by Geoff Body
Breakfast the following morning was lavish, but no sooner were we on the steamer than another one was served, to be followed by coffee and snacks and an early arrival at Millport on Great Cumbrae Island where, it turned out, we were to have lunch! By the time we had cruised back – with afternoon tea! – along the Kyles of Bute and then to Dunoon where we had dinner in another nice hotel, I had severe doubts about the ability of my trouser waistband to last the remainder of my time here. They were temporarily relieved by the pressing invitation to join in an evening of lively Scottish music and even livelier dancing.
Dragged unwillingly from sleep, the next day was to prove another experience marathon. Our vessel steamed its way over to Arran for a landing at Brodick Pier, lunch in a nearby hotel and then a trip in a nice little Bedford Duple Vista coach to a charming pub near Bennan Head on the southern extremity of the road that runs right round the island. It was a lovely, restful place, but the second midday meal was definitely not needed. Politeness demanded a token gesture, and the same on the eventual water crossing back to the mainland at Ardrossan.
I managed to function fairly normally on the train back to Glasgow, but a grand, final dinner proved my match and after contributing to the warm thanks to our hosts I slipped thankfully away to the quiet of my room. All too generous and lavish perhaps, but it had been a wonderful experience for me, and a useful one, too. I had warmed to the quiet majesty of the scenery and to the genuine people of the area, and I had noted the admirable efficiency with which the whole tourist activity was served – all features I could genuinely pass on. Albeit nearing great change, this was still part of the great Clyde steamer era when one could marvel a little longer at the skills of vessel crews and harbour staff in their judgements and manoeuvres of dozens of vessels and see the immaculate vessels themselves and their gleaming, pulsating engine rooms as something rather special.
The whole tour had been so efficiently arranged, and I had been greatly impressed by the train and steamer service pattern that constituted the transport arteries of the area. Shunting at Ripple Lane and ship to wagon unloading at Poplar Dock were going to be stark contrasts when I got back, and our little ferry out of Tilbury would seem a rather puny affair after the wonders of the Clyde.
THE BR REPRESENTATIVE – FOR RABBITS!
The fairy-tale image of rabbits was not shared by working railwaymen – and certainly not on one occasion by Jim Dorward
It is Wednesday 1 June 1960 and I am on the 4.39 p.m. from Forfar to Perth which, as the 3.30 p.m. from Aberdeen to Glasgow (Buchanan Street), carries the Aberdeen portion of the time-critical West Coast Travelling Post Office as far as Perth. I am on my way back from Perth from, of all things, the annual general meeting (AGM) of a rabbit clearance society.
As rabbits were widespread and causing much damage in the countryside, the Perth district engineer decided that BR should join the various rabbit clearance societies that were being formed to fight the problem. The cost of each member’s subscription was based on the acreage of land owned, with the money that was collected paying the wages of rabbit trappers. So, as the most junior person in the drawing office – 17 years of age – I was given the task of working out the acreage of railway land covered by each society and then arranging BR’s membership. Understandably, this resulted in invitations being sent to BR to attend the AGMs of the various societies. As circumstances conspired, I became the ‘BR representative’ and was told to attend these AGMs, mainly as a matter of BR courtesy.
This had not been a problem, until now, as I only had to write a short report on the outcomes for my immediate boss. However, at the AGM in Forfar, the chairman welcomed BR as a member and then promptly asked the ‘BR representative’ to explain to the large gathering of farmers, the connection between rabbits and trains!
Needless to say I was flabbergasted. I was concerned that what was to be my first attempt at public speaking was going to get back to the district engineer, who was sponsoring my civil-engineering studentship. Simultaneously, I was desperately trying to recall what I had been told back in the office about track subsidence, thinking that there must be some similarity between coal-mining subsidence and damage caused by tunnelling rabbits.
As I stood up, heads turned to see who was going to give the requested explanation. Trying to appear authoritative and sound as though I knew all about permanent-way maintenance, if not rabbits, I blurted out a few remarks about the possibility of 15mph speed restrictions, as in the Fife coalfield. On reflection, this must have seemed ludicrous to the farmers, especially as they must see the Glasgow–Aberdeen trains charging along at 80mph on the Perth district’s best track! I was now very worried about the possibility of being called into the district engineer’s office or of seeing ‘Rabbits Slash Train Speeds’ headlined in the local newspaper!
With hindsight, what I should have said is that rabbits, despite having a cute reputation as Peter Rabbit or Bugs Bunny, are capable of causing considerable damage. When they burrow into man-made embankments formed of earth, for instance, they create a series of tunnels. Heavy pounding by passing trains squashes these, resulting in uneven track subsidence and track geometry defects that can cause derailments if they are not quickly rectified.
Three years after my performance at the Forfar AGM, and perhaps with the help of the rabbit-clearance societies, 80mph trains running in the area was very much a part of the great A4 Pacific locomotive swansong when, displaced by the introduction of Deltic diesels on the East Coast Main Line, engines such as 4-6-2 No. 60019 Bittern were transferred to the Scottish Region to work the new 3-hour Glasgow–Aberdeen via Forfar expresses.
KNOWING ONE’S PLACE
Things were done in a certain, prescribed way at Worcester, as Ian Body soon found out
Arriving for my first ‘real’ job as assistant area manager at Worcester, I was impressed during the first few weeks to be in receipt of a goodly number of gifts – nets of sprouts, sacks of potatoes, bags of apples and blackberries – either left in my office at Worcester Shrub Hill or sitting with my name on at places along the Cotswold Line during my station visits. Of course, I enquired as to whom they were from or what they were for but received no enlightenment.
One night fairly soon after my arrival I was called out to a freight derailment in the small yard at Evesham. It was early on in my operating experience and this was my first derailment, so I decided to play safe. On arrival at Evesham signal box at the entrance to the yard, I duly signed the train register and then sensibly, I thought, asked the signalman for his advice on what should be done.
What followed did not clarify the immediate issue, but it did solve the riddle of the fruit and vegetable largesse. The signalman’s response was simply, ‘I work the box, sir, and you take all the decisions. That’s why you get the fruit and veg as compensation!’
POLMONT 1984
Peter Whittaker had a tense moment with the Railway Inspectorate after the Polmont derailment
As acting director of operations at the BRB, I arrived home after a particularly difficult Monday to hear the first reports of a serious railway accident near Falkirk in Scotland. With a sinking feeling I realised that this would be my first contact with the Railway Inspectorate as the official voice of BR.
I clearly needed to acquaint myself with as many facts as possible and so arrived early in the office the next morning to find that my good friend Chris Green (at that time deputy general manager of the Scottish Region) had arrived before me after travelling from Glasgow on the sleeper. He was able to give me a very full briefing before the inevitable call came from Freddie Rose, then Chief Inspecting Officer.
To refresh memories, the Polmont accident the previous evening had resulted in thirteen fatalities and sixty-one injured passengers, some serious, when an Edinburgh–Glasgow train had been derailed following a collision at 85mph with a stray cow on the line. This was a push–pull unit with the locomotive at the rear and I was aware that concerns had been expressed about the effe
ct on emergency braking and derailment of this formation.
Once I had given Freddie Rose all the details that I knew at that stage, there came one of those career-defining (or threatening) moments. ‘I assume you will be taking these units out of service today,’ said the Chief Inspecting Officer. Visions arose of the chaos that would result from any such decision! Swallowing very hard, I replied, ‘Come off it Freddie, for one freak accident, you must be joking!’ I waited for the explosion at the other end of the line but after what seemed an eternity he said something like, ‘I suppose you’re right.’
There followed an anxious wait for the official accident report some months later. The accident did generate considerable, sometimes acrimonious, debate about the safety of push–pull trains on BR, and myself and others wondered what criticism or recommendations might be contained in the report. In the event, Inspecting Officer Tony King confined his recommendations to the fitting of object deflectors and headlights, and improvements to fencing.
JOINT ROAD AND RAIL OFFICE
An unusual period in Geoff Body’s career, something of a tributary, at least improved the household budget
After a post-National Service stint on early and late turns in the booking office at Biggleswade I was ready for a change. We had managed to set up our first home in a pleasant rented house along the Great North Road towards Sandy, but on just over £5 a week could only manage the barest of furnishing and living standards. Sunday pay was a godsend and even the small commission from selling Railway Passengers Assurance helped.
Then came a vacancy list advertising a Class IV post in the joint road and rail office, located at Finsbury Park. I could get there by train and resolved to have a go. Surprised, I had a good interview, was appointed and duly arrived on the starting date to find that the offices were on two floors above the Silver Bullet pub. That, at least, was handy.
We were just a small unit of four people, beside myself: Tom Gregory, the Special Class B boss, who was rarely in; Class II Jimmy Justice; Class V John Moody; and our secretary and typist Christine Sharpe.
Jimmy was the brains, John kept the records and my job, apparently, was to prepare briefs for our solicitors. Under the 1933 Road and Rail Traffic Act, road hauliers seeking new or additional vehicle licences had to apply to, in our case, the chairman of the Metropolitan Traffic Commissioners, and he would publicise their applications, receive objections from legitimate existing transport providers and hold a judicial hearing where appropriate.
The published ‘Applications and Decisions’ covered everything from a ‘C’ licence for carrying one’s own goods to a ‘B’ licence for carrying specific goods for other people, and then an ‘A’ licence allowing the operator to carry anything anywhere. Among the latter were ambitions that could seriously erode existing rail business and we had every right to enter an objection and instruct counsel to oppose the application for us. In the really important cases this might be a QC, one or two of whom put up some very lively performances in the stylised traffic court procedures of opening and closing statements, presentation of witnesses and evidence, cross-examination and so on.
My contribution was to prepare a brief with what we knew about the applicant’s activities and the facilities we had for handling whatever goods movement the applicant was seeking. Jim was the usual back-up in court but I got to go fairly often and did my job of drawing our counsels’ attention to relevant information. On one or two occasions I found myself doing the front-line job because our advocate was late or missing, but fortunately I survived the ordeal.
This was not a job that made me a better railwayman, but it was interesting. On my train journeys I prepared for my various Institute of Transport examinations – on some winter journeys with ice on the inside of the carriage windows. With Jim and John I frequented Highbury and White Hart Lane in the days when no one sat at a football match and crush barriers were a godsend. I used trams to get to the traffic courts and spent lunch times either in the Silver Bullet, around the local antique shops or rowing on Finsbury Park Lake. The time was coming to move out of this specialised environment but, among the privilege of witnessing some very exciting legal battles, I most vividly remember something rather less grand.
In court, waiting for the case to which we had objected, the clerk called forward an applicant who held an ‘F’ licence for carrying his own produce as a farmer. He could already take his sugar beet to the BSC factory at Felstead and, quite reasonably, sought to be allowed to do the same for other local growers. There was no opposition and the chairman needed only to word the new licence in terms of the radius to which it should be limited. The farmer seemed bemused by being asked for the mileage to Felstead, so the chairman rephrased his request as, ‘How far is it as the crow flies?’
‘I don’t know, your honour, I’ve never done it that way.’ His flippant reply rather made the day for the whole court.
ANGLIA REGION CONTROL OFFICE
Friends had told Chris Blackman that Liverpool Street was a good place to work – he was not to be disappointed
As the new year of 1988 opened I took up the post of operations planning manager for the new Anglia Region. Overseeing the day-to-day train performance for the region was the responsibility of the Regional Control, each shift being run by a deputy chief controller (DCC). It was a curious title, as the person he reported in to was never titled or even referred to as the chief controller; instead, it was operating (or operations) officer.
As well as being responsible for co-ordinating the immediate response to train failures, mishaps and other eventualities affecting train running, the DCC would maintain a log of such events and the actions taken. One of the DCCs, Bob Mace, took particular pride in the quality and style of the reporting in his log. Thus, a report of cattle on the line would be headed ‘Bovine Incursion’; similarly, sheep on the line was ‘Ovine Incursion’, and horses ‘Equine Incursion’.
One morning, services were interrupted by the presence of a goat on the line at Bishopsgate just outside Liverpool Street. How it got there we never discovered, but Bob duly sorted the problems it caused and trains were soon running normally again whilst Bob made his entry into the log and prepared to give it a title. But what was the appropriate adjective for goat? For once he was stumped – just momentarily, for he then remembered that Richard Morris the Anglia Region operations manager had a degree in Classics, so he would be bound to know.
Bob stood up, strode out of the office, turned right down the corridor then left into Richard’s office.
‘Morning guv, what’s the adjective associated with goat?’
‘Caprine!’ was the immediate response. Bob did an about-turn, hastened back down the corridor to the control office and completed the entry with the title ‘Caprine Incursion’.
Two weeks later Bob was on late turn when there was an interruption to the region’s services, which Bob duly logged as caused by ‘a llama and its friend an emu on the railway line’, but when it came to finishing the entry with a title Bob was once again stumped. Without further hesitation he shot out of the office, down the corridor and into ‘the Governor’s office’. However, with remarkable foresight, Richard Morris had chosen not to be in the office that afternoon so was not available for his reputation to be sorely tested.
Bob returned slowly to his own office, pondered a moment and then with a flourish entitled the entry ‘Zoological Incursion’!
Out at the site of this zoological incursion the local, permanent-way gang had rounded up the llama and returned it to its owner, but the emu was last seen running away towards London on the Up line. The signalman, with commendable presence of mind and devotion to duty, proceeded to carry out Absolute Block Regulation 23 and sent the bell signal 4-5-5 for, in this case, ‘an emu running away in right direction’!
HONESTLY, I WANT TO PAY FOR A TRAIN
In a literal sense Ian Body’s bit of Long Marston local enterprise only paid off in goodwill
Back in the 1970s all railway
activity was managed by a host of clerks and recorders who were just as able to prevent things happening as to be able to facilitate them.
Out at Long Marston was Bird’s scrap-metal facility and one day when the local manager was paying a visit the owners asked if an additional service could be provided at short notice. The manager duly approached the divisional office, which managed to find sufficient reasons to refuse the request. Undaunted, the manager decided it could be done locally and so identified a rake of empties which were then suitably loaded. At the time there was a locomotive on a long layover whose driver was willing to make an additional run rather than sit around bored. Suffice to say that this ‘ghost train’ was able to run to Burnt Oak, near Birmingham, as a special and then offload and return to Long Marston. The Total Operations Processing System (TOPS) recorded the wagons as not having moved and no one apparently noticed the additional fuel used by the locomotive.
More impressive than this piece of instant business was the fact that for two weeks the divisional freight office stubbornly denied all attempts to confirm the train’s existence and bill the willing customer. So in the end everyone just gave up trying. Sad, but a great boost for our link with the substantial Long Marston activity and an equal boost for the local manager when it came to Christmas.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Don Love’s 48th birthday was memorable for a locomotive naming ceremony by Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
In 1984 I was in my fifth year as area manager at Liverpool Street station, London. Out of the blue I was asked to officiate at a locomotive-naming ceremony at my station on the 8 June, which happened to be my 48th birthday. I was informed that a Class 47 diesel locomotive was to be named Aldeburgh Festival by Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who was connected with the festival. As an opera fan myself, I knew she was a world-famous operatic soprano and I looked forward to this opportunity to meet her.
