Life on the Old Railways

by Tom Quinn

  By the end of 1943 Richard had finished his training in the plant works and was transferred to the running shed. Here, in the rough and dirty life of maintaining engines in steam to meet the never-ending demands of wartime traffic, he was in his element. He worked with a number of different fitters, and he was also a member of a breakdown gang which, manning a big forty-five-ton crane, was called out to all derailments of engines, carriages and wagons over a wide area. He enjoyed this work immensely and was a sort of mascot to the members of the gang, all in their forties and fifties, and to the foreman, a Mr Palmer, who loved to tease him. Apart from working on breakdowns, Richard went on lifting jobs: putting in a new turntable at Lincoln for example, and loading a midget submarine on a rail wagon in the early hours in absolute secrecy.

  ‘It is important to remember the difference between the plant works which was a factory, and the running shed,’ he recalled. ‘In the plant works, the discipline was pretty rigid, planning was essential, and production and output were the ever-present targets. At first sight, the running shed life, with its endless movement of engines in steam, its drivers and firemen and its artisans, might have seemed to offer greater freedom, and at times, things could be quiet for an hour; but then the scene would change, and skilled men, fitters and boilermakers could rise to amazing heights of endeavour to keep the traffic moving, for the enemy at the shed was the timetable, the clock and the fearful demands of the wartime railway.’

  Working conditions were very rough: no heating in the shed, and no way to wash up except in a bucket of paraffin; but Richard enjoyed it all. Then, in November 1944, he left the running shed for the drawing office where he spent his last nine months at Doncaster. ‘I was a poor affair at the drawing board,’ he recalled, ‘although the draughtsmen themselves were able engineers and very good company. I remember designing the lubricator drive for Great Northern, the rebuilt Al, and thinking that I had made a nice job of it; but when it came to be assembled on the engine, oh dear, what a story! I was not popular! Nevertheless I learned a great deal that was useful to me in later life – though I knew perfectly well that, above all, I wanted to make my career in the rough and tumble of the running department.’

  In June 1945 Richard was interviewed by the locomotive running superintendent, L. P. Parker – a legendary figure among railwaymen – and two months later was sent, as a progressman, to Stratford in East London. At that time Stratford was the biggest running shed in the world, housing more than 500 engines with thousands of men:

  ‘Nothing else like it, and all ghosts now,’ said Richard. ‘L. P. Parker was respected and feared, and he drove us young men – “my young men” as he called us – mercilessly; but when we had proved ourselves, he gave us the sort of responsibility no other superintendent would have considered giving to men of our age.

  ‘I was working at his headquarters at Liverpool Street when I got married in 1949. After our honeymoon I returned to work, and he sent for me. “Hardy,” he said, “I have a pleasant surprise for your wife: I am sending you to Cambridge for a few weeks,” which meant lodgings, working all hours, seven days a week and no going home at the weekend. There was no argument with L. P. – but then he wanted his young men to get to the top, and we learned the hard way.’

  By January 1946 Richard was working under the shedmaster at King’s Lynn, and this life of ever-changing locations – with two-, three- and four-year stints in widely different parts of the country – was to continue almost until he retired.

  ‘On my arrival at King’s Lynn, on a very cold, dark day, Ted Shaw, the shedmaster, a tough Mancunian who didn’t think much of younger men, asked me if I took snuff; so I tried it, and of course it made me sneeze. Ted just laughed and told me I was “nowt but a bloody kid”. Far worse things had been said to me at Marlborough, however, so I didn’t mind in the least – and anyway I had a great admiration for Ted. He had me doing the daily enginemen’s rosters and the engine list, as well as seeing to repairs and other work in the shed, coaling, boiler washing and cleaning of engines. The rostering was a minefield, particularly when upgrading passed firemen to drivers and getting the right men in the right place. The staff watched every move, and I got hell if I made a mistake – “You’re wasting the company money,” they used to say. But I used the principles that Ted Shaw drilled into me to solve many a roster dispute in later life.

  ‘After a few months he considered that I could just about manage without him, so he then spent a fair amount of time in the local pub – he liked his beer, I can tell you. When he went on leave I took his place, and when you take charge, you really begin to learn.’

  Employment conditions were far harsher in the 1940s, and at Richard’s level few enjoyed sick pay or were part of the pension scheme: ‘Few people were salaried in those days,’ he remembered, ‘so men struggled into work if they were ill, where these days some would stay at home. You were paid for being there, and got nothing if you failed to come in. There were no salaries for drivers, guards, platelayers, or firemen – in fact hardly anyone got a salary.’ But despite these disadvantages, engine driving and working on the railway were seen as glamorous jobs. Richard remembered that at many stations where the trains stopped for long enough people would gather round the engine and talk to the driver and fireman.

  ‘With diesel and electric, of course, the driver is boxed in and the job doesn’t have that special atmosphere about it, although, of course, the responsibility is the same with all those passengers relying on him.’

  It took Richard a total of eight years to become a shedmaster. He was finally given his own shed at Woodford on the Great Central, where he had to manage 280 men and 50 engines, a tall order for a young man. But it was a job he loved: ‘At Woodford, our enginemen worked to Marylebone, Nottingham, Banbury and Sheffield with passenger trains, but our shed was largely freight, to Banbury, Neasden, and the night express freight trains from Marylebone to Sheffield and Manchester. Freight work was considerable in those days because there were no motorways and the massive container lorries of the modern world simply didn’t exist. If you had freight to move you had to use the railways.’ This meant, of course, that men like Richard were a key part of the industrial backbone of the country.

  Richard’s wife had their first child in 1950 and at almost the same time he was sent to Ipswich. Again there was that sense that, for the railwayman, the job had to come first: ‘I was very happy at Woodford and my district locomotive superintendent at Nottingham tried to get Mr Parker to send somebody else; but L. P. simply replied, “If Hardy doesn’t go to Ipswich, he will not go anywhere for a very long time!” ‘

  ‘Trying to find somewhere to live on £420 a year wasn’t easy; we rented a thatched cottage near Woodford – a lovely little place, but no running water, and a hand-pump – though at Ipswich, British Railways had bought a small house for the shedmaster.’

  At Ipswich the shed dated back to 1846, and working conditions were cramped; the men had to coal the tenders by hand because there was no mechanical coaling plant, and only eleven engines could be under cover at any one time out of a total of ninety-one. ‘There were about 450 men at the shed,’ says Richard; ‘some of the most conscientious men I have ever worked with. Working conditions were a challenge, but the standard of maintenance and pride in the job was unforgettable. I have always kept in touch with the Ipswich men through their ASLEF retired drivers’ gatherings, to which I am still invited from time to time.

  ‘We had some very old engines dating back to the 1890s; they were simple and straightforward and no trouble to anybody. Our passenger engines were B1s, B17s and the famous GE B12s. The B1s (or Bongos as they were known) and the B12s had their own regular crews. There were two sets of men to an engine, and this generated tremendous rivalry as to whose was the best and most highly polished, the cab shining like a jeweller’s shop.’

  After a little over two years at Ipswich, Richard found himself posted to Stewart’s Lane, Battersea, in South London. This was very
different from Ipswich. Here, on the Southern Region, punctuality was a religion: ‘Our drivers were accountable for every minute lost, and I was accountable to my chief,’ says Richard. ‘If a driver lost two minutes from Victoria to Herne Hill after a tough time climbing the grade out of Victoria, he would no doubt regain it by Tonbridge, but the two minutes went down against Stewart’s Lane.

  ‘There were two punctuality leagues, and your position in them was judged according to minutes lost per thousand miles run. We were always well up the first division, but never at the top because of the complexity of the services our men handled. It was a splendid discipline, although administratively it cost a lot of money, especially as any time loss which was disputed had to be settled, and any delays were pursued so that there would be no repetition by those responsible – which usually included the chap in charge, and rightly so! Woodford and Ipswich were positively gentlemanly compared with the tough Battersea boys!

  ‘Of all the wonderful jobs I had, Stewart’s Lane brought me nearest to the real running of the railway. Some 750 South London boys, most of them outspoken and critical of management, would nevertheless rise to the occasion to meet the demands of the summer service year after year. It was a remarkable job, hard work, seven days a week, and only a fortnight’s holiday a year.

  ‘When I needed a break I would go down to Dover on the engine of the Golden Arrow, maybe do the driving on the down and the firing on the up road, and that would put me right again. At Stewart’s Lane, one had to be the guvn’r: if you were easy, you were finished because the Cockneys had no respect for an easy boss. You had to be fair and straight, so we had our battles – but they were good-hearted battles, with no grudges held. I still see some of the younger men of those days, including Teddy Champion, Reg Coote and Alf Pink. We used to row, and now we laugh about it, at a gathering each year near Victoria to which they invite me. I wouldn’t miss it for anything!’

  Having returned to Stratford as assistant district locomotive superintendent in January 1955, Richard was promoted to take charge of the district four years later. ‘That meant that I was in overall charge of several sheds, including Stratford, and some three thousand men,’ he recalls. This job put him in charge of the changeover from steam to diesel traction.

  ‘It was as much a human revolution as a machine revolution,’ he recalled. ‘Everybody’s way of life was changed in four short years. It always amazed me how well the older men took to this dramatic change. No longer did drivers and firemen actually generate the engine’s power, in a private world of their own and by the sweat of their brow, a challenge that made the steam men unique: now they worked in cleanliness and comfort. In the steam shed at Stratford on a warm Sunday evening, the conditions, with fires being lit and the place full of acrid smoke, were intolerable and dangerous, for men could barely see their hands in front of their faces. But when the diesel depot was opened, our men worked in conditions of order and cleanliness they had never imagined could exist.’

  Although impressed by the professionalism of virtually all the men he worked with, Richard had a special fondness for the running shed artisans: ‘These were the men who kept the engines going. The best were craftsmen, but at the same time, they had to be masters of expediency whether with steam or the new diesel locomotives. One sometimes forgets that we converted boilermakers to electricians and they took the change in their stride.’

  One of the highlights of Richard’s career came when he was asked to show the Queen round the depot at Stratford. He remembers being impressed by how well she’d been briefed: ‘She asked all the right questions. For example, I introduced her to a driver who instructed on diesels, and she asked him straightaway if he preferred steam to diesel. “The diesel is clean and interesting ma’am,” he said, “but it’s nothing like my Old John Bunyan.”

  ‘That said it all for most of the enginemen, though the artisans preferred the challenges of the new traction, and the working conditions. Again, the footplate staff missed the camaraderie, the companionship, the challenges of steam, the personal contact with the public and with thousands of would-be young railwaymen – but the new forms of traction transformed the railway and there could be no going back. However, it does make you realise what miracles of service, speed and efficiency were achieved in the past.

  ‘Imagine what it was like for a sixteen-year-old boy to be confronted, on a scorching Sunday afternoon, with the task of cleaning the fire of a King Arthur that had arrived back at the shed with a firebox full of fire and clinker. Using the nine-foot fire irons, the youngster had to break up the great mass of solid clinker and draw it out on a heavy, long-handled, red-hot clinker shovel. It was a hell of a job, and it’s no wonder many boys didn’t have the stomach for the work, and the awkward hours. Come to that, tender-first running in freezing fog could be pretty rough, too – frozen one side and roasted the other!’

  But like all railwaymen who worked on steam, Richard was proud of the tremendous skills involved in keeping the locomotives in good running order, despite the pressures of time and money: ‘You had to know exactly what you were doing, while keeping an eye on half-a-dozen things at once. It was like juggling with plates – no sooner had you sorted out one problem, than another arose which was more urgent than the first. And carelessness had to be dealt with severely, because self-discipline was part of our way of life. For example, a driver and fireman could be suspended or removed from the footplate if they allowed the water level to fall seriously low in the boiler so that the lead plug, a safety measure in the firebox, melted.’

  At Stratford, as assistant district loco supervisor, Richard was greatly concerned with the chronic shortage of engines throughout the district; such were the demands on maintenance that the shift foremen were having engines ‘stopped’ for boiler washout in the evening, washed out with cold water by the night shift, then boxed up, lit up and fired by one in the morning ready for work.

  ‘To wash out a blazing hot boiler with cold water is asking for trouble, but the engines were needed and the staff co-operated to get the job done. The water spaces were not cleaned out, and the examinations by the boilermakers were cursory until one day, through a build-up of dirt, some firebox stays broke and bulged under full steam pressure on an L1 working a passenger train.’

  Overnight, Richard drew up instructions so that every man involved throughout the district knew what he had to do; he discussed this fully with all concerned, and supported the boiler examiners on whom so much depended. ‘Initially this was highly unpopular at Stratford, but we won the day and the condition of the engines improved which made life less fraught for the shift foremen.’

  Richard’s diligence and devotion to railway transport – he never considered changing careers – finally paid off when he was promoted to a job at the Railways Board. ‘I say at, because I don’t mean on the board. There is a considerable difference! I came to BR headquarters via King’s Cross where I became divisional manager in 1964, after a spell at Lincoln and then at Liverpool from 1968 to the end of 1973. The last thing I wanted to do was leave Liverpool, having been a front-line man all my working life, but I was eventually made responsible for the career development of all engineers in every department of British Railways, dealing with the youngest sponsored student at university one moment, or the choice and appointment of a head of department the next. I retired at the end of 1982 after all but forty-two years. My first week’s wage packet was 16s 2d [81p]. I had better not tell you what I was paid at the end but it was a fair bit more! I never really thought of doing anything else. Like all railwaymen, I loved the job even in the days when I washed my hands in paraffin, got on my bike still in my overalls and, almost exhausted, cycled back to my digs late at night. No one had cars in those wartime days, and I remember Doncaster was swarming with men and women on bikes – and many were railway workers.’

  Richard remembered working ninety-eight hours in one week during the war in hard weather with the Doncaster breakdown gang. This earned
him his first £5 note. ‘I had never seen one; nor had many other men in overalls,’ he recalled. ‘I knew shopkeepers would look askance at a boy in overalls offering one of those great white £5 notes in Doncaster, so I got a friend to change it.’

  In his shedmaster days Richard was responsible for three grades: the footplate staff – drivers and firemen; the artisans – boilermakers, fitters and other craftsmen; and what were called the shed conciliation grades. ‘I still don’t know the origin of that unusual name, but the conciliation men ranged from timekeepers, storesmen, toolmen and boiler washers to tube cleaners and shed labourers.

  ‘Many of the men with whom I worked had left school at twelve or thirteen and had little formal education. Yet year after year, day and night, and in fog or snow, drivers and firemen – unlettered men, trained only by experience – shouldered responsibility for the lives of thousands. It was a way of life; but it could come to an end all too suddenly because the medical requirements were stringent, and failing eyesight, or colour blindness, or heart trouble, or loss of confidence meant removal from the footplate into the conciliation grades, a bitter disappointment with serious financial implications. It was very hard, and I saw it happen all too often.’

  Despite the relative harshness of his earliest days on the railway, Richard had only happy memories of the 1940s: ‘For me as a youngster it was marvellous. Men, some old enough to be my grandfather, took me in hand and taught me all they knew, giving me experience that stood me in good stead for the rest of my railway life. I treasure the large album of photographs I took with my little Box Brownie of the men I worked with in those days – every picture prompts a memory of an adventure, of special engines and friends, most of whom have long since died.

  ‘I suppose my favourite engines were the GN Atlantics; they were rough and uncomfortable, but magnificent uphill and they would always race across the level and with plenty of steam to spare. I remember once flying down Beeston Bank towards Leeds on an Atlantic. When we took the curve through Beeston Station at over sixty miles an hour we thought – or at least I did! – that our last hour had come. But the driver I was with, Bill Denman of Leeds, knew what he was about.