Faber & Faber

Jim Stringer (b. 1884 - )

Born 1884 in Robin Hood’s Bay (Baytown) in Yorkshire. Mother died giving birth to him; father a well-meaning but snobbish butcher. J.S. becomes thin, dreamy, possibly moustachioed youth, enamoured of trains. Aged seventeen, ‘gets his start’ as lad porter on the North Eastern Railway. In 1903, is invited by mysterious stranger to apply for work on the London and South Western Railway, offering prospect of quicker advancement.

After London traumas (see The Necropolis Railway), J.S. marries his landlady, Lydia (see below). The two next encountered living in Halifax in the summer of 1903, J.S. firing engines on the Halifax-Blackpool line for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (‘The Lanky’). J.S. uncovers train wrecker plaguing the line. (Adventure chronicled in The Blackpool Highflyer).

J.S. then sacked from Lanky for running locomotive into wall. (Which he denies). Path to engine driving now barred, J.S. enrols as railway policeman working for the North Eastern Railway force at York station. In The Lost Luggage Porter, grapples with safe crackers and worse in rainy winter of 1906. In 1909 (see Murder at Deviation Junction) J.S. investigates disappearance of entire carriage-load of men on Whitby-Middlesbrough line. Two years later, J.S., now detective sergeant, unravels aristocratic murder in pretty/creepy village of Adenwold with wife in tow (see Death on a Branch Line). Further trouble for J.S. and ‘the wife’ anticipated in forthcoming The Last Train To Scarborough.

Lydia Stringer (b. unknown - )

Maiden name and year of birth not known. Often referred to by J.S. (out of her hearing) as ‘the wife’. Is strong-willed, pretty, oddly brown-skinned.  Met J.S. in 1901 when letting a room to him in house near Waterloo, one of several modest properties owned by doddery, moderately well-off father. Older than J.S., and his intellectual superior. Accordingly takes mickey out of him - and doesn’t like trains. Their courtship chronicled in The Necropolis Railway.
   
On moving to Halifax with J.S. in 1903, gains secretarial employment at sinister Hind’s Mill. By 1906 (see The Lost Luggage Porter), is working part-time as a ‘type-writer’ (ie typist) from marital home in Thorpe-on-Ouse outside York. Encourages J.S. to join police but has bigger plans for him. (Viz training as lawyer). By 1909 (see Murder at Deviation Junction) is frequently exasperated mother of abstracted boy Harry, and  being socialist-feminist  part-time employee of Co-Operative Women’s Guild. In 1911 (see Death on a Branch Line), assists/interferes with J.S’s investigation of aristocratic murder at Adenwold.

See also: Andrew Martin Q & A