False Starts, Near Misses and Dangerous Goods

by Geoff Body

  The engineer then stressed the point of the lesson to me: the need to observe the operation of catch points by the first train to pass over them after track work if there was any doubt about them being able to function properly.

  In his accident report on the Kingfisher incident, Brigadier Langley of Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate recommended the provision of marker lights in both North Queensferry and Inverkeithing tunnels to enable drivers to establish their direction of travel when the driving wheels are slipping and the tunnels are filled with smoke and steam.

  About twenty years later, this lesson passed on to me during the train journey to Dunfermline flashed into my brain when, as an area civil engineer, I was told that the first bogie of a DMU travelling in the wrong direction had failed to derail at a set of catch points at Barrhead. My record of this incident appeared on page 108 of an earlier volume entitled Signal Box Coming Up, Sir.

  ONE WAY ONLY

  For railways, some pigeons were a nuisance while others, as Jim Dorward and Bill Parker experienced, represented revenue

  Jim Dorward recalls a day in 1957 when he observed a special train waiting to depart from Larbert at 11.10 a.m. Its passengers were doubtless apprehensive of the day ahead, as they only had single tickets and would be expected to find their own way home! This was because these passengers were pigeons, new to the sport of racing and on a training exercise.

  The train consisted of two converted bogie brake vans fitted with shelving to house the pigeon baskets. Demand for this service could be high so the specials were scheduled to run Monday to Thursday until further notice, and subject to demand. The train would collect more ‘passengers’ at Coatbridge Central, Motherwell, Wishaw Central, Law Junction, Carluke, Carstairs, Thankerton, Symington, Lamington, Abington and Crawford before terminating at Elvanfoot at 1.56 p.m. There, the birds would be released from their hampers and the time recorded so that the owners could work out the flight speed by comparing it with the time their birds arrived home. The special would run round and return to Larbert at 3 p.m., dropping the empty baskets on the way.

  As the crow flies – and assuming pigeons have the same navigational equipment as crows – the pigeons would manage the 50-mile journey fast enough to beat the train home!

  Bill Parker was involved in the pigeon business at the receiving end in Mexborough where his father was stationmaster and where the arrangements were somewhat different to those in Scotland. The pigeon specials were quite frequent weekend events, he recalls. A train of three or more pigeon vans with a coach for the bird owners and the organisers would arrive on Saturday evenings in time for the passengers, some of whom were making a weekend holiday of it, to get to the pubs before closing time. One member of the party would remain in the train for security purposes.

  Each train was stabled overnight in the goods yard and moved into the east end of the Up platform quite early on the Sunday morning. It was placed as far away from the station buildings as practical for the next operation – of unloading the baskets on to the platform under the supervision of the station foreman and the pigeon fanciers. The continuous noise of hundreds of squawking pigeons was horrendously loud and nerve racking, even in the stationmaster’s house from which the lounge and an upstairs bedroom looked out on to the platform.

  My father wisely left the opening of the baskets to the station foreman, himself a pigeon fancier, and concentrated on SLW over the Down line and on the passengers. With the help of a couple of hefty BTP officers, these and many onlookers behind a barrier were kept well away from the main hive of activity.

  The opening of the baskets and discharge of their occupants was under very strict discipline; I had what the fanciers regarded as a very important role. Armed with a clipboard containing a large number of their official forms, I had to check and record the departure times of batches of pigeons, basket by basket, aiming for complete accuracy, not just to the minute but to the second! I was carefully overseen by one or more of the fanciers but, despite being meticulous in my recording, there were always arguments and comments like, ‘Get your eyes tested, lad.’

  I was well prepared for both event and behaviour. Having only recently completed my National Service as a senior NCO, I wore my army uniform, plus steel helmet and wellies, partly to give myself a little prestige and partly as protection against the dive-bombing antics of some of the birds.

  It was all a hectic, noisy affair with the fanciers’ enthusiasm for their birds and interests making them somewhat over-eager to ensure things went well and that their own pigeons were not disadvantaged. On the whole, however, they were very jolly and friendly chaps. The goodwill in evidence did not extend to my mother, however, whose house windows were badly fouled by the pigeons but, as a railwayman’s wife, she was well equipped to cope with any railway-associated activity.

  Whether the pigeon business made money is questionable, but for me it was fun and it gave me a useful insight into the behavioural attitudes of people when there is a strong determination to win.

  PUTTING ON A SHOW

  Mike Lamport records two examples of how public relations helped to show the railway in a positive light

  The opening ceremony of the new Stansted Airport terminal by Her Majesty the Queen took place on Friday 15 March 1991. It was planned with military precision, not only because it was going to be shown live on BBC television, but also because it had been agreed that the royal party would travel, not by royal train, but by our Stansted Express train from Liverpool Street. The train could not run late.

  In fact, it ran like clockwork and the two Class 322 units in their grey and green livery and shadowed by the BBC and police helicopters arrived almost to the second at the brand-new Stansted Airport station in the chilly undercroft of the terminal.

  The royal party was travelling in the rear unit of the otherwise empty train and I had carefully placed the reception line of dignitaries in the exact spot at which the rearmost set of sliding doors would stop. All of the preparations and measurements paid off and we were spot on in our assessment. However, there was a painful pause of a few seconds while we waited anxiously for the driver to release the doors and then for the orange sidelights to be illuminated.

  There we all stood – the Lord Lieutenant, British Airports Authority and BR dignitaries and local worthies – but nothing happened. We could see Her Majesty standing in the vestibule alongside the red-waistcoated royal train steward, but they too seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

  Then it dawned on me. In all the weeks of planning and rehearsal for this groundbreaking journey by a sliding-door train, we never considered the question of who was going to press the passenger-operated door button inside the train. Against all protocol I broke ranks and, leaning as far as I could without blocking the BBC’s live camera view, I pressed the door button on the outside of the train and quickly drew back into the throng as the beaming monarch stepped down on to the platform to a great cheer and the prearranged musical fanfare from the Essex school orchestra.

  Sir Bob Reid then invited Her Majesty to step up on to the rostrum and say a few words before pulling the cord to unveil not one but two plaques, both of which read ‘Stansted Airport Station opened by Her Majesty the Queen on Friday 15th March 1991’, with the words ‘Network South East’ along the bottom. The giant background plaque, which I had designed to fill a void and to act as a windbreak in that cavernous station, provided Her Majesty with a relatively warm spot in a uniformly cold place and was legible on the live BBC coverage compered by the incomparable Richard Baker.

  The Stansted Express operation was managed by Network South East’s newly constituted West Anglia & Great Northern Train Operating Unit, of which I was public affairs manager. It straddled the boundary of the former Anglia and Eastern regions and it was in these borderlands that I discovered the ‘Fiefdom of West Anglia’.

  This ‘mini state’ had managed to maintain some sort of independence while the two BR regions were concentrating on tearin
g themselves apart, and was the province of Area Manager Stuart Davies and his team. I quickly discovered that they had a very ‘can do’ attitude, particularly when it came to organising events.

  One of Stuart’s team was railwayman and local councillor John Boothroyd, who was ably supported by operations chief Brian Heath; they were the driving force behind the phenomenon that was the Cambridge ‘Gala’ Days. These annual events were held during the last weekend of the school summer holidays in disused sidings, which later became part of the track of the controversial Cambridge Guided Busway. Locomotives and stock were put on display, sideshows arranged and stalls erected, and all proceeds went to local charities.

  To give a flavour of the scale of these events, the line-up for the 1991 Gala included a Class 303 Glasgow Blue Train shuttling visitors from Cambridge to Stansted Airport and back, the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway’s Green Goddess giving rides on a specially laid length of 15in-gauge track at King’s Lynn and the naming of not one but two new diesel locomotives – Class 59 Village of Great Elm and Class 60 Robert Adam. There were also special trains on the former Cambridge–St Ives and King’s Lynn–Middleton Towers freight-only branches formed of Class 310 EMUs topped and tailed by Class 31 and 37 locomotives.

  This was not all. At the same time, this resourceful team was also pulling together what we thought would be the last opportunity to ride behind steam traction on the Cambridge–King’s Lynn line, viz. the Fenline Steam Weekend to be held on 19–20 October 1991. This major undertaking saw in action No. 4472 Flying Scotsman, No. 34027 Taw Valley and the former local locomotive No. 70000 Britannia. Between them they provided a programme of regular trips throughout the weekend, attracting enthusiasts and local people to the line and to our message: ‘Say goodbye to the past and look forward to a bright, electrified future.’

  I was delighted with the media coverage that this ‘last ever’ opportunity created, and Anglia Television even allocated a crew to join Brian on a trial run, which Flying Scotsman made to King’s Lynn and back in the preceding week. This footage was quietly interspersed with the actual day’s shoot and produced an excellent piece of reportage. What they didn’t show, Brian told me, was the Thursday’s encounter with a ‘Fen Blow’ – a fenland phenomenon that sees dry earth whipped up off the empty, flat landscape into a cloud, which then deposits its contents wherever it chooses. In this case it was over what is arguably the most famous steam locomotive in the world.

  These events all enabled visitors to see for themselves the work already undertaken to prepare the line for electrification, part of my job of keeping opinion formers up to date with what turned out to be a rather more protracted process than we had planned for.

  One of our chief allies in this period was West Norfolk MP Henry Bellingham. He was a guest of ours at the 1991 King’s Lynn Festival where Network South East was the principal sponsor, and I clearly remember standing with him in King’s Lynn’s famous Tuesday Market Place while, in the fading light of a July evening, my boss Chris Green mapped out his vision for the ‘Thameslink 2000’ on a piece of paper resting on the bonnet of a parked car.

  After the demise of Network South East, I took it upon myself to continue to support the festival by sponsoring at least one headline concert each year. We were able to keep in touch with the opinion formers in an area where the Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk had shown commendable foresight and commitment by signing a unique agreement with BR that secured electrification.

  The agreement guaranteed to make up for the loss to BR if the electrification of the line failed to bring the expected revenue boost. In the event, this support was never needed because the service quickly attracted new customers and succeeded in enticing back many of the former regulars, who had found other ways of travelling during the three years since the withdrawal of the locomotive-hauled through trains and their substitution by a much slower and less convenient DMU shuttle service connecting at Cambridge with London trains.

  Concerns over the revised layout at Ely North Junction following the Bellshill single-lead accident were still delaying us from announcing a start date for electrified services; nonetheless, we had to go ahead with preparation for a royal event to celebrate the scheme, even though, as the media was quick to point out, we didn’t yet have an electrified railway to show off to our royal guest of honour – Her Majesty the Queen Mother, who had graciously agreed to perform the naming of EMU No. 317361 King’s Lynn Festival in her role as its patron.

  The day for the big event dawned, a gloriously warm and sunny 28 July, and we all gathered at King’s Lynn for the occasion, along with BR chairman Sir Bob Reid, who had travelled up from London that morning.

  At 11.30 a.m. on the dot, Her Majesty stepped from the royal car on to the red carpet where she was introduced to the official party before Sir Bob invited her to unveil the red and silver nameplate. As the photographers snapped away and the television cameras whirred, Sir Bob sought to lead Her Majesty to where the 100 or so invited guests were awaiting her arrival in a marquee for lunch. But this well-travelled lady had other ideas.

  Suddenly Sir Bob beckoned me to his side and whispered that Her Majesty had asked to look inside the train. This was an eventuality that we had not prepared for but, of course, had to agree to, even though it required me to forego years of maintaining royal etiquette by taking Her Majesty’s right arm while Sir Bob, with his one arm, took her left arm to gently aid her up the step and into the train. Then, while she and Sir Bob chatted happily away in the small first-class section of the train, I withdrew to the platform in order to manage the potential ramifications of this change to the, as ever, carefully choreographed and forensically timed programme. Mercifully, after just 2 or 3 minutes the two emerged and Sir Bob escorted the royal visitor to the marquee.

  After lunch and the departure of our royal guest, Sir Bob told me that while they had chatted in the train the Queen Mother had told him that as a child the Bowes-Lyon family used to travel on the Orient Express, which – unlike our train – had tables on which she had very much enjoyed writing and drawing. I made a note that any new trains on this ‘royal route’ ought to be equipped with tables!

  Electrification was an immediate success and, by working closely with our civic partners and the Fen Line Users Association (led by its pragmatic new chairman Robert Stripe), we were quickly and without controversy able to tweak the service to meet emerging demands. In the longer term, however, we were both looking forward to new trains – the Class 365 Networker Expresses, along with their royally decreed tables!

  A LONELY FUNERAL

  Colin Driver describes just one of the many ongoing complications that tended to characterise large depots

  At the large Southern Region goods depot, where I was the goods agent, at least one of the goods sheds had staff working at night, and any disputes were often discussed in the morning. One senior foreman was used to having his judgement questioned, despite an almost 100 per cent record of correct decisions.

  One morning, I was met with the sad news that the foreman in question had died during the night. When the LDC said they wanted a discussion about the supervisor, I was able to say that they were ‘too late’. However, they were aware of the sudden death and had wanted to discuss the number of staff that would be released to attend the funeral, and their pay.

  It was a tradition in parts of London that staff would line the route of the funeral cortege. In this case I was asked to agree to release a large number of staff (the depot employed over 1,100 men) and give them basic pay plus the average tonnage bonus. The members of staff who stayed at work wanted extra bonus for the tonnage they handled, but this would have been inordinately expensive.

  A simple solution was offered involving a small number of staff and no extra bonus, which inevitably was refused by the LDC. The proposals did eventually form the basis for an agreement, but with dire consequences forecast for my own funeral.

  It was claimed that I could be the f
irst London goods agent within living memory not to have any staff attending his funeral. I was able to say that if this were the case, I would go with a smile on my face!

  IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

  A severe winter meant a lot of problems for David Barraclough’s Boston goods depot

  The land around Boston is flat and fruitful. Two crops a year is commonplace, with some places happily manage more. Summer is glorious in East Lincolnshire but in winter, all too often, the wind comes straight from the Urals, nothing impeding it en route. The winter of 1962–63 proved this point.

  The Boston goods yard at that time was quite extensive, with several single-storey buildings dotted about, a shed, an office, three small brick ‘huts’ and a three-storey warehouse in the south-west corner. A small marshalling yard, four running lines and up to fifteen scattered sidings, plus a 14-acre BR-owned orchard gave little protection from any weather. The yard abutted against the London Road and then came the River Witham and the expanse of the municipally owned Boston Dock, with warehouses along the eastern quay, more sidings scattered about, hydraulic cranes, a coaling hoist and a three-storey granary tucked away in a corner by the river. Rail access to and from the dock was by level crossing over the London Road and then by a railway swing bridge with a tiny signal box and a BR rowing boat fastened to the riverbank below. As goods agent at Boston this was my patch, together with a large staff that included clerks, supervisors, dock labourers, lorry drivers and guards.

  Shunting and pilot work in the yard, sidings, dock and station was undertaken by a three-shift yard pilot, a two-shift dock and transfer pilot and a single-shift Monday-to-Friday pilot – all Barclay 0-6-0 locomotives. There was also a Class 03 Sleaford pilot that served the stations at Hubberts Bridge, Swineshead and Heckington.