Along Different Lines: 70 Real Life Railway Stories

by Geoff Body, Bill Parker

Overview

Running a railway is a complex business. However organised it is, there will always be surprises: often hilarious, frequently unexpected, but sometimes serious.

Along Different Lines includes such bizarre 'everyday' events as coping with hurricanes, rogue locomotives and runaway wagons; PR successes and otherwise; the Brighton Belle, Flying Scotsman and Mallard; training-course capers; a wino invasion; trackside antics; the Eurostar backdrop; the birth of a prison; and royal and other special occasions.

Expert authors Geoff Body and Bill Parker lovingly compiled this entertaining collection in which railway professionals recall notable incidents from across their careers. This illustrated compilation provides an enjoyable look back at life on the railways.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780752490915
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	11/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Geoff Body worked in the railway industry from 1945 to 1976 and wrote widely about railways and canals throughout his retirement. He wrote a wide number of articles and books, including Railway Oddities and Signal Box Coming up, Sir! Bill Parker's 39-year railway career began at Doncaster in 1945 and progressed through to divisional manager at Kings Cross.

GEOFF BODY made his start with LNER in 1945, at the age of 16, and left thirty-one years later, having risen to senior officer positions within the railways, Freightliners and Pickfords Tank Haulage. He wrote widely about railways and canals throughout his retirement, including a number of articles and books, counting Railway Oddities and Signal Box Coming up, Sir! among them.

BILL PARKER's 39-year railway career began at Doncaster in 1945 and progressed through to divisional manager at Kings Cross. He died in 2023.

Read an Excerpt

Along Different Lines

70 Real Life Railway Stories

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By Geoff Body, Bill Parker

The History Press

Copyright © 2012 Geoff Body & Bill Parker
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9091-5

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CHAPTER 1

Beginnings

Opening these accounts, Geoff Body remembers some of his early railway experiences. At the end, Sir William McAlpine portrays activities at the other end of the spectrum. In between is a range of fascinating stories from the professionals of a great industry.

My father was a district relief clerk and I was well used to train travel, especially from Peterborough to Waddington or Rauceby in Lincolnshire, the nearest stations to my respective grandparents. It became the practice for my parents to take a later holiday on their own after the annual family week at Sandown, Isle of Wight, in June, and when they did I went to stay on the farm of my Waddington grandparents. During one school holiday it was deemed that I, still a lad, was responsible enough to make the journey to Lincoln on my own. Suited me! I welcomed the opportunity and it saved my parents from having to deliver me before setting out on their own break. Put on the train at Peterborough I knew that I must get out at Grantham and move across the platform face to No. 4 bay where the Lincoln 'Parly' usually stood. I had to make sure this was the right train for sometimes the Nottingham stood there and sometimes the Lincoln one even went from the Up side bay.

Delivered onto the busy main-line train at Peterborough with plenty of admonitions about behaviour, I sat quietly all the way to Grantham, content to savour the travelling experience. Alighting at Grantham with my small suitcase and the demeaning label with my journey details attached to it, I checked on my next service and then devoted myself to the Nestlé chocolate machine and the views of the locomotive depot from the Down platform. Joining my own train, I was not displeased with my seasoned-traveller performance so far.

The Lincoln train was compartment stock with no corridor so I could travel in splendid isolation. I knew that I had to watch for Honington, Caythorpe, Leadenham, Navenby and Harmston station stops before alighting at Waddington. Plenty of time to switch the lights on and off, open the window and try the result with the strap on the various anchor points. I had enough sense to put my head out only with caution and gave that up for studying the stilted sepia photographs of unknown and uninspiring places displayed above each seat.

When these activities palled I settled down with my comic. Some cracking stories absorbed all my attention and I neglected to check the passing markers. Horrors! That was the brickyard on the Up side. I had missed Waddington station itself and was now heading for the unfamiliar territory of Lincoln Central, then a busy station indeed. I remember feeling highly embarrassed but not in the slightest bit worried. I just asked about the next train back and spent the waiting time marvelling at the constant operation of the High Street level crossing and the variety of local trains waiting in the bays for various East Lincolnshire destinations.

There were no recriminations when I finally arrived. My grandparents with the pony and trap were waiting to take me to their farm, their relief overcoming any anger. It had been a good adventure and now I could enjoy exploring the old farm machinery that lay around everywhere, fishing and bathing in the Brant River, the summer threshing rituals and the occasional excitement of a line-side fire adjoining one of grandad's fields, courtesy of a hard-working D Class 4–4–0 passing on the line that had witnessed my small shame at being over-carried.

There were many other 'firsts', of course. The first time on a locomotive footplate was one, and then the first day of employment by the London & North Eastern Railway, when I travelled the whole journey to St Neots in the brake compartment just to feel I belonged. A short piece I wrote about that day appeared in an issue of the old LNER Magazine. Then there was the first time 'in charge', which came after I had moved to the Norwich district.

After a spell at Wells-on-Sea, memorable for having to fix parcel labels on to wet bags of sea fish, I was instructed to relieve the chief booking clerk at Fakenham West. Wow, that sounded good – a position of substance at last! I imagined the early and late turn clerks would carry the job and I could bask in their efforts and make meaningful decisions. Not so; they were even younger and less experienced than I was and, worse, could not manage the single-needle telegraph instrument. I began to wish I had spent more of my time at Eccles Road on the training instrument, but had found more interesting things to do there, including spending time with the signalman and sampling the local Banham Cider Company's offerings.

In those days the telegraph instruments were located in station booking offices in the old Great Eastern area and were the prime source of communication. The staff at the Norwich hub of the system could send messages in Morse at incredible speeds and competent receivers signalled their willingness to accept this by sending 'G' – two long dashes/needle-moves to the right – followed by one short/left, after the preliminaries of repeating their station call sign and holding down the key handle to signify their attention. Unfortunately, I was only a 'T' reader, one who had laboriously to decipher each arriving word and indicate understanding by sending 'T' back. I managed, but took an awful lot of time to do so and stretched the patience of the Norwich staff to breaking point. But they could not win since the receiver could hold up the proceedings at any time by just holding the handle/needle of the instrument still until their anger dissipated.

Sometime after this, as my appreciation of both the professional railway and its origins increased, I earned my first professional writing fee – £2, I think – for an article in Trains Illustrated about the Essendine to Bourne branch. I travelled on the last day before closure and this vignette image of a disappearing railway age is still very clear in my mind. Oddly enough, the motive power was a British Railways (BR) Standard 2MT but the two old, quaint saloon coaches were from a different age. The guard was immaculate and complete with traditional rose buttonhole. Any spare time on the short journey he spent polishing the brass fitments of his stock. I just had time to photograph the ancient Red House which served as Bourne station building and was popularly rumoured to be haunted. Back on the platform to take a photograph of the train which would take me back to Essendine, the guard insisted that all his passengers and the train crew should line up to appear in my shot, just the way it had happened in so many early railway photographs. I have written much since then but that first fee was really something.

A Great Crash & a Cloud of Coal Dust

During his duties one evening Hugh Gould came across a wagon with a mind of its own.

In 1952, while a student at Glasgow University, I took a summer job as a porter at Drumchapel station, in the Glasgow North district ex-LNER (NBR) suburban network. I spent my first day on the railway unloading a coal wagon at the behest of the stationmaster, Willie Kirkpatrick, 'to help a good customer avoid demurrage'. Throughout the day I was harangued by the relief porter I was to replace, a left-wing Aberdonian, who insisted that 'they had no right' to make me do that. But I knew a co-operation test when I saw one, and Willie K. and I got on very well afterwards.

Drumchapel goods depot consisted of a single hump siding shunted by a freight trip every weekday morning, usually worked by an Eastfield depot Class J37 locomotive. The only traffics were coal wagons and BD containers for a local biscuit firm. On late duty, I would spend part of the summer evenings tidying up the siding by putting up the wagon doors, using a small hand crane to put the container back on its Conflat wagon, shackling it up and running it down to the bottom of the siding to couple everything ready for a straight lift next morning.

One evening, the Conflat refused to budge, even with the aid of a pinch-bar. Peeved, I went on down to the foot of the siding to put up the wagon doors there. Then I heard a rumbling noise. The Conflat had belatedly decided it was time to go and was accelerating towards me. I ran forward, but could do nothing to halt its relentless progress, only await the consequences. There was a great crash and a cloud of coal dust, but mercifully, no derailment. I coupled up and went back to the booking office, slightly shaken and with a lesson learned.

Next day, the permanent way ganger, a kindly Highlander called Angus McPherson who lived in the stationmaster's house, Willie K. living elsewhere, sidled into the booking office and whispered into my ear: 'I heard you shunting last night, Hughie!'

LMS Apprentice

Alan Sourbut, who retired as chief mechanical & electrical engineer, Eastern Region, recalls his early days as an apprentice fitter, which stood him in good stead in his later career.

It was 7.30 a.m. on 10 May 1943, with snow falling heavily as I commenced my first paid position as an apprentice electrical fitter, following a two-year course at the local technical college. The location was the carriage repair shop at Meols Cop, Southport, the main depot for the electric trains on the Liverpool–Southport and Crossens–Ormskirk lines. The depot covered all maintenance and repairs to this fleet and was staffed by sixty artisans and others. Supervision was by a foreman leading electrician, who clocked on like the other staff and whose clock card showed a base pay rate some four shillings higher than those he supervised. General control of the depot, plus the staff at Hall Road Shed, was under a salaried grade engineer.

There was a clear distinction between the wages grade depot staff and the salaried office staff. Incredibly, when the engineer was not there, the chief clerk, not the foreman, took charge of the shop. The fitters were dual-crafted, mechanical and electrical, and we apprentices learned much from them, including the use of equipment and diagnostic skills. We also suffered their pranks and idiosyncrasies. Initiation varied, but all the lads were sent for the 'long stand' where the victim was despatched to the stores and then relayed from one fitter to another and made to wait for some time at each. Eventually, the light would dawn and he would return to his mate to be admonished somewhat impolitely!

There were known dangers at work: the live rails outside the depot could produce a painful experience at 650v, asbestos was used extensively, and heavy bogie work could easily cause injured hands.

After about three years at Meols Cop depot, some time was spent at Hall Road Inspection and Cleaning Shed, fault-finding on trains in service and sometimes on live equipment. Cleaning was done by Italian prisoners of war who arrived, without guards, on a bus. A major was in charge, and he doubled as a cook to those nice guys who revealed wonderful voices as they sang while cleaning the trains. Some of them had artisan skills and borrowed our workshop at times. Many an ashtray on their coach became a cigarette lighter.

Some months were spent at substations and on 'live rail working' where we handled live switches and cables using rubber gloves! Towards the end of the apprenticeship, twelve months were spent at Horwich Works in the machine and electrical shops. This was a location where men had names like Entwistle and Ramsbottom and greeted each other with 'erst goin' on ould fettler' or similar words.

The 6.20 a.m. train from Southport took me to Lostock (Bolton). Then came a bus ride to the works after a steep hill walk. Twice a week I had tea in the works canteen; then I would go by train to Wigan to study for engineering qualifications and home by train to Southport. There I met a girlfriend – now my wife of sixty-two years – and had supper at her home until late. Returning on the 6.20 a.m. train next morning was fine until Wigan, where mill girls joined with lots of shouting and banging – they all wore clogs! There was danger in making careless comments because the pack could be aggressive, as one lad came to experience by losing an item of clothing.

The apprentice scheme was well organised and closely monitored and was a credit to the LMS. When I was 21 I moved on to become a draughtsman in the district office at Liverpool, and the experience of having worked with tools and machines was invaluable. Above all, this had been a great learning process, working alongside skilled men, understanding their pride in doing a good job, and savouring their humour and fellowship. As I moved around the railway industry in a management role, I always felt at home and got on well with those people who represented a key feature of that great enterprise.

The 1987 Hurricane – A Personal Experience

In the early hours of a Friday morning in October 1987, Theo Steel was awakened to deal with the effects of a violent storm on both his railway and his home.

I went to bed on Thursday 15 October 1987 aware that there was a storm in the English Channel; but I was not in the slightest degree prepared for what was about to happen. At the time I was assistant general manager – a short-term co-ordination role in East Anglia, scheduled to end imminently with the creation of the Anglia Region. Indeed, John Edmonds was due to arrive as designate general manager on 19 October.

I was awoken by a telephone call at about 2.30 in the early hours of the Friday morning; it was overhead line engineer John Sills to say that he was out driving and had been almost hit by more than one falling tree. His information from the Electrical Control Centre overhead line monitoring facility at Romford was that they had already recorded more incidents that night than in all the previous thirty-eight years of electrification, and that trying to run any electric trains was impossible. A timescale for repairs was not practicable as we were still in the eye of the storm. We agreed that John should go home, but with caution.

I telephoned the control office at Liverpool Street and gave instructions that trains were to cease moving in East Anglia. At that hour there were no passenger trains on the move but I recall that we had to recess a Freightliner train at Witham and that its driver took a long while to get home. It was clear that movement on any route in East Anglia was going to be perilous, whether electrified or not.

Next I had a conversation with Phyllis Allen who was then our public relations and press manager. I asked her to get in touch with her radio and press contacts. By now it was around 3.30 a.m. and we were in the thick of the storm at home in Southend. The family all got up, dressed and prepared themselves to leave the house quickly if necessary.

David Rayner, who was general manager at York at the time, got hold of us and was quite incredulous that we had decided to stop all trains and on my head be it. Ironically, there was a huge crash in the middle of this conversation which he could hear and on investigation I realised it was some 600 tiles coming off one end of our roof! A fine demonstration of just what we were facing, and it wasn't over yet. David's switch from incredulity to empathy was immediate, but it did demonstrate just what a surprise the intensity of the storm was. In the event, no East Coast Main Line trains ran south of Peterborough on the Friday, either.

It was now about 6 a.m. and I had to get the germ of a recovery plan together while the storm continued to rage. It stopped suddenly at dawn and we were able to assess the damage to the roof at home which we got battened down later in the day. Luckily the damage was not structural, although there were houses in Southend that were rendered roofless and uninhabitable.

About 9 a.m. I got to the area manager's office at Southend Central with some difficulty and did a telephone round-up there. All agreed that we would aim to get the railway open again for Monday morning and that the plan for damage repair in the electrified area was to work outwards from Central London. I left the various functions to get on with the work and asked to be advised of any problems. I recall that army assistance was offered but not used.

The critical path was going to be tree clearance and restoration of the overhead lines, and I arranged a Saturday morning conference at the Romford Electrical Control Centre to review progress. Key roads were passable by this time although traffic lights were not all working. Our car had not been damaged but our neighbour's had. There was a lot to do but a resumption of the full service on Monday seemed possible and to be aimed for. All the rolling stock was serviceable and had been on live track sections – earlier snows in 1987 had not only interrupted supplies but ruined the traction motors on about fifty units.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Along Different Lines by Geoff Body, Bill Parker. Copyright © 2012 Geoff Body & Bill Parker. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Introduction & Acknowledgements,
Beginnings (Geoff Body),
A Great Crash & a Cloud of Coal Dust (Hugh Gould),
LMS Apprentice (Alan Sourbut),
The 1987 Hurricane – A Personal Experience (Theo Steel),
Slips, Slides & Washouts (Jim Dorward),
Kettering (Dennis Simmonds),
Renaissance 4472 (Bryan Stone),
First Course (Geoff Body),
The Battle of Broughty Ferry (Harry Knox),
A Shuttle Cock-Up (Cedric Spiller),
Tales of a Young Controller (Nick 4Wood),
Wormit & Lochee (Jim Dorward),
Music: Orchestra & Chorus (Bill Parker),
Music: Opera (Geoff Body),
Music: Top of the Pops (Cedric Spiller),
Newsworthy (Mike Lamport),
European Night(mare) Services (Theo Steel),
To Pull or Not to Pull (Jim Dorward),
A Near Thing (David Crathorn),
Survey Surprises (Peter Spedding),
'Something of a Luxury' (Dennis Simmonds),
We Couldn't Keep Up (Bryan Stone),
The Down Postal (Peter Spedding),
Joint Line Adventures (Bryan Stone),
The Chief Clerk (Bill Robinson),
Are You Sure It Will Work? (Jim Dorward),
Ferry Admiral (Bryan Stone),
Show Time (Bill Parker),
The Diesels Have Arrived (Jim Dorward),
At a Higher Station (Cedric Spiller),
Stop & Think (Geoff Body),
Unforgettable Meal (Basil Tellwright),
Motorcycle Stationmaster (Alex Bryce),
Now There's a Funny Thing (Jim Gibbons),
Out of the Ordinary (Jim Gibbons),
Prison Yard (Bill Parker),
Merthyr Tydfil (Hugh Gould),
Peter Pan (David Maidment),
Sitting on the Fence (Alex Bryce),
Whoops! (Tom Greaves),
The Swishing Fishes (Graham Paterson),
Queen of Scots China (Hugh Gould),
Biter Bit (Alex Bryce),
Coal Train Runaway (Philip Benham),
On Call (Don Love),
The Cloth (Bill Parker),
Steam Pressures (Tom Greaves),
The Whirling Dervishes (Les Binns),
The Woking Ladies' Finishing School (Geoff Body),
A Shade Too Far (Hugh Gould),
The North Briton (David Ward),
Caught Out (Geoff Body),
The Depot Cats Rule – OK? (Colin Driver),
A Royal Lift (Philip Benham),
Manchester 'Miss'-hap (David Ward),
The Slowest Train? (David Maidment),
I'll Be Alright (Hugh Gould),
The Return of Mallard (Philip Benham),
Expresso Supper (Graham Paterson),
Special Workings (Philip Benham),
Interviews (David Jagoe),
On the LT&S (Basil Tellwright),
Show Me the Way to Go Home (Alex Bryce),
Lured by a Bird (Philip Benham),
None Shall Sleep (David Crathorn),
Ne Worry Pas (Jim Gibbons),
Beaujolais Nouveau (Jim Gibbons),
Crushing Experience (Geoff Body),
Belle Finale (Frank Paterson),
Saloons & Me (Sir William McAlpine),
Glossary,
Copyright,