My 50 Years as a Southern Railwayman

by P J Shannon

  In March 1969, we were blessed with another daughter, Natalie.

  The weeks turned into months and I became more proficient at the job and even learned to operate the crane and move the pole trailers about for loading. I was really enjoying the challenge; but there were storm clouds gathering. There was a lot of talk of the depot closing and the development of concentration depots, but for the time being it was business as usual.

  One morning when I reported for work most of the wagons in the middle road of the yard were derailed. The shunter, Tim Pierce, had got muddled on the points and had derailed most of the train. The train formation for the middle road at Staines was mainly made up of light conflats with either “A” or “B” containers, so the re-railing of this type of traffic would be no problem for my experienced crew to deal with. As there was only superficial damage to the track Tim agreed and went to report his indiscretion to the Depot Manager. Before he had returned, my crew had unloaded the containers and re-railed the conflats, and the only thing left to do was to have them inspected; this was done during the day and the conflats were deemed to be safe to travel.

  During my time at Staines I had a couple of accidents. One happened when I was untangling a wire bond, and the heavy steel loop for protecting the ends sprung up and hit me in the groin causing a swelling in the testicular region. This was, to say the least, very painful and required surgery at Frimley Park Hospital. As you can imagine this kept me quiet for a while but thankfully I suffered no lasting damage.

  The second accident occurred when I was working on a bogie bolster full of small steel girders. I put my foot up on a stack which turned over and trapped my right foot, which had to be released by lifting the stack off my foot. I was rushed to Ashford Hospital where x-rays showed that I had only severely bruised the foot thanks to my safety foot-wear, and although I was off work for a couple of weeks I think that my guardian angel was looking out for me that day. This was a blessing in disguise because I had to learn to kick a football with my left foot and became a left sided player when I returned to playing. Now 50 years on, I still bear the scars of this encounter on my right ankle.

  In 1970 my parents returned to Ireland to live. I suppose I could understand them wanting to go back home, but I would only be able to see them when I had my annual holiday and that was not as frequently as I would have liked.

  I had a good three years in the full loads department at Staines but unfortunately the railway was now a changing place, small depots were being amalgamated and everything was being concentrated. It was now only a matter of time before I would lose my job and be transferred somewhere else.

  The 1970s

  In the early part of 1971 my turn came, and Staines was closed. I was lucky to obtain a Leading Railman’s Parcels post at Egham with all my grade and pay, so it was full circle for me back to the same job as I had had at Ascot all those years ago. Egham was a little country station on the edge of Surrey and Middlesex, with up and down platforms, a signal box at the country end of the down platform, with a station crossing. About a mile further along was Rusham crossing. At the London end was Pooley Green and the Causeway crossings. The town itself was one street up and one street across with some nice little shops. The rest of it was quite spread out and there was also a bypass that took all the A30 traffic past the town and on to London.

  Station Manager, David Milnthorpe, was in charge of an area which included Staines, the train depot, Ashford and Feltham. The staff members at Egham were Fred Ishaq, Bill Dabner and Mr Michael the Leading Railmen; Margaret Haggerty and Danny McGuinness, the Clerical Officers; Bob and Fred Russell the Signalmen, and Ginger Lineham the parcels delivery driver. I soon settled down to this nice clean job, with a smart new uniform. It was all a far cry from my previous dirty job!

  The delivery rounds included Egham, Englefield Green, Pooley Green and Thorpe, which was quite a sizeable area. Ginger had his work cut out to cover it all. I have to say that the workload for me was no pressure as I was already used to working to deadlines in my previous jobs. Some of our work during the pre-holiday season involved going to Holloway College to sell tickets and arrange for the students’ luggage to be collected, which was generally done by Danny and me. We all got on very well together and as time passed I was asked if I would consider being LDC representative for the station. This I agreed to and it brought me into contact with the other reps such as Mickey Lake and Tim Pearson and it also gave me knowledge of how meetings were set up, which was to prove very valuable in later life. In negotiations with Mr Milnthorpe I soon learned that it was of no use to rant and rave about the unfairness of a certain situation, but to ask for things that were possible and under his control; this always worked very well for me and we usually got what we wanted.

  Around this time there was a lot of talk that the signal boxes were going to be closed and a panel-box which would be located at Feltham would take in the area from Bracknell to Richmond and all branches within the Feltham Manager’s Area. All this was due to take place in 1974, but as with a lot of things of the day we thought that it was pie in the sky and never going to happen. We could soon see, however, that we were wrong; this would see the end of all the little signal boxes in the area.

  With work on the Panel progressing, it became a great opportunity for me to learn about points winding, signal flagging, AHB and CTTV barrier control, all of which meant a bit of overtime for all who were willing to move with the times.

  Sometimes I was asked if I would do a Sunday turn at Virginia Water and I was not one to turn down a bit of overtime, so I usually agreed.

  Virginia Water was a small junction station with an up and down main platform to and from Waterloo and Reading, and a branch line with up and down platforms for trains to and from Weybridge and Woking which were controlled by “A” box which was situated in the middle of the junction platform. This box also controlled a little siding at the London end of the station. The other end of the station was controlled by “B” box which controlled the loop around to Weybridge; so it was quite a busy little place with a train service every 15 minutes or so.

  One of the features at Virginia Water was its huge sanatorium which housed a lot of people with mental conditions, so most days it was not unusual for at least one of them to visit the station; this meant keeping a sharp eye on them as history had proven that some of them had either tried to commit suicide or had been successful, so an urgent phone call to the sanatorium would produce a very quick response. While I was on duty there I was lucky not to have to deal with any incidents of this sort.

  Feltham Panel finally opened in 1974 introducing Colour Light signalling, reducing Wood Lane, Feltham West, Datchet, Mays, Thorpe Lane, Pooley Green, Egham, Chertsey, Sunningdale and Camberley to gate boxes, with emergency crossovers at Bracknell, Bagshot and Sunningdale. The new colour light signals were provided with a plate bearing a prefix letter F and a number. The prefix letter would indicate the controlling signal-box; telephones were provided at or adjacent to the stop signals and at certain other locations as indicated on the diagram.

  The introduction of colour light signalling was going to take some time to get used to; just a few of the new signals being junction indicators with numbers, route indicators, automatic signal, yellow aspect, banner repeating signals, semi-automatic signals, platform starting signal “off” banner, and position light shunting signal. This was all exciting stuff and I, for one, was in my element. As a parcel leading railman I had the opportunity to take advantage of this and to get weekend flagging and other operating work.

  I could see that the parcels traffic on the railway was in decline and small offices were being closed. Bigger concentration depots were now the norm, with offices at Staines, Richmond, Woking, Andover and Basingstoke.

  In 1974 we had another child; this time a boy we named Phillip. He was to complete our family and we appeared to be so happy, but later revelations proved this not to be the case.

  In October 1977 it was my turn f
or redundancy. The parcels office at Egham closed leaving me with a dilemma. Should I progress on the operating side of the railway considering the knowledge that I had gained over the past 4 years, but which would mean shift work, or should I try and look for something else? The decision was really taken out of my hands when I was offered a job as Foreman of the Wimbledon DMO Movements gang. This was the same type of job that I had when I worked at Staines but it meant travelling all over the Southern Region on special jobs or work that needed specialist men or equipment. I would need to give this some consideration and discuss it with my wife. As she was not keen on me working shifts I decided to take the job. I was called up to Wimbledon to meet the team I would be in charge of. It consisted of Tommy “call me a liar if you will” McNamara, Ernie Willett, Jimmy Ball and Terry Hall. These guys had been doing the job for donkey’s years and there was nothing that they could or would not do. They even took a turn doing night shifts loading the paper trains from Waterloo to Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth and Poole.

  Over the years we travelled all over the Southern Region to places like Bevois Park, Fratton, Marchwood, Basingstoke, Andover and Richmond, doing a lot of specialised work and meeting many interesting people.

  In the summer of that year we took the children to Ireland to see their Grandma and Grandpa. It was very good to see them after a couple of years and to catch up with some of my old friends from my childhood, Mousy Gorman and Bonzo Kenna. I had not seen these two lads since I left Ireland at fourteen years old so we had a lot of catching up to do, but before we knew it, it was time to go home.

  I was back in Basingstoke. This depot was an unusual place as it had a full loads and a parcels dispatch depot. The former was run by a father and son team, Jim and Ray Tyrell, and the parcels side was run by John Taylor.

  We also had some funny and strange times. Ernie Willett’s wife, Kitty, was so distrustful of Ernie that she used to follow him everywhere. When we were doing nights at Basingstoke or Richmond she would turn up and spend the rest of the night with him. We could never really understand why, because Ernie was probably the most inoffensive bloke that I have ever encountered and devoted to Kitty, but for some reason better known to her she did not trust him. I remember one night at Basingstoke where John Taylor was the night Inspector, when Kitty arrived. Tommy Mac wound her up unmercifully, jokingly taunting her about the ladies of the night arriving at certain places on the night train and offering their services to the men. He said that this usually occurred on the round-trip trains from Waterloo to Waterloo via the Hounslow loop at Richmond. I tried to tell her that this was a load of rubbish, but unfortunately she would not have any of it and said that I was covering up for him. I don’t think that winding Kitty up really helped, but Tommy Mac saw it as great sport.

  In November my mother was taken ill and my brothers and I went to Ireland to see her, but it was obvious when we saw her that she was very ill and we didn’t expect her to get better. We returned to England without a great deal of expectation, but she saw Christmas out. Unfortunately she died on 27th January 1978, so we made a sad trip back to Ireland to bury her.

  1979 saw me doing the rounds, and I even did a couple of weeks at Woking, an unusual place for my team as Woking usually looked after themselves, but for some unknown reason I got a call to go there. It was all parcel traffic, but a job was a job. It was then back to my usual haunts such as Basingstoke, Bevois Park, Richmond and Fratton which took me up to the end of that year.

  All Change

  It was early in 1980 on my return from work at Andover that my wife told me that our marriage was no longer working. I must admit that I had not seen this coming. Like most people, I thought that things were all right. Like everybody else, we had our ups and downs but always managed to pull through, so this devastated me. Of course we had the three children to consider. We had been married for 15 years and did all the usual things like going on holiday every year, and having the occasional break while her mother looked after the children.

  This was not an ideal situation but she continued to stay at the family home until I could sort something out. My turns of duty at Andover continued and with the help and support of my good friend, Maggie, who was the parcels foreman there, I began to get my act together.

  A few weeks passed without her making her mind up so I decided to move to my brother’s in Egham for a couple of weeks. I then informed my company office of the situation and managed to get rostered on a middle shift at Richmond from 9am until 4pm. This was ideal, so I returned home and after some discussion it was agreed that I would stay in the family home and Jo would return to her mother’s, leaving the children with me and she would see them at the weekend. This arrangement worked fine with me at work and the children at school. I would see them off in the morning and be home very soon after they got back to get their evening meal.

  As I had worked at Richmond on and off for 3 years, I had become friendly with one of the young foremen, Tommy Davey. He was very accommodating about my plight, but the other foreman, SL, who was no older than Tommy, took a delight in trying to upset my routine by going to the Station Master, Mr Baldwin, complaining that I was not working around the clock like everybody else. His complaints were soon squashed as Mr Baldwin and Charlie Reilly, the Station Inspector, knew of my position and had agreed with my office that I would be allowed to work a static shift until further notice.

  In my opinion, Richmond was not the best designed location for the type of traffic we were handling. The parcels office was pokey and restrictive with pillars and a lead-out under the roadway above to the main station platform and along to number 4 platform where the railway vehicles were loaded. This was all done by loaded brutes and a towing tractor which was restricted to 7 brutes. The system for loading was to tow the brutes on to number 4 platform, unhook them individually, then try and reverse them one at a time up a ramp into the PMV. One had to be a very good driver to accomplish this in one go and all this was generally done by one man. I held the record of being able to tow 12 brutes from the parcels office to number 4 platform without hitting one of the pillars or unhooking any of them, so the task usually fell to me to load everything. This suited me fine as I did not have to engage in much conversation and it gave me ample time to think. One day when I arrived, Tommy greeted me with the news that SL had been successful in getting the job as foreman at Bricklayers Arms and would be leaving us directly; he knew of my dislike for SL and knew that I would be overjoyed with the news. He was absolutely right, and with another weight off my mind I began to enjoy life again.

  The months passed and I was coping with my predicament, but the wind of change was blowing on the railway again. Andover had been incorporated into the depot at Basingstoke and I was happy that my old friend Maggie had been transferred there and still had a job.

  Later in the year I was given probably the best news for some time. It appears that my unfriendly ex-foreman SL had been helping himself to some of the goods at Bricklayers Arms and was caught by the BTP trying to smuggle them out in his car. Needless to say, I considered that he got his just deserts when he was prosecuted and sacked from his job.

  Time has an awful habit of passing by and things at home were settling down and I was coping with the odd hiccup here and there, and as I was not working at weekends, I could get on with the washing, cooking and cleaning. As the children were with their mother at weekends, it also gave me time to mix with my friends, play darts and have a pint. It was during one of these weekends on a visit to my local pub, the Three Mariners, that I noticed that they had acquired a very pretty new barmaid named Jenny. Although I was still reeling from my separation from my wife and was not looking for romance, there was something about her that made me interested. Over the next few weeks I got to know her and she would chat with me and my friend Mike. I thought she was more interested in him, but that was not the case and over the next few weeks we talked about ourselves and everything seemed to fall into place, but there were complic
ations. She was in the same situation as I was. She had a small son called Jamie and was in the process of separating from her husband, and she too was not looking for romance. We were probably the unlikeliest pair to hit it off. She was English, Protestant and had a private school education, whilst I was Catholic, Irish and with not much education. As we became closer we dated a couple of times. I say dated, but we met each other while we were doing our washing in the local launderette. This seemed an unlikely setting for romance, but it was all we had. One of my other friends, Brian Vaughan, told us that it would not last five minutes. He later had to eat his words!

  Brian used to arrange the pub darts competitions that usually took place on Saturday night, so I was able to enter them. Although I considered myself a useful player, I never won any of them. I was runner up most of the time with medals to prove it. I suppose it gave me something to concentrate on.

  Christmas was approaching and Jenny decided that our position was all too intense and as I had three children who were living with me, this was a lot of responsibility. She decided to go to her sister’s in Horsham to try and clear her head. I must admit that I thought that even if she returned she would call the whole thing off. But much to my joy that didn’t happen. On her return, we knew that we were destined to be together, so we had to make plans for the future. We didn’t know how we going to sort this mess out, but somehow we did, and over the next few weeks things improved. I was able to meet her husband and discuss what was best for all of us. He decided that he would move in with his brother and leave her and Jamie in the house, so at least they would be safe and secure.

  Jenny had now left the pub and was solely looking after Jamie and helping me out with my children but this was not an ideal situation and something drastic would have to be done but not yet.