The ghost train went nowhere. That was why Len trusted it. Along the Kent coast, ghost trains were meant to be simple machines: painted devils, rubber bats, live rails, trip switches, bad wiring, loud screams and an exit sign that meant what it said. Len Biddle knows how they work. He has spent years keeping dark rides alive at Margate, Ramsgate, Dymchurch and Folkestone. He knows every tired monster, every sticking trip arm, every warm switchboard, every loose screw and every cheap scare that still makes children scream. Fairground ghosts do not trouble Len. You can oil them. But when a wet luggage label marked Dover Marine turns up beneath a ghost train car, when railway ballast appears where no railway should be, when locomotive soot coats the black-light tubes, and when a clean British Railways closure notice appears inside the cash box, Len begins to understand that the ride is carrying more than seaside nerves. Kent has other ghost trains. Lost lines. Closed branches. Harbour railways. Lifted track. Vanished stations. Tunnel soot. Closure notices. Journeys that once carried people to work, school, market, war, harbour, holiday and home — until the paper came and the lines went quiet. Ghost Trains is a darkly comic Kent After Dark novella of fairground machinery, coastal amusements, lost railway routes, cheap scares, rust, salt, paperwork and the things that still travel after the line has gone. The skeletons were wood. The screams were wire. The devils were paint. The track was real. Kent supplied the dark.