they left her down at the buffer stops they didn’t

know the chance they were giving Here . The Adventures of Clara Chuff, with Dvina Whitehouse as Clara, will start in the Children’s Session from 2YA-_on_ Friday. February 12, and later will be heard from other stations. Tt was written by ‘Harry Harrison and produced for the NZBS by i de a Austin.