A Privileged Journey

by David Maidment

  A week later I sat somewhat nonchalantly in the cab of 5001 Llandovery Castle on arrival at Paddington, chatting with my father and a few of his friends who had spent the day at an army reunion in Bristol and whom we had just transported back to London. 5001 had been another star on the ‘Oxford Flyer’ a month previously, when it had achieved an actual time of 53 minutes (average speed 71.3mph), and the highlight that time had been passing through Reading at spectacular speed (Tableau 8 and Appendix Table 14). The following day I saw No 4082 roaring through Twyford on the ‘Flyer’, and the Old Oak grapevine later claimed a journey time of 51 minutes (74mph average). The sound effects were akin to that of an automatic machine-gun being fired; there was clearly no slowing for the Twyford curve that day!

  On the whole, ex-GWR engines rode extremely well, but I was quite keen to experience a really rough locomotive, to see just how bad it could be for the crew. I had been on a ‘Hall’ (4917) which rode like a bicycle with a flat tyre, but that was irritating rather than rough. One of Old Oak’s older double-chimney ‘Castles’, 5008 Raglan Castle, had been a star but was getting run-down as it neared its shopping date, and as it was rostered for an evening commuter train I decided to go with it to Reading. The first alarm was when I leant against the cab side and found that it moved under my weight. (A few days later 5008 was removed from a South Wales milk train because the crew complained of a dangerous cab — many rivets were found to be missing.) Steam pressure on getting the ‘right away’ was only 180lb, and the fireman was trying manfully to clean the fire. However, once underway, 5008 proved herself to be very strong, steam pressure recovered, and good time was kept. 5008 was rough but not uncomfortably so. She rolled and pitched in a sort of corkscrew motion, but if you learned to move with it, it was quite predictable and rather fun.

  I did eventually find a real shocker — but it was not a GW engine. On one of my very long days I decided to do the ‘triangle’ — Paddington–Bristol–Shrewsbury via the North & West and back up the Birmingham main line. I picked up the 7.55am Paddington at Reading, with 7021 Haverfordwest Castle, which gave me a good steady run to Newport, where I caught a DMU to Bristol. There joined the 7.5am Penzance–Manchester, hauled by an ex-works 6945 Glasfryn Hall, the special attraction of this train being that from Pontypool Road it was rostered for a Crewe ‘Royal Scot’ for the remainder of its journey to Manchester. Sure enough, at Pontypool Road a grubby 46166 London Rifle Brigade was waiting, complete with Shrewsbury crew (ex-LMS driver and ex-GW fireman). My first impression was of the comfort and roominess of the cab after the Western engines, but this was soon undermined by its behaviour in motion. Although our running was ‘gentle’, to put it mildly, the locomotive riding was erratic and unpredictable and over 50mph was decidedly rough. The schedule was very easy, the train on time, and the load only moderate (nine coaches), so little exertion was called for, and our highest speeds on the way to Shrewsbury were 66mph at Tram Inn and 65mph on the descent from Church Stretton at Dorrington. At these modest speeds the ride became very uncomfortable, with a jerky side ‘waggle’ that caused me to hang on and not relax my grip for fear of being thrown across the cab. The firing technique was very different from that applied to GW engines; large lumps of coal were manhandled through the firehole door until the firebox was full, then a rest was taken while it burned through, whereas Western engines almost invariably were fired little and often. 46166 was taken very easily up the banks (in fact the fireman confided in me that he thought his mate took it too easily), but we arrived in Shrewsbury on time without discovering what the ‘Scot’ could really do, if pushed.

  At the other end of the scale in terms of ride was a run up from Swansea on 5056 Earl of Powis, a couple of months out of Swindon after overhaul and thus in its prime. I’d joined the Cardiff crew on 7036 Taunton Castle on the 7.55am Paddington from Reading, which ran very energetically and was early at every calling-point. I’d pre-arranged with Driver Ward of Old Oak that I’d return with him on the 11.10am Milford Haven from Swansea — a double-home job, as he would have gone down to Swansea the previous night with 5056 on the 6.55pm Paddington–Fishguard. Despite a load of eleven coaches (420 tons gross) the return journey could not have been made to seem easier. The only source of alarm was a drop in steam pressure as we climbed through Landore and Llansamlet to the summit at Skewen, but on arrival at Neath Fireman Thomas found that the smokebox door had not been sufficiently tightened and was drawing air, and after his attention we had no further problems. Arrival at Swindon was a full five minutes early, and running in the upper 60s was sufficient to get us into Paddington equally ahead of time, with the locomotive running very quietly and riding like a Pullman coach.

  As I made my way back to Twyford station house for the night, on the footplate of 7906 Fron Hall on a Didcot semi-fast, we passed the next up South Wales express (the 12.5pm Neyland) running equally early behind my favourite Laira ‘Castle’, 4087, and I found myself wishing I had waited a further hour in Swansea, although this would have meant disappointing my Old Oak crew, who seemed genuinely pleased to have someone on board who took an interest in their work. In fact, one of the lessons I learned during my footplate spell was that managers were often not aware of the attitudes and concerns of footplate staff because they so seldom saw them undertaking their normal duties. Drivers told me all too often that they only ever saw management when they were ‘on the carpet’ for some sort of misdemeanour. I remembered this when I became Chief Operating Manager of the LMR in 1982 and sought wherever possible to ride with train crews when I had to travel round the Region to get to meetings or conduct other business.

  Other memorable journeys included a little gem of a trip on a parcels train with Didcot’s 6309 — a competent little locomotive, just back from another Swindon overhaul despite its age — and a hugely impressive run with a heavy load (470 tons) from Shrewsbury right through to Bristol with Canton’s best ‘King’, 6018 King Henry VI. During my spell in training at Old Oak my ultimate tally for footplate trips was six ‘D8xx’ ‘Warships’, one ‘D70xx’ ‘Hymek’, one DMU, one ‘D30xx’ diesel shunter, six ‘Kings’, twenty-two ‘Castles’, ten ‘Halls’, one ‘County’, one ‘47xx’, one ‘Grange’, one ‘63xx’, one ‘97xx’ and one ‘Royal Scot’. Logs of some of these runs, with details of the locomotive handling, are included in the Appendix (Table 14).

  At the end of this particular period of my training my supervisory managers doubtless felt that I had been much too much the ‘enthusiast’ rather than the management trainee and had spent too much of my time at Old Oak sampling obsolete steam locomotives rather than the new forms of traction, but as things turned out I would have plenty of opportunities of living with the diesels as they flooded the Western Region over the next couple of years. In retrospect I realise just how much of value I picked up — largely as a result of of my intense interest in all that was going on — that stayed with me throughout my working life. Supremely, the lesson was one of being sensitive to people, their interests and concerns and of respecting the knowledge and experience of those who would not count themselves as managers but whose opinions and views were well worth the effort of canvassing through both formal and informal contacts.

  I look back at my time in the old London Division of BR’s Western Region with great affection and feel a great sense of gratitude towards all those who gave me opportunities and enabled me to develop my potential yet allowed me to have a lot of fun in the process. Many were the times I found myself thinking in disbelief: ‘I’m actually getting paid for doing this!’

  Postscript

  In June 1962 I moved on to the South Wales Division to complete my basic training at Margam (the London Division having no major freight yard), spending months ‘sitting next to Nellie’, as it was known — learning by watching clerks do their job and reading files — in the Swansea District and Cardiff Divisional Offices and ultimately becoming a stationmaster in a Welsh valley. These, however, form other stories and, together with tales
of my time at Gillingham (Dorset), Aberbeeg and Bridgend, in the Cardiff Divisional Office, as Chief Operating Manager at Crewe and ultimately as Head of Safety Policy for British Rail at 222 Marylebone Road, will form the backdrop of a second volume of my reminiscences, to be published in 2016. The foreground will be taken up by accounts of my frantic attempts to savour the last swansongs of British steam between 1963 and 1968, a burgeoning interest in Continental steam in France and both halves of Germany, a one-off amazing tour of China’s JiTong Railway in 2002 and my experiences of the many special steam trains, both in the UK and of those splendid German phenomena, the ‘Plandampfs’ of the 1990s.

  A final chapter will be describe the railway industry’s support for the charity I founded in 1995, Railway Children, which helps street children living on the railway and other transport termini in India and East Africa, and the often hidden runaway children living on the streets of our own country. At a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council held in Geneva in 2012 it was stated that Railway Children, with an annual income of nearly £3 million, was now the largest charity in the world working exclusively for children living on the street. Since its inception almost 50% of the charity’s income has come from individuals and companies associated with the UK railway industry — both the main-line network and heritage railways.

  In common with the royalties and profits from my various novels and non-fictional books on street children, all royalties from this book will be donated to the Railway Children charity.

  The author at the launch of the Railway Children charity at Waterloo station, 31 May 1995.

  The author sits with street children at their ‘platform school’ on the Rayagada Goods station platform near Visakhapatnam in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, c 2004

  The Child Assistance Booth ‘CAB’ at Lucknow station manned round the clock by Railway Children’s partner project, station staff and members of the Indian Railway Protection Force (RPF) as part of that station’s piloted ‘Child Friendly Station’ scheme, January 2011

  Street boys demand a photo with the author at Delhi Cantonment station, c2002

  The poster displayed round Lucknow station encouraging passengers to spot lone vulnerable children and bring them for registration at the Child Assistance Booth as part of the ‘Child Friendly Station’ initiative, a partnership between Indian Railways and the Railway Children, January 2011.

  Appendix

  Train ‘log’ tables

  Table 1: Salisbury–Exeter with a ‘King Arthur’ (replacing 34009 — failed, injector problem)

  30449 Sir Torre, the engine that worked the Ilfracombe express west of Salisbury in 1956, passing Surbiton with a West of England train c1955. (Robin Russell)

  Table 2: Waterloo–Woking (‘King Arthurs’)

  30777 Sir Lamiel pictured in May 1960 at the head of the 5.9pm Waterloo–Basingstoke commuter train, which it hauled regularly during the latter part of 1959 and most of 1960.

  Nine Elms’ 30779 Sir Colgrevance arriving at Woking with the 9.48am to Waterloo, May 1959.

  Table 3: Woking–Waterloo (‘King Arthurs’)

  Table 4: Woking–Waterloo (‘Lord Nelsons’)

  Table 5: Waterloo–Woking (‘Lord Nelsons’)

  30852 Sir Walter Raleigh at Waterloo with the 10.54am semi-fast to Salisbury, May 1959.

  Table 6: Waterloo–Southampton Central (‘Lord Nelson’)

  30861 Lord Anson at Southampton Central on 14 June 1962 with a Bournemouth–York express, which it will work as far as Oxford. (Manchester Locomotive Society collection)

  Table 7: Woking–Waterloo (morning commuter runs)

  Table 8: Waterloo–Woking (evening commuter runs)

  35004 Cunard White Star draws into Woking with the 1pm Waterloo–Exeter (the return working of the 6.45am Salisbury commuter train), July 1959.

  Table 9: 5.9pm Waterloo–Woking (March 1959 ‘trials’, Driver Carlisle of Basingstoke)

  Driver Carlisle of Basingstoke and 30794 Sir Ector de Maris after posting the winning time of 25¾ minutes from Waterloo, March 1959.

  Table 10: Waterloo–Woking (Basingstoke/Salisbury semi-fast services)

  Another run on the 9.48am Woking, this time with the sole Maunsell rebuild of a Urie ‘H15’, 30491, May 1960.

  Urie ‘H15’ 30489 arrives at Woking with the 9.48 to Waterloo, a stopping train from Bournemouth, in June 1960.

  Table 11: Woking–Waterloo (Basingstoke semi-fast services)

  ‘L1’ 4-4-0 31786, displaced by the Kent Coast electrification, heads the 1.24pm Saturday Waterloo–Salisbury into Woking, July 1959.

  Table 12: 8am Plymouth–Liverpool (via North & West route) 1960/1

  5095 Barbury Castle at Pontypool Road with the 8am Plymouth–Liverpool, 17 November 1960.

  Table 13: Swindon–Paddington, 1961

  Churchward 2-8-0 4708 at Reading on the Gloucester – Paddington relief train, on which the author, travelling in the first ex LMS coach just visible, recorded 80 mph between Reading and Maidenhead, 4.8.61. (A.Wild)

  7013 Bristol Castle (the former 4082) at Oxford with a Worcester–Paddington express on 6 May 1962, a week after the author footplated it from Oxford to Paddington on a similar train. (John Hodge collection)

  Bristol Castle speeds through Sonning Cutting with the up ‘Cathedrals Express’ from Hereford and Worcester to Paddington, July 1962. (R. H. Leslie)

  Table 14: Footplate runs during OOC management training (April-June 1962)

  4088 Dartmouth Castle, at Oxford in 1960 with a Worcester–Paddington express.

  Lady Margaret Hall pounds past Fosse Road with a Saturday Wolverhampton–Weymouth holiday express in June 1962, a month after the author footplated it on the 5.30pm Oxford–Paddington. (R. H. Leslie)

  7911 Lady Margaret Hall at its home station of Oxford, at the head of a York–Bournemouth express, 1960. (R. K. Blencowe collection)

  No 6016 King Edward V descends Hatton Bank with the 07.40 Birkenhead - Paddington express on 25 August 1962, a month before withdrawal. (Manchester Locomotive Society collection)

  46166 London Rifle Brigade at Cardiff General with the 8.55am Cardiff–Manchester express, during a period in March 1962 when engineering work at Shrewsbury made engine-changing there something to be avoided. (John Hodge)

  Old Oak’s 7036 Taunton Castle passes Ealing Broadway at speed with the up ‘Red Dragon’ (normally a Canton ‘King’ turn) early in 1962, two months before the author rode it on the 7.55am Paddington–Swansea. (G. A. Richardson)

  Nameplate and numberplate of 7030, now owned by Steven Hayes. (Steven Hayes)

  Table 15: Test runs, 15 May 1962

  Table 16: Excerpts from best runs, 1961/2

  46206 Princess Marie Louise takes over the Fridays-only 8.55pm Glasgow–Euston sleeper at Carlisle, 1 September 1961.