Three Generations of Railwaymen E-Book

Jim Body

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 265

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

When Jim Body joined Great Northern Railway in 1916, he could never have imagined that it would become 'the family business', with both his son Geoff and his grandson Ian taking to the rails. Through the eyes of three generations of Bodys, the rail industry changed beyond recognition, going through two world wars, grouping, nationalisation, the end of steam and privatisation before ending up as the industry we know today. With tales that include being suspected of spying, dealing with dramatic flooding, and the first Glastonbury Festival, Three Generations of Railwaymen is a rare behind-the-scenes look at one family's life and experiences in the railway industry.

Leseprobe

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Geoff Body, Ian Body, 2018

The right of Geoff Body and Ian Body to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9034 9

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgements

PART ONE: HERBERT (JIM) BODY

Lad Trainee to Station Relief Clerk

A Lowly Start

A Move, a War and a Scare

A Very Different Scene

Married

The Second World War

System Streamlining

Dead of Night

To Norfolk Post-War

The End of the M&GN

Relays and Punched Cards

PART TWO: GEOFF BODY

Under the Influence

Records Smashed

Lines of Character

A Main-Line Junction

Passenger Stations and Goods Depots

Live Chicks and Lyons Cakes

Rather Less Glamorous

44,000 Missing Sacks

Dead Rabbits Smell

Cider and Cockles

The East Anglian Herring Season

A Lost Train

On Her Majesty’s Service

Biggleswade Station Booking Office

The Fire Hogger

Joint Road/Rail Office, Finsbury Park

Off to ‘The Smoke’

In Court

Commuting Studies

Canvassing and Development Section, Norwich

Humour Competitions

General Section, District Goods Manager’s Office, Gordon Hill

A Busy Freight District

Lorries, Cranes and Handling Staff

Always Something Different

Sidelines

A Landmark Decision

Traffic Apprentice Training at Spalding

Home Comforts

At Whitemoor Marshalling Yard

Humping

Stations and Yards

Shades of Brunel

A Badge of Authority

A Real Mixture of Yards

Motive Power

On the Inside – of a Firebox!

Tapping and Shopping

On the Footplate

A Lucky Escape

A Unique Tramway

Diesel and Electric

Cambridge: Commercial and Operating

Views from the Garret

Signals and Perks

A Memorable Lunch

More Variety

The Final Phase

Off to the Seaside

The Other Extreme

The Tramway

Varied and Profitable

Taking Cars off the Road

Oil and Water

Change and Reward

Traffic Manager’s Office and Eastern Region HQ, Liverpool Street

A Hide on the Docks

Where is the Urinal?

Freight Sales Officer, Divisional Manager’s Office, King’s Cross

A Line Saved

A Joke on the Boss

A Truly Remarkable Railway

Senior Management Course No. 16 at Woking

Acting Divisional Commercial Manager, Liverpool Street

Marketing & Sales Manager, West of England Division, WR Bristol

A Great Variety

Disaster

Pumping Engines and Monkey Specials

The Wild West

Bad and Good at Ashchurch

More Personal

‘Now Let’s See Your Ticket’

The Pop Music Affair

Turned to Stone

A Move and a Bucket

Area Manager (South West), Freightliners Limited

The Terminals

Lost at Sea?

A Brand New Depot

Steel and Opera

Change Happens

On My Own

Rail Link Restored

Sheep May Safely Graze

The Big Anniversaries

Invicta150

Rocket150

GWR150

The Later Years

The Aftermath

New Books and Exciting Launches

Somerset and Railway Tales

PART THREE: IAN BODY

Getting Started

The Early Days

An Unintentional Career

Management Training

Training Schools

The Far South-West: (1) Signalling

Assault

A Bruising

The Far South-West: (2) Plymouth

Risk of Showers

All the Fun of the Freight

Riding the Stick

Operating Variety

Divisional HQ Tedium

On to Real Jobs

Seaside Station Master

Disturbed Sleep at Exeter

Back Indoors Again

Assistant Area Manager (Terminals), Worcester

Life in the Country

Mixed Blessings

Signalling Variety

Two Tunnels and a Dog

Baptism of Fire

History and Novelty

Freight Tales

Passenger Promotions Manager, Bristol

Competition and Marketing

The 125mph Arrival!

Divisional Public Relations Officer, Bristol

Good Press, Bad Press

Divisional Demise

PR Promotions Manager, WRHQ, Swindon

150 Glorious Years

New Stations and Novel Promotions

Marketing Development Manager, InterCity, Swindon

Serious Promotions

Fun and Frivolity

InterCity Route Manager (Bristol & South Wales), Swindon

Franchise Development Manager (Terminals), Swindon

Business Group Manager (South Wales), Swansea

Flying the Flag in South Wales

A New Era and an Old Danger

The Parting of the Ways

Avon Anglia Crowd Management (Cardiff)

Learning the Ropes

Incidents, Challenges and Issues

Moving On and Winding Down

London 2012 – Olympic Games

Olympic Park Transport Integration Centre (OPTIC)

Different Cultures

And Now

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When Jim Body joined the Great Northern Railway in June 1916, just after his 13th birthday, the rail network was at its peak, with nearly 24,000 miles of its rails covering the whole country and pervading every aspect of life. Now it has shrunk to less than half its former size and is a totally different activity, one that he would barely have recognised. In the way of these things, there is now a move to reverse something of the long, lean years of line closures which, in doctrinal haste, cost so many important transport routes, such as the Great Central route to Marylebone, and various cross-country lines including those from the Midlands to King’s Lynn and from Oxford to Cambridge.

Jim was born in rural Lincolnshire into a family with a long history as agricultural labourers. His schooling progress provided an opportunity for a major change, and engagement as a lad trainee on the railway, then a highly regarded employment, was a major change in his life. How strange his first days must have been, with the journey to the gaunt railway district office at Peterborough, an interview with austere officials and then arriving at his first station. There he would have been plunged into a world of myriad forms and practices, as well as the earthy excitement of being part of the train romance that he had only known of vaguely before.

The amount of railway change in Jim’s lifetime was incredible, not just in the trains, track and signalling but also in functional matters – all, of course, in stages which Jim needed to understand and embrace. He would have seen two world wars, with the 1923 grouping and the contrast of the General Strike and the dawn of the glamour expresses in between. He was dedicated and loyal to the railway industry and its tradition of public service, and maintained his belief in its traditions for the whole of his fifty-two years of service. This dedication and his ability took the lad trainee to a final well-deserved senior post as a divisional traffic accountant.

Unsurprisingly, Jim communicated much of his enthusiasm for railways to his son, Geoff, who joined the old London & North Eastern Railway at the age of 16 in 1945. The whole system had emerged from the demands of a second major war, worn out but hopeful. It still operated in much the same way but had high hopes for the future which the LNER expressed in a modernisation plan labelled ‘Forward’. In his progression from temporary probationary junior male clerk to senior officer, Geoff was also to be part of great changes in Britain’s railways. The Modernisation Plan of 1954 brought vehicles like railbuses and diesel locomotives; suburban electrification followed and then the overhead lines linked Euston and Glasgow. Semaphore signals and level crossings were modernised, speeds rose dramatically and every facet of the activity improved. But road competition was not to be denied, earnings dropped and Dr Beeching’s ‘reshaping’ plan led to a climate of closure which was eventually to see not only a huge reduction in the route mileage but also, in due course, the abandonment of the traditional wagon-load business, newspaper and postal traffic, and the Red Star Parcels service. Privatisation completed the massive changes.

After twenty-eight years, Geoff moved on to managing a road tanker company and subsequently to his own writing and publishing activities which, unsurprisingly, had railways at their core.

By the time Ian joined the railway, this general process of change was continuing, albeit mostly in a downward trend with the early 1980s representing the lowest point for revenue and growth. In 1986, sectorisation saw the arrival of the three passenger subdivisions of InterCity, Regional Railways and Network South East, and things generally began to pick up. The arrival of high-speed trains (HSTs) exemplified the optimism and rate of change along with serious restructuring of the freight business. This process of change was further accelerated by the Railways Act of 1993 which heralded privatisation. While the company names and liveries were perhaps the most obvious change to the public eye, the separation of infrastructure and rolling stock ownership from operation were far more fundamental. Passenger carryings continued to rise significantly, the railways opened their doors to much more external recruitment and the industry began to be judged against other industries rather than as a traditional category of its own. In some ways it had come full circle from Jim’s days in terms of private ownership, coupled with dramatically advanced operation and technical expertise, but comfortingly, the underlying values of public service and industry comradeship had not changed.

The direct and indirect railway links of these three lives span over a century. In that time they have brought the three people involved great dividends from those they have worked with and the experiences they have gained. We are grateful for both and for the ongoing support for this record provided by Amy Rigg and her colleagues at The History Press.

All photographs are from the authors’ collection except where specifically acknowledged.

PART ONE

HERBERT (JIM) BODY

By Geoff Body

LAD TRAINEE TO STATION RELIEF CLERK

My father was Herbert Body, ‘Young Jim’ as everyone called him at first, and then just ‘Jim’. He was born into an agricultural worker’s family at Heckington in Lincolnshire in 1903 but grew up at Great Ponton when they moved there in that same year. Such moves were commonplace in the farming world at that time and the next one was to Corby, only 5 miles away but providing advancement for young Jim’s father, who was given control of the farm’s steam machinery. Curiously, a son of the family living next door turned out to be C.K. Bird, who ultimately rose to the top ranks of the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER).

A Lowly Start

Father himself was destined for a railway career, showing enough educational promise to raise the prospect of a scholarship to Grantham Grammar School. Then fate took a hand, as is so often the case, and an opening occurred for a lad trainee on the Great Northern Railway (GNR) at Great Ponton station, on the King’s Cross to York main line. Backed by his headmaster, young Jim secured an interview at the GNR District Office at Peterborough, was appointed to the position at Great Ponton and began his railway career there on 19 June 1916. By now the family had again moved home and the novice railwayman had to find lodgings. This he did, but at 13 his wage was a mere 9s a week, which was less than he had to pay out for his accommodation. Not for the last time, a parental subsidy was needed.

Examples of the multitude of forms young Jim Body would have had to understand and use when he began his railway career at Great Ponton station.

Life at Great Ponton station would hardly have been hectic. It lay on the 5 miles of 1 in 200 descent northwards from Stoke Tunnel, where Down trains would have been braking for Grantham and Up ones steaming hard to breast the crest and speed down the high-speed stretch beyond the tunnel. The local passenger train service was sparse because of the line occupation demands of the long-distance expresses, and the trains that did call would break no speed records. The first Down train to call was part way through its all-stations marathon from King’s Cross to Doncaster, which occupied nearly seven hours in the process. When he was qualified, Dad would have booked a handful of people going to work on the 8.32 a.m. and then watched as the guard waved his green flag and the locomotive, probably an Ivatt 4-4-0, eased its train off towards Grantham and the connections it made there for the Nottingham, Lincoln and Boston lines. He may well have lingered to watch an Ivatt Atlantic storming the gradient on the Up line and marvelled at the graceful 4-4-2 locomotive, a design which had appeared on the main-line scene in 1902 and was to be the mainstay of its express services for nearly fifty years. Off he would then go to tackle the daily cash balance, some goods traffic invoicing and other routine station tasks.

A Move, a War and a Scare

Things were a bit more lively at Waddington, where Dad was sent after his five-month induction at Great Ponton. The passenger train service on the line running north from Grantham to Lincoln in the shadow of the Wold ridge was a little busier, especially on Lincoln fair or market days, but the station’s main activity was linked to the new aerodrome situated some 5 miles to the east beyond Waddington village.

The Great War began to rage fiercely and air power was becoming increasingly important, and with it the needs of the new aerodrome up on the hill. Its personnel, supplies and construction materials all had to come by rail and the modest Up side goods yard at the station was a busy place indeed. The constant stream of inwards rail traffic all had to be hand-craned onto flat trailers and then hauled up the steep hill by a traction engine. Between issuing tickets and keeping the goods office records, Dad found himself with plenty to keep him occupied.

Now 13½, Dad had got a rise with the move. His rate was now 12s 6d for a week of ten-hour days. Unfortunately, his ‘digs’ cost half a crown more, so the parental subsidy had to continue to make up the deficit and help with clothing, books and the like. He fell for the sister of a new-found friend, a farmer’s daughter who lived just across the road from the station and who was destined to become my mother, but there was no cash to spare for romantic gestures at this period.

No doubt there were occasional lively moments, one at least proving quite unusual and not a little scary. It was a time when German Zeppelins were already raiding the east of England and, looking up on one occasion, Dad knew that the dark shape overhead boded no good. It proved to be a Zeppelin which had followed the course of the railway line, looking for targets to bomb. All this passed quickly through young Jim’s mind and his worst fears seemed to be realised when a dark object was lobbed out of the passing airship and hurtled down towards him. Jim had never run faster in his young life until a resounding clang on the station approach road revealed the object to be an empty fuel can!

A Very Different Scene

In 1921, now 18, Jim became a man clerk and got a nice rise to £80 a year. With the wartime activity at Waddington now at an end, he was moved to an office at Stainby. There a new aspect of the railway business confronted him on a mineral line network which ran west from the main line at High Dyke to serve a growing activity in the mining of iron ore. Opened in 1920 to serve mines either side of the route at Colsterworth, the single line continued on to more mines and sidings at Stainby and was then extended to Sproxton in 1923. Working the branch was a pretty basic operation, with unusual and often slightly hair-raising operating practices and the need to manage and document a large number of empty wagons coming in and constant loads of ore hauled outwards over steep gradients and sharp curves to the main-line marshalling sidings at High Dyke.

Jim again had to lodge, this time at Colsterworth and with a signalman who worked the Stainby signal box, one Harry Barlow whom he described as ‘quite a card’. With station working and the mineral line business all adding to his experience, after a couple of years Jim got a nice promotion to be a station relief clerk based at Hitchin. Another change brought him back to be based in district manager ‘Micky’ Mirfield’s office at Peterborough, again relieving holidays and vacancies anywhere between ‘Arlesey and Arksey’ as he was wont to describe it. It was a varied and interesting job, with the occasional drama. One attended his period relieving at Rossington, where the passengers were mainly coal miners. Dad was a small, compact man, dwarfed by the burly miners, but he still had to deal with those who showed a marked reluctance to pay for their travel and others who returned from Doncaster races after having drowned the sorrows of their betting losses.

Married

With much improved financial prospects and a colleague offering him a terraced house to rent for 4s a week, Jim and his Waddington sweetheart could now marry. This they did back at Waddington in 1927, and two years later they produced a son who was to be the family’s second-generation railwayman. My mother returned to the family home to await my arrival and stayed there for eight weeks before bringing the young lad back with her to Peterborough. Dad, ever meticulous, kept a housekeeping record during that period, faithfully recording everything from his wages of £2 7s 6d a week to such things as bread 4d and the shilling for his membership of the Railway Clerks’ Association. The week of my return was marked with her train fare of 9s 6d, a 3s taxi fare and 1s 9d for ‘gripe water’. A new era had begun.

Great Northern Railway locomotives Jim Body would have seen at work.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

System Streamlining

The war years of 1939 to 1945 were to place a huge strain on the railway system, producing a large increase in traffic but with manpower ranks depleted by the needs of the armed forces. One measure that had to be taken was to eliminate all waste and inefficiency, and to this end a task force was set up and six posts were advertised to secure experienced staff to scrutinise activity at all main centres throughout the Southern Area of the LNER, to streamline practices there and to reduce staffing requirements accordingly. My father saw this vacancy list, with the result that ‘For some reason now obscure I applied for a post in London,’ to quote from the memoirs I later bludgeoned him into writing. He was successful in securing one of the positions and was to spend several years contributing to the war effort in this way. It was not always popular, of course, leading to the people concerned being known as ‘The Razor Gang’. His base was Marylebone but, because of the London bombing, he was allowed to continue living in Peterborough, where my mother did her bit by becoming an unpaid cashier at the city’s American Red Cross club.

Dad managed to get home most weekends but then had reports to write and Home Guard and fire-watching duties to carry out. By this time the Home Guard had graduated from its origins as the Local Defence Volunteers (known colloquially as the Look, Duck and Vanish brigade) into being properly armed with rifles. Even so, he regarded a period of duty on the roof of Peterborough North station as a bit risky at a time when the main danger came from the air.

Like countless others, our family, now with a daughter, had to cope with food rationing, air raids spent in the Morrison shelter and other difficulties, but Dad never faltered. Always smart, from gold tie pin to spats, he scoured the LNER lost property office in the motley King’s Cross buildings, known by most as ‘The African Jungle’, for items which would help with the wartime shortages. He could never resist a bargain umbrella but did better at nearby Bravingtons, where the 10 per cent discount afforded to REPTA (Railway Employees Privilege Ticket Association) members went towards a tasteful piece of jewellery for his wife.

Dead of Night

By 1943, the theft and pilferage taking place on the railways to feed the black market had reached serious proportions and a headquarters decision was taken to appoint a team of two experienced people to track down where the losses were occurring and devise ways of combating them. Dad was chosen to represent the railway operating and commercial role in this process, and Inspector Bill Baker of Grimsby that of the railway police. Together they began an intense period of visiting depots, docks and yards, working with local staff and police officers, spending uncomfortable hours in goods yards and depots watching for criminal activity and enduring the horrors of the Luftwaffe’s attempts to bomb the railways into dysfunction. Dad rarely alluded to the horrors of the bombing nights, just joking about his appreciation of the solid LNER tables he often had to shelter under. But he was, not unreasonably, proud of the results achieved in arrests and prosecutions, sadly mostly of railway employees, and in the reduction in losses and claims. After a nearby clothing factory had been bombed while Dad was keeping an eye on the wagons loaded with Player’s cigarettes in Nottingham goods yard, he was greatly upset for many years by the cries of the injured he had heard.

Dad enjoyed having first-class travel for the first time in this period, but overnight observation from an unheated guard’s van or crouching in an empty platelayers’ hut while incendiary bombs dropped nearby was considerably less of a pleasure. Twice having to convince others that he was not a German spy also came in the latter category.

TO NORFOLK POST-WAR

Weary of the war, as everyone was, but with an official letter of recognition of his work, Dad returned to his pre-war post at Peterborough. Promotion from Class III to Class II came in 1946 with a successful application for a staff inspecting clerk position in the Norwich district office, and the family duly moved to that fine city. Dad was to spend twenty-two happy years in Norwich, twenty of them based in the railway offices housed in the impressive main building at Thorpe station.

By this time I, too, was a railwayman and was now working at stations in the Norwich district. I don’t think there was any nepotism but Dad had a good relationship with the chief staff clerk, Cyril Birkett, which may have helped in the variety of postings that enhanced my learning process. By the time I came back after a period elsewhere, Dad was head of the General Section and subsequently joined the management staff level as assistant to the district manager.

The End of the M&GN

In 1959, Dad had to take on a task for which his Razor Gang work had well qualified him. It was the time of closures and the wandering routes of the old Midland & Great Northern (M&GN) railway network in north Norfolk were never going to survive. Busy as its main line from Castle Bytham to Great Yarmouth may have been on summer Saturdays, a weekday journey labouring over its 150 miles of mixed single- and double-line route just did not earn enough to service its costs. The other main M&GN routes from King’s Lynn to Peterborough and Melton Constable to Norwich had to go too.

On 2 January 1959 the 11.37 a.m. from Cromer Beach calls at Holt on its way to Norwich City. Just two months later most of the M&GN system will lose all its passenger services.

Despite the magnitude of the closure task, it was achieved – sadly in some ways. But this was still the period when redundant railway items were sold off cheaply to staff and the family acquired one or two mementoes of a route they had some affection for, including an Eastern & Midlands Railway platform seat, now in the care of a preservation location. The standard cost, whatever the item, was 5s, and proof of ownership was recognised by the issue of a ‘Firewood Receipt’ by the district engineer’s office.

Relays and Punched Cards

My father’s last post was that of divisional accountant at Norwich, a position from which he retired on 20 April 1968 after just two months less then fifty-two years of varied and useful railway service.

Jim Body seated at his desk as the Norwich Division traffic accountant.

Quite apart from the natural affection of son for father, I had a special regard for a man who could successfully make the journey from the laborious clerical and accounting routines of his first years to managing the new generation of huge IBM relay computers and punched card accounting. In between he had seen the full variety of his industry in many places and guises, and he never lost his affection for it and his pride in it.

PART TWO

GEOFF BODY

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Records Smashed

It was supposed to be a secret but I have no doubt that the railway grapevine had been at work and that quite a few people knew about it. Not me, though. At just 6 years old I could hardly have been aware of the excitement that had been steadily growing on the London & North Eastern Railway, spreading through Doncaster Works and the Marylebone headquarters and then seeping out to other parts of the LNER empire. All I knew was that my dad had promised me an exciting outing.

It was September 1935, four months after the Silver Jubilee celebrations of King George V and Queen Mary. On the 27th, a Friday, I was up, washed and dressed far too early, and eager to set out with my father, then an LNER relief clerk working at whatever stations in the Peterborough district needed temporary assistance. After what seemed an impossible wait, we eventually left the house, caught the Eastern Counties company’s red double-decker bus to Peterborough North station and crossed to the Down side of what was still known as the Great Northern main line, before settling down to wait.

Still with no idea what it was all about, I do remember a stir among the small crowd, people fidgeting, looking at their watches and waiting for movement among the approach signals. And then it happened. Passing within a few yards of me was a train such as I had never seen in any of the rail journeys we had made to visit other members of the family – a sleek silver-grey locomotive and matching coaches, so unlike the regular LNER, LMS (London, Midland & Scottish) and M&GN visitors to Peterborough.

Streamlined A4 Pacific No 2509 Silver Link at Hadley Wood with the 1935 inaugural LNER Silver Jubilee train. The sight of this later in its journey inspired in Geoff Body his choice of a railway career.

Class A4 Pacific No 2509 Silver Link and its train had reduced speed to negotiate the curves that then existed in the Peterborough alignment and I had no idea of what had already been achieved. The speed over the 41 miles between Hatfield and Huntingdon had averaged just over 100mph and four world records were to be broken during this short press preview run to Grantham, a fitting commemoration of this, the 110th anniversary of the pioneer Stockton & Darlington Railway and the dawn of a new era.

Lines of Character

Another strong influence on my subsequent choice of career was linked to our family visits to Stamford, where we ‘took tea’ with an elderly aunt and uncle in a fashion I thought quaint and they clearly thought ‘proper’. Despite then accommodating heavy traffic on the Great North Road, Stamford was, and still is, an attractive place, full of character and enhanced by its many warm stone buildings. Our journey was made on a stopping train from Peterborough with a change at Essendine for the short single-line branch to Stamford. The station there, later called Stamford East, was a fine Tudor-style building, reflecting the influence of Burghley House, the home of the Marquis of Exeter, who was a prime mover in the promotion and funding of the branch railway.

Stamford had realised quickly that it needed to take action to compensate for missing out on the newly opened Great Northern main line to the north, which had passed it by to the east. By 1853, the Stamford & Essendine Railway had secured its enabling Act for a branch to the GNR and was opened three years later. As the major shareholder, the marquis had influenced the design of its station headquarters and, for a time, some staff wore a special livery. The decorative frontage of the station building led to a square booking hall with a high ceiling and a gallery around the first-floor level. Huge doors then led to the single covered platform with its two faces and sidings beyond.

Essendine, GNR main-line junction for the Stamford and Bourne branches which provided Geoff Body with both his first footplate experience and his first writing fee.

The whole station, although not huge, was incredibly imposing, and being allowed to ascend the footplate of a branch tank locomotive on our arriving train cemented the indelible impression the place made on me. Later visits, in a position of some authority, never diminished that initial impression, even knowing that the signalmen were able in quiet moments to do a spot of fishing in the River Welland from the top of the signal-box steps. This just added to the delightful idiosyncrasy of the place, as did the fact that soon after the GNR took over the line its 0-4-2 tank locomotive No 503 managed to plunge itself into the same river and acquire the soubriquet ‘The Welland Diver’ when recovered. Dad also passed on the account of local man Jim Cherry about a bull going berserk in the goods yard, ending up stranded in the river and having to be lassoed in the course of a hectic mini rodeo to get it out again.

Retracing our steps homeward took us past the junction for the closed branch to Wansford, another modest venture serving a sparse territory and an early closure victim. At one period, supposedly, the controlling Stamford station master visited this part of his empire on horseback, and it was certainly unusual in having its train-loading restrictions expressed as maximum wheels per train. Nor was the shadow of the past entirely escaped back at the main-line junction station, for Essendine’s other branch was equally eccentric, with its own unusual coaching stock where the train guard was wont to polish the brasswork. An article on that line’s closure earned the author his first writing fee, a princely £2.

A Main-Line Junction

Another factor in my eventual choice of career was one more outing with Dad, this time when he was working a shift in the passimeter at Peterborough East. Passimeters were a recent LNER innovation and comprised a ticket office with windows all round, and positioned so that joining passengers were channelled along one side and alighting ones the other. My job was to receive and sort the collected tickets at the latter.