I promised I'd have a 2nd go at this challenge myself. My opening piece at the start of the thread was reusing some old work and that was staring to feel like cheating :-) So here is something written just for this forum, finished about five minutes ago and coming in at exactly 500 words. ------------------------------------------------------------ Coalford Junction I wasnt the last person to see Kelsey Miller alive. But when I heard the sound of the 7:27 derail with a scream of tortured metal I thought I had been. I turned the pickup truck round in a cloud of dust. Five minutes earlier Id been crossing the junction just below the wooden signal box. Id waved at Kelsey, standing in front of the levers. The old signalman had a fat cigar behind one ear and thick black rim spectacles. He was so much a part of my landscape that I never gave him a second thought. But I ought to have done because hed retired last week. It coincided with the introduction of an electronic system to govern the whole railway from the sea to the state boundary. By rights Kelsey had no part in that. Wed had some beers, me and the lads and Kelsey. He was always trying to strike a deal with you over something. That was just how he was. That and his beloved railway. He didnt really fit in with us. Different generation, I guess but he tried his best and we tried to give him a good send off. What will you do now? I asked. He shrugged. Ive got some deals. Ill get by I didnt think he would. Now I had other things to think about. A freight train had taken out the last three express passenger carriages. The signal box was crushed. There were bodies all over the banking. Some were moving but most werent. I did the best I could but I was second on the scene. The first survivors claimed an old man helped them. An old man with thick black spectacles and a fat cigar behind his ear. When Doc Martin arrived Kelsey was nowhere to be seen. For an hour we saved our words to comfort the injured. Mercifully only three travellers died in that crash but it was bad enough. And all on the morning Kelsey Miller had himself a fatal heart attack, Doc Martin sighed as heavy lifting gear arrived. But Kelsey Died at 6:45 this morning. Not that it made much difference. Hed have been killed in that signal box for sure. I said nothing. A software failure caused the accident. The system routed a freight train onto the main line just after the 7:27. An error in timetable records, they said at the inquiry. The engineers reckoned it might have been worse. Levers had been pulled in the signal box, averting a head on collision. Just as well the maintenance people hadnt got round to disconnecting them. I thought about it later: the way Kelseys last trade might have worked. A trade of deaths. The useless heart attack for the useful accident. And there was one last days work to be done after he retired After he died. I realised that I wasnt the last person to see Kelsey Miller alive. I was the first to see his ghost.