All are narrated by Hugh Walters except #3 and #6 which are by Richard Burnip.
1. The Necropolis Railway [2002] 7 hours 5 mins, 32 kbps / 22 kHz Mono CBR.
A chance encounter leads young Jim Stringer, a railway porter, to move from
Yorkshire to Waterloo, and a better job. But the London of 1903 is a world of
garish pubs and tawdry brothels, boxed in by towering blank-faced factories.
Jim finds that his duties are mysteriously confined to the strangest corner
of the South Western's business: a railway line that runs to an enormous
cemetery. Still more perplexingly, the men he works alongside have formed an
instant loathing for him, and his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious
circumstances! Can Jim work out what is going on before he too is traveling on
a one-way coffin ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway?
2. The Blackpool Highflyer [2004] 11 hours 33 mins, 32 kbps / 22 kHz Mono CBR.
Cassettes. [* Many thanks to Telpointer for this one.]
When his train is nearly derailed, a young Yorkshire railwayman once more turns
sleuth. Since his previous escapade (The Necropolis Railway, 2002), engine
cleaner Jim Stringer has gotten closer to his lifelong dream of driving a train.
As fireman aboard The Blackpool Highflyer, he gets to ride alongside rugged
driver Clive Carter. In 1905, trains like the Highflyer are growing in
importance as modes of transportation, even for the working class. During
a trip from Halifax to Blackpool, the train suffers what the press calls
a "narrow escape" after someone places a large stone on the track. Clive is
heralded as a hero for averting total disaster, but a young woman named
Margaret Dyson is killed and her son orphaned in the suspicious accident.
Jim is well aware that Clive was driving too fast. So when the train goes on
an unforeseen hiatus, Jim, driven by guilt as well as curiosity, decides to
investigate. His wife, faithful and intuitive, provides moral and corporal
support and a nightly sounding board. Jim's probe provides Martin an excuse
to pack the narrative with historical color, as well as a plethora of train
lore. Jim encounters radical socialists itching to incite factory hands to an
uprising and the possibly corrupt owners who exploit them. Is the death of
the 99-year-old chairman of Hind's Mill due to natural causes or a link to the
alleged crime? (Kirkus Reviews)
3. The Lost Luggage Porter [2006] 9 hours 12 mins, 48 kbps / 44 kHz Mono CBR.
The story is set in winter in 1906. After his adventures as an amateur sleuth,
Jim Stringer is now an official railway detective, working from York Station for
the mighty North Eastern Railway Company. But he's not a happy man. As the rain
falls incessantly on the city's ancient, neglected streets, the local paper
carries a story highly unusual by York standards: two brothers have been shot
to death. Meanwhile, on the station platforms, Jim Stringer meets the Lost
Luggage Porter, humblest among the employees of the North Eastern Railway company.
He tells Jim a tale which leads him to the roughest part of town, a place where
the police constables always walk in twos. Jim is off on the trail of pickpockets,
'station loungers' and other small fry of the York underworld. But then in a tiny,
one-room pub with a badly smoking fire he enters the orbit of a dangerous,
disturbed villain who is playing for much higher stakes.
4. Murder at Deviation Junction [2007] 8 hours 38 mins, 32 kbps / 22 kHz Mono CBR.
A train hits a snow drift in the frozen Cleveland Hills. In the process of
clearing the line, a body is discovered, and so begins a dangerous case for
struggling Edwardian railway detective, Jim Stringer. Jim's new investigation
takes him to the mighty blast furnaces of Ironopolis, to Fleet Street in the
company of a cynical reporter from "The Railway Rover", and to a nightmarish
spot in the Highlands. Jim's faltering career in the railway police hangs on
whether he can solve the murder - but before long the pursuer becomes the
pursued, and Jim finds himself fighting not just for his job, but for his very
life as well.
5. Death on a Branch Line [2008] 8 hours 31 mins, 48 kbps / 44 kHz Mono CBR.
It's the sweltering summer of 1911, and one Friday evening a special train
rolls into York station. It carries a young aristocrat recently found guilty
of murdering his father in the sleepy village of Adenwold. He is briefly
entrusted into the custody of railway detective Jim Stringer, and he warns of
another murder likely to happen in the same village - that of his brother,
a reclusive intellectual. Jim and his wife Lydia take the train along the near
deserted branch line to Adenwold. Here they encounter a host of likely suspects
and the intended victim, as Jim has one weekend in which to stop a murder and
unravel a conspiracy of international dimensions.
6. The Last Train to Scarborough [2009] 9 hours 20 mins, 48 kbps / 44 kHz Mono CBR.
One night, in a private boarding house in Scarborough, a railwayman vanishes,
leaving his belongings behind. A reluctant Jim Stringer is sent to investigate.
It is March 1914, and Jim Stringer, railway detective, is uneasy about his next
assignment. It's not so much the prospect Scarborough in the gloomy off-season
that bothers him, or even the fact that the last railwayman to stay in the house
has disappeared without trace. It's more that his governer, Chief Inspector Saul
Weatherhill, seems to be deliberately holding back details of the case - and
that he's been sent to Scarborough with a trigger-happy assistant. The lodging
house is called Paradise, but, as Jim discovers, it's hardly that in reality.
It is, however, home to the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby, a woman
evidently capable of derailing Jim's marriage and a good deal more besides.
As a storm brews in Scarborough, it becomes increasingly unlikely that Jim will
ever ride the train back to York.
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