by Geoff Body
Once the fully reserved set pulled into the platform, the rush to join the train was far from dignified and was invariably followed by heads appearing at each window complaining of non-existent seats or unauthorised occupation by others. It was at times like this that the need for strict adherence to booked departure times brought the relief of energetic whistle-blowing and flag waving and the comfort of knowing that the problems would gradually be sorted out on the long trip home.
THE SCOTTISH TELEVISION TRAIN
Jim Dorward describes a pioneering Scottish Region example of on-train television broadcasting
It is Wednesday 14 August 1957. The Scottish Region’s television train is at Johnstone station on the Glasgow–Ayr line ready for an 8.47 a.m. departure to Oban. It is some twenty years since the first radio reception on trains and today’s extraordinary train represents another railway milestone: each coach is equipped with television monitors to display black-and-white television programmes produced and transmitted from the on-board ‘studio’ housed in a BG bogie brake van normally used for mail and parcels. Behind the studio vehicle is a Brake Standard Corridor (BSK) coach for the television crew, including an electrician responsible for cabling throughout the train. This is followed by two open coaches with four seats at each table, a buffet car, another two open coaches and finally a coach for the guard. Eight coaches are quite enough for the gradients that will face the two steam engines on the West Highland Line between Craigendoran and Crianlarich Upper.
After picking up more passengers at Elderslie and Paisley (Gilmour Street) the train will proceed to the start of the West Highland Line by travelling through Glasgow between Shields Junction and Bellgrove over a line not used on a regular basis by passenger trains.
Unless they are engrossed in watching the televison programmes, the passengers will notice the train stopping on the single-line West Highland route to cross the all-stations 10 a.m. Arrochar & Tarbet–Craigendoran push-pull train at Garelochhead and the 12.05 p.m. Oban–Glasgow (Buchanan Street) and Edinburgh (Princes Street) at Taynuilt. Arrival at Oban is 1.18 p.m., which will give passengers over 5 hours for sightseeing and shopping. They might even get to see the arrival or departure of the boats serving such places as Tobermory and Barra.
At 6.45 p.m. the train is due to leave Oban and return to Johnstone, but not via the West Highland Line. Instead it will give passengers another scenic line to enjoy, as the train is to travel via Killin Junction and Callander, joining the WCML at Dunblane. When it reaches Glasgow it will use another line (Gushetfaulds Junction–Shields Junction) not used regularly by passenger trains and will arrive back at Johnstone at 11.02 p.m.
This unusual train is busy during the summer season. In July there were departures from Glasgow (Queen Street) to St Andrews, North Berwick, Arbroath and Oban. All four trips could be made on a 50s ticket, saving 9s 7d, not an insignificant sum when only high earners were getting £20 a week. The entertainment on these particular trains was provided by the Glasgow Evening Citizen newspaper.
Those travelling on these imaginative trains would probably be torn between watching the beautiful scenery they passed through and the novelty of the scenes on the ‘telly’. Some may even have been influenced to spend more money to bring the new technology into their front room.
US RAILROAD STATIONS AND BUILDINGS
Theo Steel provides a snapshot of a parallel US trend towards the positive reuse of former railway buildings
The background to this piece is a 2009 visit to Roanoke in the US, the spiritual and actual home of the Norfolk and Western Railroad (N&W). We had stayed at the Roanoke Hotel – built in the late nineteenth century and run by the company until 1989 – and had planned to look at a permanent exhibition in the Raymond Loewy-designed art deco station building honouring O. Winston Link, the publisher of a series of evocative 1950s photos of N&W steam.
While it will be a few years (2018 is the schedule) before regular passenger services return to Roanoke, it is also the home of the Virginia Transport Museum where the prize attractions are an N&W J Class locomotive and a Mallet example, along with other exhibits. The works where they were built is also still operating, albeit repairing diesels these days.
At the museum there was a touring exhibition featuring the 150 best buildings in the US, chosen by a consumer panel but, in typical architect’s style, much argued and supplemented by their list of ninety-eight that they thought ought to have been there! No less than ten US stations are included.
Grand Central New York, 100 years old in 2013 and beautifully restored, tops the rail list at number thirteen. The others are Washington Union, St Louis, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Washington Metro, Chicago, Kansas City, Philadelphia 30th Street and a unique entry – the late, lamented Penn station in New York, which was sadly demolished in 1963. They collectively range across US architectural styles from the late nineteenth-century Richardson-esque of St Louis through the Beaux Arts of Grand Central and Kansas City to the art deco of Cincinnati and the Spanish–American art deco of Los Angeles.
The featured stations are mostly large Union stations but it is always worth hunting out other stations in North American towns and cities. Some are still being used for their original purpose while others range from total adaptation (for example, St Louis is now a hotel and shopping centre) through to being busier than ever with train services – Los Angeles is an example with its ninety-plus daily departures these days. Most now combine shopping and restaurant centres with train operations.
A feature of US stations is extensive waiting facilities but often rather drab train-side access, which is sometimes not very appropriate for the volume of customers – the contrast between grand entrance and train access at Grand Central in New York and Washington are cases in point. Other stations like Cincinnati and Kansas City have six trains a week and six a day respectively but are now primarily museum focused. However, after long periods of disuse they have been adapted and are still there.
Some former stations are now shells, such as Buffalo or Detroit, isolated from rail these days and awaiting adaptation. Many have been recently restored. After forty years as a storage warehouse, St Paul Union was given a $247 million refit and reopened as a transportation hub as part of a downtown revival attempt in 2013; Denver and Springfield, Massachusetts are currently awaiting restoration. Many have been pulled down but others have been adapted as banks (Albany, San Antonio) and hotels. Among the hotels are the Chattanooga Choo Choo (complete with sleeping cars to stay in) and Nashville Union.
Adaptation is not limited to large Union stations. The information centre in Eagle River, Wisconsin is the old Chicago N&W railroad station, a number of the New York Central stations along the Hudson Valley have been adapted and the old Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) station at Gaithersburg is a delightful café. Eating gourmet (as well as fast!) food at stations is not impossible. The Oyster Bar in the basement at Grand Central New York is a venerable institution and is now complemented by some modern additions. J.B. Smith’s in the old Presidential waiting room at Washington is rather special and Traxx Restaurant at Union station in Los Angeles is fun (currently they only cater for special events), even if it is a pale imitation of the last Harvey House facility designed by Mary Colter. The station at Lake Louise in Canada is a delightful restaurant, with sleepers providing accommodation and courses punctuated by CP freights grinding through.
American-preserved railways are worth visiting for the stations. The Grand Canyon Railway has impressive facilities at both Williams Junction as well as at the rim, where the initial facilities were developed by the Santa Fe Railway. North Conway is straight out of Dr Zhivago and the Durango and Silverton facilities have survived remarkably well.
US stations are not renowned for overall roofs and many of those that did exist have been pulled down, such as the one at Boston South. That said, the exhibition centre at Philadelphia is based around Broad Street terminal which features a roof similar to St Pancras but with a larger span.
US railroad magnates of the nineteenth century did not skimp on their private housing – The Frick Collection art museum in New York is perhaps the most famous example, once home to industrialist Henry Clay Frick, but there is also Flagler’s mansion in Palm Beach and various Vanderbilt houses. A personal favourite is the James Hill house in St Paul. Their private vehicles were often very luxurious too and over 200 are still operating to brighten up an Amtrak station or train.
This is just a snapshot to whet appetites, but most of the stations can be found on the Internet and there are many books on the subject. I find it encouraging that, as in the UK, we have moved from destruction to preservation and that the US financial structures have encouraged so much reuse and adaptation to move us forward from the ‘Amshacks’ of the 1970s.
NEW STATIONMASTER
Fernley Maker’s first appointment as a stationmaster was typical of the railway in the 1950s
I was appointed to the post of stationmaster/goods agent at Northfield in 1952 but had to wait until the following April to be released from my post as passenger clerk at Bude. Northfield lay on the old Midland Railway Main Line from Birmingham–Bristol, some 7½ miles south of Birmingham New Street. The main station building was located on an island platform between the Up and Down main lines with Up and Down goods lines beyond, the latter normally worked on the permissive block system. In every 24 hours there were some 200 train movements, including calls by forty-two passenger services. The fifty-five-lever signal box was situated at the south end of the station and the goods yard consisted of three thirty-wagon sidings, a crane siding, goods office, weighbridge, feedstuffs stores and a garage for the railway motor vehicle.
I was fortunate in getting good ‘digs’ while waiting for the stationmaster’s house to become available. This was situated at the entrance to the goods yard and of typical Midland Railway design: two reception rooms, three bedrooms, a kitchen with just a cold-water tap, an outside lavatory and a large garden. Rent and rates were 12s 6d a week, which went up when a small pantry was subsequently converted into a bathroom.
My induction into the new post was brief and cursory. The relief stationmaster went home as soon as I arrived on the Monday but was back with me for Tuesday and Wednesday. That was it. His return on the Saturday allowed me to get back to Bude for the weekend but from the following Monday it was all down to me.
Halesowen Junction signal box, about 1½ miles south of Northfield, was also under my supervision. It too was a busy place, with four running lines plus the branch to Longbridge motor works and on to Halesowen. This was worked under electric-train staff regulations with ex-London & North Western permissive instruments in the box contrasting with the usual three-position needle instruments for the absolute block on the main lines. Father and son Jack and Maurice Roberts both worked the box, the former a devout member of the Plymouth Brethren and someone who encouraged me to work the frame for experience during the period I was in lodgings. In the busy period between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. pulling levers along the seventy-five-lever frame and dealing with the clamouring bells of the block instruments was truly hard graft.
One of my Northfield signalmen was Bill Taylor, who had started out as a van boy at Birmingham’s Lawley Street depot but had been at Northfield for many years. He made sure I could work the box there. I also remember him because in a quiet period of about 20 minutes just after 9 a.m. each day he would have a full fry-up in the box, something that produced a mouth-watering aroma and smelled especially tantalising to one who had managed only toast for his breakfast quite a bit earlier. Someone else who helped me a lot with operating matters at this time was Raymond George who was the district signalling inspector for the Birmingham Midland area and one of the best practical railwaymen I ever met.
I was fortunate with my staff at Northfield. Former army captain A.B. Pettit was my goods clerk, a church lay reader and well respected by our traders. With the help of our checker and motor vehicle driver the yard dealt with a variety of full-load business, coal, animal feeding stuffs, containers and steel for new flats springing up in the area. In addition there was a large quantity of returned empties, both forwarded and received and always difficult and time-consuming to identify and handle. Access to the yard was off the Up goods line via points released from the signal box and operated for shunting purposes by the platform porter. Our inwards ‘pick-up’ freight service detached wagons around 9.15 a.m. and returned to shunt the yard about 12.30 p.m.
Northfield was a very good starting place for a new stationmaster, with plenty of variety in the work from the daily routine to occasional signal and engine failures and acting as pilotman for SLW. Less dramatic was the collection of small accounts locally and inspections of damaged goods in connection with the claims procedures.
Not everything went smoothly, of course. One of the porters booked on at midnight to attend to an excursion train arrived to find the booking office had been burgled. Needing to call me out, he was so nervous that the burglars might still be around that he insisted the signalman accompany him and then waited until I had dressed in order to have support on the way back to the office. And then there was a relief goods checker called Harry who spent his lunchtime in the local pub and seemed seriously short of energy when he returned in the afternoon. On one occasion when there were two 10-ton wagons of Bibbys animal-feeding stuffs to unload and Harry was making little progress with the job, I took the late-turn platform porter with me to the yard and roused Harry from his lethargy.
The porter and I unloaded from the wagons and had Harry running with the sack barrow until he was sweating profusely – we had cleared the first wagon and Harry had got the message about tackling the other one.
I had only been at Northfield for eight months when, due to a shortage of relief staff, I was requested to undertake the stationmaster duties for King’s Norton, the next station, and to cover my own position as overtime. The King’s Norton post was a much higher graded one, the location having a shunting yard and carriage-cleaning staff. This was deep-end treatment but I managed to survive for a five-week period and benefitted from the extra money. I also covered Barnt Green and Bournville for odd days and, coming back off leave on one occasion, I found I had to cover King’s Heath for a week, a station I had never even seen before.
In Cotswold country, 4-6-0 No. 4086 Builth Castle heads through Campden with the 2 p.m. Worcester–Paddington service.
The organisational set-up in the Birmingham area was complicated. Operationally there were two district operating superintendents at New Street, as the Western and Midland Division had separate control and general offices but shared a staff office. Commercial responsibility was bi-regional with a district passenger manager at New Street and a district goods manager at Snow Hill, where the Western Region’s district operating superintendent was also based. One of the consequences was a lot of meetings involving us stationmasters.
On a less functional note, one of my enduring memories of Northfield is being in the garden on a summer evening at about 9.30 p.m., just as the light was beginning to fade. Rushing through the station at about 70mph would come the Up mail, hauled by a usually spotless LMS Jubilee-Class locomotive with about seven passenger coaches and two TPO mail coaches behind. About 10 minutes later the Down mail, similarly formed, could be heard in the distance, soon coming into sight with the Jubilee pulling against the uphill grade, the TPOs and tail lamp disappearing into the twilight and the Down main signal dropping to the horizontal behind it. There were also Up and Down mail trains in the early hours but I seldom saw them, although I think they may ha
ve registered subconsciously while I was in the Land of Nod.
ON FROM NORTHFIELD
After five years as stationmaster/goods agent at Northfield, Fernley Maker was ready to move on
On 1 August 1957 I reported to the offices of the district operating superintendent (Midland) at Gloucester Eastgate seeking appointment to a Class 3 post as a relief stationmaster. The grade was the same as that at Northfield but overtime, expenses and Sunday working would make the earnings appreciably higher and I would be nearer to Cornwall where my wife was temporarily living.
My first interview with the chief staff clerk, W.J. Wilcox, did not go well. I had crossed swords with ‘Brummagem Bill’, as he was known, when I was at Northfield and his long list of detailed questions gave me a strong feeling he did not want me to get the job. I then saw District Operating Superintendent C.W. Hearnshaw and received a totally different reception. He promised a few days refreshing before taking me for my rules and regulations competence.
All went well. I got the job and, with the help of the Cheltenham stationmaster, found lodgings, passed my rules grilling and went to my first relief job at Bredon. I subsequently found a furnished flat so that my wife could join me and a few months later we moved into a brand-new house near Lansdown station. Before that happened I had found that my chief staff clerk nemesis was reluctant to issue passes for my weekend visits home. On one occasion he actually sent me to Towcester for two weeks with the comment, ‘You will not be able to get home from there.’ Fortunately the office clerks were more sympathetic and tried to help without ‘Brummagem Bill’ knowing.