Life on the Old Railways

by Tom Quinn

  “What?” I said.

  “Don’t you know the dodge here?” came the reply.

  ‘Well, it turned out that this chap had been buying our lamp oil from Monty at 6d a go. I put a stop to it immediately.’

  Crews Hill was situated in the middle of a large area of nurseries, so much of the freight traffic was associated with this industry, and one of George’s most delightful stories arose as a result of this connection:

  ‘One morning the stationmaster, who looked after three stations including Crews Hill, turned up early. He asked me to stay behind and told me that the best kept station competition was to be judged in the area that day and he wanted to win the prize. There was £2 in it for the stationmaster, 10s for me and my mate Joe Ward, five bob for the lad porter and a little something for the booking clerks; the total prize was a fiver.

  ‘Crews Hill had plenty of flowerbeds so we set about re-whitening the edges of these, and then the stationmaster sent us down to the nearest nursery, which backed on to the station, to get some plants that were in flower and would therefore look really good. We raced off with several big barrows, came back with the plants and buried them in the soil complete with their pots! Within a couple of hours the whole station was transformed – it looked absolutely beautiful. A little later the special train arrived with the district superintendent aboard. Our stationmaster immediately began sucking up to him like mad – “Would you care for a piece of this cake? My wife made it this morning,” and suchlike. Anyway, the superintendent was impressed and said so. He got back on the train, having said we were in the running for the prize, and off he went. As soon as he was out of sight, the stationmaster shouted to us to get the barrows, dig up the plants, still in their pots, and take them straight back to the nursery! Disgraceful really, but we won first prize.

  ‘This particular stationmaster used to take vegetables and fruit from the owner of one nursery if he failed to take delivery of his coal within a specified time; he should have been fined, really, but the stationmaster was happy to take grub in lieu! When the circus trains used to stop at High Barnet this same stationmaster – then a lad, but his dad was stationmaster – used to charge the local kids a penny to watch the elephants being exercised; that’s how he got his nickname, Jumbo!’

  Like most railwaymen, George continued to move around a great deal as he changed jobs. After two years at Crews Hill he went to Cuffley Station, then on to Palmers Green, then Enfield, all posts in the North London/Hertfordshire area. Eventually he got his first job on the main line in Hornsey Number One signalbox:

  ‘Hornsey was a bit scary at first because you were dealing with expresses. I’ll never forget the first day I spent in the box on my own – it was a hell of a responsibility because you didn’t get any second chances; what you did had to be spot on, or there could be a disaster. I spent three weeks in that box being trained; it was a bit like the system with drivers where they had to know the road, in other words the route, before they were allowed to drive the engine over it. With signals you had to know your box before they left you to get on with it. On the day you were finally to be tested the district inspector would come along, then the regular signalman would step back and say to you, “All right lad, get on with it!” The two of them then watched to see if you made any mistakes.

  ‘Each track had a bell telling you a train was coming and a bell telling you the train was going away, and there were eight bells at Hornsey, covering four sets of tracks. The bells were on a shelf above you and each one had a different tone, so you had to know which tone was which in order to answer. If you got the wrong bell, the man who’d sent you the signal would signal back with a sarcastic ring. I know it’s hard to imagine, but you really could ring the bell sarcastically; if I made a mistake and replied to the wrong signalbox when a bell rang, the returning signal would instantly make me aware that the other man was saying, “Come on you nit-wit, get it right!” You didn’t want to let yourself down in front of people, so you very quickly got to know the sound of each bell!’

  At peak periods George found that he was dashing around pulling levers for all he was worth, but there were slacker periods when he could heat up something to eat on the range at the back of the box. ‘All signalmen cooked,’ recalled George, ‘and many would take the ingredients for a complete roast dinner if they were working on a Sunday. I remember one old boy used to nip out of the box, run across to a nearby allotment and help himself to some onions which he then added to his meal.’

  After Hornsey, George moved to Wood Green, to a box that overlooked the racecourse at Alexandra Palace: ‘That was great, because from my box I had a better view of the horses than anyone anywhere on the track itself. I’d often look out the window, too, and see my father, who was a guard, waving to me as his train went past, and all the drivers waved so you never felt lonely. You could also telephone your mates in signalboxes up and down the line.’

  A signalman who worked on what was known as a continuous cabin had to work for twenty days before he was allowed a day off, and this would include two twelve-hour Sunday shifts. Shifts were either 6pm–6am or 6am–6pm, so the hours were long. When unions negotiated a reduction in the hours from forty-eight a week to forty-six, more staff were needed to cover for the rest-day relief.

  The contingency that all railwaymen dreaded in the pre-electronic age was bad weather, particularly fog, but for the signalman there were also the practical difficulties associated with relatively primitive equipment: ‘If a signal lamp went out you could be in trouble,’ remembered George. ‘When they were trimmed and lit – they were all oil – they were supposed to last eight days, but through human error, a badly trimmed wick or whatever, perhaps high winds, they might go out. This was particularly dangerous if a light went out on the gantry above the lines and the signalman might have to re-light it. Those rickety old gantries high above the rails were bloody awful places to be, I can tell you, and in bad weather (when you were most likely to have to go up there) they could be terrifying. I remember going up to light a lamp when there was a terrific gale blowing and it was pitch black. I didn’t think I’d ever get down, and when I did, I hardly knew where I was.

  ‘Fog was the biggest killer of all because fogs then, the old pea-soupers, would reduce visibility to a few feet. Everything slowed down and we’d bring the fog signalmen on.’

  George continued as a signalman until 1955, but his obvious abilities, combined with the shortage of men in the years following the end of hostilities, meant he was promoted to assistant controller.

  ‘This was at Knebworth and I was eventually responsible for everything from King’s Cross to Barkston in Lincolnshire. I had to know every inch of those 108 miles as well as the sections of loop line. A class five assistant controller, which was where I started, was on the lowest rung; you had to do all the record keeping, check all the trains were running on time, stoke the fire in the office and make the tea for the other controllers.’ By starting at the bottom George lost £3 a week in wages, but the prospects were good. After four months he went back into the signal grade (his assistant controller job was as a summer relief only). Soon after that he was sent to Peterborough which, in the 1950s, was especially busy.

  ‘The first thing I remember about that job was that I was put in charge of giving the drivers salt tablets! These were regulation issue because driving was such warm work, and losing too much salt through sweating is very bad for you. I also had to go to the drivers’ barracks in the town and wake them up in the morning. I’d walk along in the dark with a list of names in my hand tapping on various windows with a long pole.’

  By 1955 George was working as a full-time assistant controller, and by the 1960s he’d taken over as assistant stationmaster at King’s Cross. ‘I’d known I wanted that job years earlier when the assistant stationmaster at King’s Cross had said to me, “Where’s your hat?” I told him I didn’t have one – I was a signalman at the time, and signalmen never did, but he obviously had no idea
. Anyway he sent me home, so off I went. But halfway along the platform he called me back and told me to go to the stores and get something for my head. I went, picked up the first hat that came to hand, got a pen and some ink and scrubbed out the words “Ticket Collector” which were printed on the front of it. That assistant stationmaster then asked me what my ambition was, so I said I wanted to be an assistant stationmaster like him so I could boss people about the way he did. “Get out, you cheeky devil!” he replied. I did nearly twenty years as an assistant stationmaster, and for much of that time I was acting stationmaster. It was a great job.’

  Signalboxes all disappeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and modern trains are all monitored and controlled electronically; but George wouldn’t have missed a minute of his early years: ‘I’m glad I had my time working the old levers. The men I worked with both then and later on were a great bunch, and there were some very funny moments. I remember particularly Chitty Mason who kept the platforms tidy at King’s Cross. One day Princess Margaret had just arrived and was about to get off her train when Chitty spotted a poodle using the red carpet in an unmentionable fashion outside her carriage. Quick as a flash he leapt over, picked up the poodle dropping and put it in his pocket. He walked calmly over to me and simply said, “That was a near miss, guv!”

  ‘Perhaps the funniest thing in all my forty-three years’ service was my meeting with Anthony Barber when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He borrowed two bob from me, and would you believe it – some flippin’ chancellor – he never paid it back!’

  Train Robbers Meet Their Match

  It is rather strange that the greatest excitement and dangers often come to the lonely signalman rather than to the busy one. Some years ago a plan was made to hold up and rob a train that was conveying boxes of gold to Southampton for shipment to America. The secret of the shipment had somehow leaked out, and half a dozen desperate characters, ex jail-birds, apparently decided that the gold had better stay in England. They therefore arranged to attack and overpower an elderly signalman at a lonely countryside place, afterwards working the signals themselves. They proposed to bring the gold train to a standstill, tie up the enginemen and the guard, and carry away the spoils in fast motor-cars. Perhaps the plan was inspired by something the criminals had seen upon the cinema screen. In America, such outrages are sometimes brought off successfully, but in England modern highwaymen seem to have little luck. The old signalman, who was to have been overpowered and captured, was taken ill with influenza and a younger man came to do the job for a time. He was a strong man, too, and something of a boxer, as the train robbers found when they came along soon after dark to overpower him. He knocked them down the steps of the signal box as fast as they came up, and the gold train ran by in safety whilst they were counting their bruises. Afterwards the police rounded up the lot of them, and they were easy enough to identify because of the marks they bore.

  S. T. James The Railwayman, 1928

  GENTLEMAN

  AT THE TOP!

  RICHARD HARDY

  SHEDMASTER ON THE LONDON & NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY

  Richard Hardy was an unusual railwayman. A former public schoolboy, he began his career in 1941 as an apprentice engineer making nuts and bolts, and ended up at the top, sitting on the Railways Board. What began as a passion at the age of four ended in an enthusiasm that took him through forty-two years of practical experience with steam, diesel and electric traction. ‘I was given a clockwork engine when I was four, and then I was taken to the station at Leatherhead in Surrey by my mother. This would have been in 1927. I was hooked,’ he recalled.

  The moment of truth came in 1929, however, when he was given a copy of the January edition of the Railway Magazine: ‘That was it,’ he remembered. ‘I didn’t understand much of it, but by and by that monthly magazine gave me a wonderful grounding for life on the railway.’

  Although he was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, the son of a retired tea-planter, Richard and his family had moved to Amersham in Buckinghamshire by the time he was ten. An only child, but very happy, he was to spend long hours on Amersham station platform watching the trains roar by. But he never took their numbers because he didn’t want simply to record the existence of the great engines, but to understand how they worked: ‘The great Central engines, passing through Amersham, were marvellous,’ he remembered. ‘I was on the platform every day of the holidays when I came home from school at Marlborough. I got to know all the railway staff, who were incredibly friendly. Eventually the footplate men knew me, too, and I was given trips to Rickmansworth and Wendover. Can you imagine that now? Not likely!’

  Like many railwaymen, Richard spent much of his career working in different parts of the country, constantly on the move, but he never lost his early enthusiasm:

  ‘My interest simply grew and grew,’ he recalled, ‘and everything seemed to conspire to make me more interested. For example, in 1931 I had a holiday at Mexborough in Yorkshire with my governess, when I would have been about seven. As luck would have it, my governess’s father was a coal merchant and her uncle chief clerk at Doncaster Locomotive sheds. Apart from helping deliver coal, which we collected at the railway yard and which I enjoyed enormously, I spent a day of that holiday at the huge engine shed at Mexborough, another at Doncaster Carr Loco, where I would be working as an apprentice thirteen years later, a day at York at the railway museum, and endless hours on Mexborough station.

  ‘I can also remember my first trip on the footplate, in 1933. I was at school at Seaford in Sussex and my parents were taking me to Brighton by train one Sunday. We had to change at Lewes, and when our train ran in from Tonbridge, we went up to look at the engine. I must have stood there looking up at the driver with my mouth open. Just imagine my surprise when he asked me if I wanted to climb up and go to Falmer with him. I was in heaven, I can tell you, and he took me on to London Road, Brighton where I was put back in the train. I can still remember the engine, a Sterling F1 built for the South Eastern Railway in about 1892. Among southern enginemen they were known affectionately as Flying Bedsteads.’

  Determined on a railway career, Richard left Marlborough at the age of seventeen. His reasons were partly financial – ‘my mother couldn’t really afford it after my father died’ – but he was pleased to be starting work in the industry that had so captivated him: ‘I went straight into a job as an apprentice at Doncaster, and I can remember the exact date – it was 17 January 1941. An older friend at school had gone to the LMS and I thought rather vaguely that I ought to follow him; but my heart was in the LNER, and when I saw Col Pullein-Thompson, the careers adviser, he went straight to the point: “Go on the LNER boy! Gentlemen at the top!” ’

  Richard began his life on the railways making motion pins and bolts on a lathe, but from his earliest days he was interested in everything that was happening, and enjoyed the company of his workmates, young and old. He did his practical work on the lathe during the day, and was expected to do his theory at home at night.

  ‘Oh, you were expected to do as you were told, and long hours and strict conditions were the norm. You were only paid when you came to work. I wasn’t salaried in those days and being late on duty was a serious matter. During my apprenticeship I was late once. I was going to work on my bike at 3am one moonlit Sunday morning when a policeman stopped me for not having a light – I was ten minutes late for work, lost half an hour’s pay and was fined 10s.’

  Richard’s public school accent must have sounded incongruous among the other apprentices, but few tricks were played on him by the older boys and indeed he has fond memories of his contemporaries’ kindnesses. When his one pair of boots hurt his feet, for example, someone suggested he wear clogs which were still popular in the north in those days.

  ‘They cost 8s 6d a pair, and only one clothing coupon,’ remembered Richard, ‘but they were very comfortable and once saved me from serious injury to my foot when I’d got caught between the fallplate and the tender end of a GN Atlantic on
a sharp curve in York yard. The thick wooden sole of the clog took the squeeze, not my foot, which would have been crushed if I’d been wearing ordinary boots. When my mother came to visit me once she was so taken by the clogs that she bought herself a fancy-coloured lady’s pair!’

  Richard started work as what was then known as a premium apprentice, which meant his mother had to pay a premium of £50 to get him in. ‘I believe I was the last premium apprentice on the LNER until after the war, and those that followed me had the same training but without the premium. I have always believed that an engineering apprenticeship is an education in engineering and in human relationships. In those days it was all very autocratic, but as I moved through the various engineering departments I discovered that the men I worked with never asked me to work harder than they were prepared and able to work themselves.’

  Lifelong friendships were established in those early days, and Richard remained in close touch with, for example, Stan Hodgson. Stan was a fireman when Richard first met him one night in May 1941. At Wakefield, the extrovert Stan invited Richard, a scruffy seventeen-year-old, onto the engine of the London Mail. At Doncaster and before returning to Leeds at two in the morning, the driver, Bob Foster, and Stan took Richard in hand to explain to him the essentials of their job: ‘You’ll be a boss one day and you’ll have to know our job inside out, else you’ll be neither use nor ornament; so come and see us every evening that you get the chance and we’ll put you through it.’

  ‘After that I never looked back, and the West Riding men in particular, many of whom were in their late fifties and early sixties, went to endless trouble to teach me their job in all its complexity; but above all, I was learning about railwaymen. They had nothing to gain by doing this and I shall never forget their kindness, for in my Doncaster years I covered about 60,000 miles on the footplate, most of it in my spare time and outside my official training.’