by Geoff Body
At my first station, Sawbridgeworth, there was a sharply curved siding into the maltings. Two-axle vans could go in and out, but no locomotives so a fine, old draft horse did the work, although sadly it was replaced by a small mechanical tractor before I got my camera into action. The railway-horse culture finally ended, fittingly at Newmarket, but is yet another example of the trades that existed within the period railway. If all else failed a wagon could be moved by using brute strength and a pinch bar (a stout wooden pole with a metal wedge end) that was jammed under the wheel tread and then raised to initiate motion.
In this 1963 mishap at Wood Green the sheer weight of the heavy steel load has overwhelmed the 6-ton Conflat wagon that is used to deal with the overhang. (Bryan Stone)
Many of the pictures I did take caught, not always intentionally, platelayers at work. There were no protective clothes or fluorescent jackets, just picks and shovels. Even so, track alignments were often superb. Fishplates, usually with four bolts, were used to join rails together before the days of continuous welded rail. The joints got a fearful hammering and a familiar sight was that of a figure bent over a fishplate with a metal can of heavy oil, a long-handled brush and an equally long-handled spanner to tighten the bolts.
On stations, in signal boxes and in goods yards and depots there were many other competent railwaymen at work using dedicated and extensive skills, albeit in ways that now seem almost primitive. It is humbling to think of how much we took for granted, even the brutal, hard and dangerous skills that are now lost for ever.
NORTH AMERICAN INTERLUDE
Jim White made a decision that transported him from a relief clerk post at Dumfries to the US and Canada
I joined BR around April 1954 as a junior clerk in the parcels office at Dumfries station. I had left school on the Friday and started work on the following Monday in the middle of term having decided, rightly or wrongly, that I had sufficient education for my needs. After nine months, like all other 18-year-olds in those days, I was called up for National Service and was selected to spend my two years in the Royal Air Force, appropriately enough as a ‘Clerk, Movements’. My two years passed relatively uneventfully, having been posted to 16MU, RAF Stafford, conveniently on the west coast route to Scotland.
On demobilisation I returned to BR and took up a position as a relief clerk based at Dumfries and covering the area from Annan to Auchinleck on the old Glasgow & South Western Railway Main Line and Stranraer town on the ‘Port Road’. Learning was very much an ‘on the job’ exercise, as returnees from National Service were given just two fortnight refresher courses at Dunbar, one each on passenger and freight commercial activities. As my nine months’ previous experience had been limited to parcels work my knowledge base was fairly limited, as evidenced by each time I had to attempt to fill in the sack return at New Cumnock, a document designed to challenge a PhD in maths.
The next two and a half years passed uneventfully, spent at stations now long gone or with vastly reduced services. Then, one afternoon, I was on the late shift at Dumfries booking office when I took a call from the staff section of the district traffic office at Ayr. The clerk explained that a request had been received to submit names of possible candidates to work for nine months in the Toronto office of British & Irish Railways (a joint operation of BR and the two Irish railway undertakings Córas Iompair Éireann [CIÉ] and UTA). The caller asked whether there were any suitable staff in Dumfries who met the criteria of having booking and enquiry experience, being single and also being Scottish.
Going through my colleagues rapidly in my head I replied that I thought not, but was then asked about a relief clerk named White. Confirming my identity, I agreed to have my name included, a decision that was life changing, although I did not know it at the time. I then forgot about the conversation, confident in my own mind that such an attractive posting would go to someone with good connections in the corridors of power.
Some months later, while working at Annan, I was summoned to an interview at the BRB headquarters in Marylebone Road, an adventure of considerable importance when compared to my usual round of activities. Having met some of the other candidates I returned home convinced that I could forget about the position so far as I was concerned.
Christmas and New Year came and went until, in February, I was working at Stranraer when the staff office tracked me down and a voice enquired whether I had a passport. On replying in the negative I was asked if I could obtain one and be on the Queen Mary sailing for New York in ten days’ time at the end of February. I responded affirmatively and was duly on the ship when she sailed for Cherbourg and the wide Atlantic, along with four other BR and CIÉ clerks heading for the B&I offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto.
In those days BR had an arrangement with Cunard that allowed staff on business to travel at reduced fares in the best cabins in steerage class. On that voyage the ship was pretty full and our contingent was placed in two-berth cabins below the waterline and just above the engines. I was seasick from the Bay of Biscay until we neared the US coastline.
On disembarking we were met in the cavernous luggage hall by Peter Green from the B&I New York permanent staff who escorted us to the office, located in those days in the Rockefeller Centre at 630 Fifth Avenue, a prestigious address. I was not permitted to dally in the city, however, and that night found myself on the overnight train to Toronto, my destination for the next nine months. I was allowed a couple of night’s hotel accommodation until I found a room in ‘Dizzie’s Doss House’, as it was affectionately known. This was a boarding house run by an English lady (a pre-war motor-racing driver), who provided bed and board for about half a dozen, mainly British, guests.
The background to my new activity lay in the establishment of a representative office in New York by the LMS in 1937 – not the best of timing in view of subsequent events. During the Second World War the office was maintained by one redoubtable lady, apparently virtually unaided, until tourism started to flourish when peace returned. By 1960 the pressure on staff in the peak summer months necessitated additional resources, hence the transfer of one experienced clerk to each of the four North American offices. Due to the historical links between Canada and Scotland the majority of Canadian tourists were including Scotland in their itineraries, hence the request for a relief clerk from the Scottish Region to come to the Toronto office.
The work was interesting, which included issuing tickets (mainly against orders received from travel agents) and dealing with Britrail passes and Thrift coupons, rail and ferry services and enquiries from the various agents, airlines and members of the public. In addition to the railway companies and all ferry services, B&I also represented the hotels of its constituents, plus the Trust House and Grand Metropolitan Hotel chain and also several large coach-touring companies, enabling complete package holidays to be put together.
In the May a notable event occurred for me when the chief clerk recruited a new secretary who was to play a significant role in my life. Nevertheless, October eventually came around and my time in Toronto came to an end. I found myself back on the Queen Mary heading for Southampton, although this time I was free from mal de mer for the entire crossing and enjoyed a single cabin boasting its own porthole.
On my return, and without any interval, I was back on relief in my old position, my first job being at Thornhill Goods where a wet October Monday morning found me walking round the yard noting down the numbers of wagons shunted in over the weekend. With the rain running down the back of my BR waterproof and my notebook becoming ever more sodden, I debated whether it would have been wiser to resign when in Canada and become a permanent immigrant!
THE RETURN
An unexpected telephone call took Jim White back to Canada and later to the United States
Having enjoyed a summer of working in Toronto the return to south-west Scotland was a considerable contrast. Then, when I was covering the late shift at Stranraer one day in late January 1961, I received a call from
Regional Headquarters in Glasgow asking whether I was prepared to return to Toronto the following month for another nine months there. Needless to say, I did not hesitate, and February once again found me on the boat train to Southampton where the Queen Mary was waiting to take me and the other relief clerks to New York and, in my case, thence by train to Toronto.
As the months passed it became apparent that a significant and growing amount of revenue was originating from the western provinces of Canada, notably British Columbia, which was some 3,000 miles and 3 hours time difference away. After due consideration, the BRB agreed that an office should be opened there with the proviso that a target revenue should be reached within three years. I was appointed as clerk in the new office and it was agreed that I should drive out west, with expenses of 10 cents per mile to cover my costs. The trip on the still-under-construction Trans-Canada Highway took ten days and meant covering 3,600 miles in total.
After two years on the west coast and with the financial target already met, I was promoted to sales representative in the New York office and responsible for covering the southern states from Washington DC, south to Miami and west through Texas – a considerable area and, in my opinion, the best sales job on BR.
The customer base was primarily travel agents, the pattern being to spend the winter on the road and the summer looking after one’s customers in the office. For me this translated into taking the ‘Peach Queen’ train from Pennsylvania station to Raleigh or thereabouts, covering Virginia and the Carolinas by car, flying to Miami and then working my way north to Jacksonville. As I included Daytona Beach in my itinerary I took the opportunity to drive along the sands there, famous as the home of many land-speed record attempts.
From Jacksonville the overnight train delivered me the next morning to New Orleans to cover that city and Baton Rouge, then off on another flight to Houston. On one visit to Houston I was asked to give a 10-minute radio talk on the forthcoming ‘Flying Scotsman’ service. I was still talking at the end of the 10 minutes and was asked to return the next week. I then did further spots for this programme, which was syndicated to some 200 local radio stations across the USA.
On another visit to Houston on a hot, sunny day in November, I was returning to my hotel when I ran into stationary traffic. On walking to the head of the queue I was in time to see President Kennedy, his wife and entourage drive past in an open car. The next day I was driving to Dallas via Waco when, on setting off around 12.30 p.m., I switched on the radio to hear that a few minutes earlier President Kennedy had been assassinated and was being rushed to hospital. I stopped in Waco but no one was interested in anything but the events in Dallas so I pressed on to my hotel there.
The following day was a Saturday and, on leaving my hotel for a walk, I noticed a crowd of people standing on the opposite corner of the street. Having nothing better to do I joined them and discovered that I was outside the jail where Lee Harvey Oswald was being held before being moved to another secure location. Just then my neighbour asked, ‘Did you hear that?’ But I had not. It was the sound of a gunshot, of Jack Ruby killing Oswald.
The whole area then erupted. An ambulance arrived, was too large to fit into the tunnel under the jail and was replaced by a smaller one which took Oswald off, already dead. With Monday being declared a day of mourning and few people interested in considering UK travel plans, I called short my trip and returned to New York. Since then I have read extensively about the assassination of JFK and returned once to Dallas where I stood on the famous ‘Grassy Knoll’. I remain of the view that Oswald was not working alone, but I doubt we shall ever really know.
The rest of my career on BR was somewhat less exciting than this period. I had returned to the UK to become a TA in Scotland. In January 1968 I was appointed a salesman in International Container Services, that very individualistic organisation in Finsbury Square, London within the Shipping Division of BR and which launched the first lift on–lift off container service between Harwich and Zeebrugge. But that is another story in itself.
DERAILMENTS
As David Barraclough’s narrative demonstrates, derailments were a fact of railway life
Wath Yard
‘How many off; how many buffer-locked?’ This was often the first question the incoming assistant yardmaster at Wath yard asked of the assistant yardmaster he was relieving. It was a crucial question as it frequently determined one’s activities for part, hopefully, or even most of the shift. Pushing an average of 3,000 wagons over the yard’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ humps every 24 hours was not going to be achieved if either or both of these two problems caused any of the thirty sorting sidings beyond each hump to become blocked. An assistant yardmaster’s first priority was to keep the throughput of wagons flowing over the humps and if either derailment or buffer-locking hindered this the ‘pilot’ – a 350hp radio-fitted diesel – and a human shunter would be needed in a hurry.
Rerailing was usually simple: just set the ramp or ramps correctly and pull the derailed vehicle up their incline, and usually ‘on she went’. Buffer-locking was even simpler, done by pulling the offending wagons to a siding split to alter their alignment. Too easy, though, to proceed happily and fail to notice that one wagon could be buffer-locked in the opposite direction to another one or even buffer-locked at both ends so that the change in direction produced a derailment.
On my shift I had a yard foreman who was very keen on closing up wagons on the sorting sidings below the hump. This was something that had to be done slowly without the wagons being attached to the pilot and with sufficient handbrakes applied. Slow and steady was the rule. One afternoon there were several sidings below ‘A’ hump to be pushed down and this became less than slow and steady. On an adjacent ‘B’ hump siding a Mottram train was just departing when my foreman pushed too hard, resulting in buffering-up and a heavy collision with the wagons of the departing train. Thirteen wagons were derailed and an overhead electric supply mast brought down with the 1,500V dc wires falling across the departing train and tripping the supply. The Mottram guard was shaken but thankfully unharmed. Three hours had been wasted in putting matters right and one siding was out of use for four days.
On another occasion the carriage and wagon examiner on duty called me to come down to a siding off ‘B’ hump where he said there was a derailment. We met and there was a recently repaired and repainted Lowmac wagon that was en route to an industrial firm in Rotherham who had purchased it from BR. The wagon was not derailed in the strict sense of the term. As a result of a very rough shunt one pair of wheels and half the length of the wagon was upside down on top of the other half, a situation that took some sorting out. We could drag the half wagon in one direction and in the end took it over ‘B’ hump and then pushed it, protesting, until we reached a spot where it was out of the way and could be cut up on site.
All this excitement occurred during my ten-month secondment to Wath, the ex-Great Central Railway yard built in 1907 and where some 3,000 1-ton mineral wagons were sorted every day in the 1960s and even on into the ’70s.
Another train of empties for Wath yard passes beneath a loading gauge behind Robinson Class 01 2-8-0 locomotive No. 63727. (Bryan Stone)
Doncaster Division
The Doncaster Division of BR was bisected by the East Coast Main Line and had a number of branches of some importance. Within broad boundaries of Spalding–Seamer and Mansfield–Cleethorpes it dealt with many passenger services and just over 22 per cent of the whole of the BR freight traffic. Until August 1973 a significant portion of the latter was ironstone for the Scunthorpe blast furnaces coming from an area south-west of Grantham at Sproxton and Stainby (the Highdyke branch off the East Coast Main Line) and the Denton branch off the Grantham–Nottingham line.
The iron-ore content of this home-mined ore was only 15 per cent and this necessitated the running of five Class 6 fully fitted trains of thirty-five ‘Tipfit’ wagons and seven unfitted trains of up to fifty tipplers five days each week and up to seven train
s on Saturdays. The unfitted services alone conveyed 1,500 tons per train, 56,900 tons each week. The services were all worked by Grantham train crews on an out and home basis with routings at various times via Honington, Newark and then to Doncaster via Crowle. The unfitted trains originally ran via the East Lincs line and then via Newark and Barnetby. They were later upgraded to Class 7 with a vacuum-fitted portion of additional brake power.
Over the years only two derailments stand out. One was on a Saturday evening in the depths of winter when a broken rail near Worlaby on top of the North Lincolnshire Wolds resulted in twenty wagons out of the thirty-five on a Class 6 train being derailed and turning on their sides on top of the low embankment. It was bitterly cold and freezing outside with snowflakes blowing in the wind. The clearing up would have to wait but by crowding all the attending departments into the warm signal box and sending the locomotive crew back to the warmth of their Class 47 diesel we were able to complete the paperwork in record time, which would avoid the need for a divisional inquiry.
The other ironstone derailment occurred late one sunny morning when a Class 7 Highdyke–Frodingham train was passing over Boultham level crossing on the approach to Lincoln St Marks station. The cause was eventually found on site to be a broken axle on one of the unfitted tippler wagons in the train, many wagons of which went all over the place and, in doing so, managed to fracture the main underground gas pipe that supplied the greater part of Lincoln. The escaping gas caught fire with a dramatic flame rising some 30ft in the air. The local fire service was quickly on site and gave instructions that the flame must continue to burn to avoid an explosion and that under no circumstances should an attempt be made to extinguish the fire until the gas had been cut off on both sides of the level crossing. BR staff were permitted to begin sorting out the shambles within 30 minutes and use of the Immingham and Doncaster steam cranes was also approved.