False Starts, Near Misses and Dangerous Goods

by Geoff Body

  By the end of each September the evenings at Boston began to get cold and, in 1962, I donned wellington boots and thick socks for daily work, never abandoning them until the end of March 1963. By early October night-time frosts were regularly severe. To avoid damage to our seven road lorries we arranged for a shunter with a road-vehicle licence to start up each vehicle for half an hour every 2 hours. In the worst conditions this was increased to running vehicles every other hour and even continuously. There were some complaints that this should have been a job for the regular lorry drivers on overtime, but then, we pointed out, who would drive their vehicles during the day? The nearest other BR delivery vehicles were in the Nottingham area, but somehow we managed to serve the large parts of south Lincolnshire in between throughout the winter.

  For much of railway history the clearance of heavy snow from the line was undertaken by charging the blockage with this sort of snowplough, aided by hard work with the humble shovel.

  Whilst many parts of the UK had several feet of snow during that winter, a couple of inches was the most we had – the east wind saw to that. Ice was another matter. Lincolnshire has many miles of deep, often wide, drainage channels, the largest of which can be up to 20ft wide. These drains froze early on, some spectacularly. In places there was ice 16ft thick up to the top of the banks but with running water right down at the bottom.

  By mid December the River Witham and the adjacent dock were completely frozen over with ice thick enough to prevent access by ships of any size. One of the last to arrive was carrying a cargo of pig iron, and some of the unloading dockers threw ingots over the side to see if the ice would break. It didn’t and the ingots then had to be rescued and loaded properly into their waiting wagon.

  The very low temperatures kept the River Witham frozen, which helped the competitive skating that took place near Spalding, with some of the best races for many years taking place in January 1963. Here at Boston a notable event was the trip made by some local lads in a Land Rover on the river from just north of the Grand Sluice to Woodhall station, nearly 18 miles each way.

  Despite the difficulties, the railway kept going throughout the winter. Our locomotive shed had closed in the October, with most of the remaining steam turns now being served by incoming locomotives. For two turns, however, engines came light from New England yard at Peterborough. On one particular evening, the 2-6-0 making the 32-mile run tender first had to stop near Kirton and throw out the fire, as the water in the tender had frozen solid. One of our diesel pilots had to be despatched to the rescue.

  On the positive side, we were still operational while in many parts of England conditions were such that road haulage had become impossible. Snow in the south-west, basically anywhere beyond Bristol, was especially bad. One of Boston’s regular services was the 4V25 8 p.m. Boston–Stoke Gifford fitted freight. For much of January and February 1963 this train not only ran every night (except Saturdays) with a full load of fifty-five wagons, but sometimes there was a second service and even a third, depending on what traffic had found its way into Boston from the rest of Lincolnshire and what help we could get from New England yard. The special interest of one of the assistant yardmasters there did much to enable us to keep this vital flow moving, further aided by the agreement of the Exeter goods agent to take traffic for the south-west on the 4V25.

  This was the time when railway communication was still supposed to be routed via one’s district office, but I had found it useful to build up a network of contacts with other goods agents and stationmasters at places as far apart as Edinburgh (Waverley) and Merthyr Tydfil. These contacts proved vital in keeping traffic moving and in carrying out some of our more imaginative plans.

  For some time we sent Merthyr Tydfil a weekly AF insulated container load of frozen chickens. This travelled by freight service to Lincoln, thence on the Tamworth Mail, forward ECS to Birmingham New Street, then passenger train on to Cardiff from whence the container became ‘tail traffic’ for the first passenger service up the valley to Merthyr. All went well until the commercial people at Lincoln district office learned that the movement was at freight rates, despite the passenger service element. Passenger rates were too expensive and we lost the traffic.

  We had more success with the same firm’s frozen-food container movements to London and the south. The evening fish train from New Clee (Grimsby)–King’s Cross stopped at the station for a Boston crew to take over from the Immingham men, with the engine then taking water at the yard. While it was doing so we took the opportunity to use the Boston yard pilot to add our containers at the rear.

  And thus we survived a nasty winter, keeping traffic moving when the odds were often against us, and looking forward to the return of better weather and rather more normality.

  BACK TO NORMAL

  Winter over and Boston returned to normal. Not that life was dull, as David Barraclough makes clear

  Towards the end of March 1963 the weather and temperature began to improve. The ice covering the dock surface was broken up one afternoon by an arriving vessel, and over the next fortnight normal working at the dock resumed. During this period we took the opportunity to thaw out two dozen or so wagons of ‘washed smalls’ – export coal for German power stations. They were moved close to the coal hoist and well away from the usual vast stock of imported Baltic and Russian timber so that small fires could be lit underneath the wagons while our dock labourers applied lump hammers to the wagon sides and underframe to help the loosening-up process.

  Very soon all normal, regular dock arrivals resumed. A Geest boat, and occasionally two, arrived on every tide with market vegetables and fruit from Maassluis in Holland. These vessels often took back live cattle that had either arrived by rail into our own lairage or come by road into the Buitelaar lairage. Another regular vessel was the owner captain’s 350-ton MV Fiducia, which arrived twice weekly whatever the North Sea weather, again with agricultural produce.

  During the long winter, quantities of timber had built up in Scandinavia and by April the Midlands urgently needed supplies. Rail forwardings were made in Ashworth Kirk private-owner wagons or in Hyfits to a consignee in Leicester who spread his intake by giving us half his tonnage and taking the remainder in barges travelling to their destination via the River Witham, the Fossdyke navigation, the River Trent and then the River Soar.

  Other regular Boston Dock arrivals were fertiliser in bulk for Saxilby and gypsum from Sardinia by the aged 1916 vessel MV Giannas, destined for East Leake and Tetbury. For these flows we used 16-ton mineral wagons that had arrived with export coal. After the coal had been tipped at the coal hoist, BR dock labourers swept the wagons out and then reloaded and sheeted. A similar process, minus the sheeting, applied to the imported pig iron.

  We had sugar-beet factories close by at Bardney and Spalding and used the same 16-ton mineral wagons for these forwardings during the annual autumn sugar-beet ‘campaign’. Road-vehicle queues at the factories meant that farmers might only manage one load a day with direct road delivery, whereas bringing the beet into our depot and using a single elevator meant that some 750 tons could be put on rail. The same situation applied to malting barley, which was also conveyor loaded, this time to bulk-grain vans which were then positioned as required by the yard pilot, checked by the carriage and wagon examiner and duly sent off to Scotland, Silloth or, occasionally, Snape in East Anglia.

  Reinforcing rod was regularly imported through Boston. It had been brought down the Rhine by barge, transhipped in Holland and then carried across the North Sea for unloading at Boston on to waiting bogie bolster wagons, often purloined from passing New England–Frodingham services. After weighing and customs clearance the rods went forward to Sutton-in-Ashfield by our two daily services through Colwick yard. How, I wondered, could such cheap material stand the colossal transport costs of such a series of journeys? And pig-iron forwardings from Boston Dock continue even now, with up to four trains a week being despatched in covered steel carriers.

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sp; Sundries (small-goods consignments) were the subject of a BR decision in late 1964 designed to reduce costs. Wagons of sundries traffic would have to convey at least 1.5 tons of revenue traffic to a specific set of destinations or empty wagons would not be supplied. In Lincolnshire there were five of us – at Grimsby, Louth, Boston, Spalding and Lincoln. How could we comply with these new instructions? We got together and quickly decided how to address the problem. Using the existing pattern of pick-up freight services it was easy for Grimsby to start the load for a wagon that could be added to at Louth and Boston and still depart within 24 hours of loading for station groups covering King’s Cross, East Anglia, some Midlands areas, Scotland and the West Country. For other destinations better served by Lincoln or Grimsby a wagon could be started at Boston or Louth and added to in the same way, while Spalding could route via Lincoln, if necessary, although their sundries business was not great.

  As a result of this enterprise we assembled a list of thirty-five destinations to which we could guarantee to load 1.5 tons per wagon on specified days in the week. The arrangements worked and we lost no business; however, there were internal inquiries about how we could have achieved these results – there were even unannounced inspections of the books – but we all passed with flying colours.

  An earlier scheme to improve local loadings had produced mixed results. The boxed fruit, vegetables and flowers dealt with at Spalding would no longer be carted, but a special rate of £70 per van would be offered for consignments brought into the forwarding station and collected at the other end, however much or little was loaded into it. The scheme proved a tremendous success, but when applied to the fish traffic from Hull and Grimsby, which had often loaded poorly, it was not taken up because the merchants were not prepared to have each other’s boxes in the same van. The story was different again at Mallaig where for years a BG vehicle was loaded every day with iced boxes of fish and was conveyed to London on the overnight sleeper.

  SEASIDE SUMMER

  TA training over, Geoff Body’s first supernumerary appointment was at the seaside

  After nearly two and a half years of absorbing information I was tired of being a pupil and looked forward to putting into practice the things I had learned during my experiences as a TA. Information on my first post-training appointment was eagerly awaited and duly arrived: I was to spend the summer of 1958 as supernumerary assistant stationmaster at Clacton-on-Sea. I was pleased, not only because of the extra experience this would provide in dealing with intensive passenger business, but also because I could find local accommodation that would allow my wife and two young sons to join me – some compensation for the long periods spent away from home during my training.

  Clacton was a pretty straightforward terminus with four platforms (each with engine release points) and a generous frontage and booking area. I found Stationmaster Dick Dennis rather inscrutable initially, but learned to both respect and like him. My first few days were pretty routine. One of the main tasks was to prepare for the hectic Saturdays (a feature of Clacton) and for when a lot of extra trains brought thousands of holidaymakers to the town and its Butlin’s holiday camp in the nearby village of Jaywick. A key factor in the Saturday mayhem was to check that everything – locomotives, stock, drivers, guards etc. – arrived when it should and to know exactly what it was booked to do next.

  We did all we could to prepare for each manic Saturday. A sales representative went along to Butlin’s a couple of days beforehand to make as many advance bookings as possible in order to relieve the pressure on our own booking office. There would still be a queue several hundred yards long outside the station from quite early on, everyone with a week’s luggage and their own special needs and queries. The assistant stationmaster handled many of the queries: lost children, people without funds, wrong luggage and so on.

  Inside, we anxiously awaited the first train of the day, a special from the Midlands via the Colne Valley line and Colchester. Somehow, if this service arrived on time it augured well for the rest of the day, but any one of a dozen disappointments might be revealed – locomotive mechanical problems, crew who did not know the road for their next working or did not want to work the overtime necessary to perform it. Then it was improvisation time – finding an alternative, often ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ by taking a guard from a later job and then having to fill the subsequent gap. Diesels were just appearing at this time and there was more than one occasion when a driver just did not have that know-how which comes with familiarity to remedy a fault, so a steam replacement had to be conjured up from the shed.

  If all went well, arriving train engines would get released to go to the shed and take water and the departing engine could back on to the train for its next working. Alternatively, the shed pilot would take the empty stock to the carriage sidings until it was required to go back into the station. Some basic interior cleaning was done but this was greatly limited by the time between stock arrival and departure.

  We checked with each crew member that he knew when his next working was, made sure he knew where the mess room was and then checked he was fully available as each departure time neared.

  All this took place amid hordes of passengers arriving and departing, all seemingly unsure about something and needing to be guided or advised. We had no train announcing system, just slat destination boards, something I remember well as a result of having carelessly ordered ‘more sluts for the platform’ from the Stratford stores.

  Dick Dennis took a few days off on one occasion, leaving me in charge – no great risk, as the station inspectors were an able lot – but, as is the way of things, there was a coach derailment in the carriage sidings. After inspecting what appeared to be something of a mess I rang Stratford suggesting we needed the breakdown crane. Wiser heads than mine sent a breakdown van and treated me to the spectacle of how easy experienced professionals could make a re-railing seem just with the clever use of ramps and a careful driver.

  By Saturday evening I was always tired beyond exhaustion, but Clacton on a Saturday was a useful and interesting experience. It was calmer during the week but Sundays brought a lot of day-trippers and there was a lot of activity connected with the advancing electrification of the line. Youngsters were encouraged to become ‘Progress Chasers’ and take an interest in how the electrification construction work was going, while the introduction of an Essex Coast Express meant another occasion for pretty hostesses, media coverage and a lot of background work for the station staff.

  The hectic summer seaside activity became even harder for railways to handle in bad weather like this at Skegness where two trains wait for their quota of homeward-bound holidaymakers.

  In personal terms, through the kindness of friends, we had the use of a beach hut at Holland-on-Sea so that when I was not working there was an opportunity for some family seaside relaxation. My eventual move on to Temple Mills marshalling yard would prove something of a contrast.

  RESERVATION CHALLENGES

  Like Geoff Body in the previous ‘Seaside Summer’ piece, his son Ian also experienced the pressures holiday traffic brought

  For the summer of 1974 I left my management training and took on the seasonal role of stationmaster at Paignton. It covered the three stations of Torre, Torquay and Paignton, together with the coaching stock stabling and turnround cleaning yard at Goodrington. As far as workload was concerned it was decidedly unbalanced.

  Mondays were spent recovering from the hectic weekend while Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays involved little more than station and signal box visits, booking office checks and maintaining good working relations with the staff. Friday morning was the lull before the storm and that duly began in the late afternoon.

  It was at this point that empty coaching stock (ECS) began to arrive at Newton Abbot and Paignton to form the morning services to the Midlands and the north; the reservation labels to accompany them came separately. With the considerable pressure on available seating accommodation, every train was fully
reserved and every seat had to be individually labelled so that it could be identified by passengers joining the train on the following day.

  With a minimum of six services involved at this stage and each conveying at least ten passenger-carrying vehicles of sixty-four seats per vehicle, there were just under 4,000 seats to be labelled. Each label had to be fixed underneath a retaining screw that had to be undone and then retightened.

  This fixing process was in itself a time challenge, but additionally there was always the threat of an Eastern or Midland region ‘three-a-side’ coach covering a Western ‘four-a-side’ working. With the former normally configured to accommodate six passengers in each compartment and the latter eight, this would mean that eight reservation labels per compartment had to be accommodated within a compartment with only six seating numbers – a recipe for confusion.

  The ‘high tech’ solution for this problem was to use a felt-tipped pen to write new numbers on the panel above the seats and match this with reservation labels stuck on with tape. This not uncommon challenge meant a total seat reservation labelling process that might not finish until the early hours of the morning. In this situation the only place for me to grab some sleep was on the floor of the small, cupboard-sized stationmaster’s office.

  But at least this aspect of the preparation could be done without, relatively, real time pressure. In contrast, on the Saturday, customers were soon queuing outside the front of the station behind the heavy wooden destination signs for Newcastle, Birmingham, Bradford and Edinburgh. The incoming trains arrived and disgorged their eager holidaymakers and were then despatched empty to Goodrington sidings. Here they received their turnround clean, such as it was, and had to be equipped with new reservation labels before being brought back into the station Up platform to receive customers from the next queue. In the worst cases the booked turnrounds were only 90 minutes, which put pressure on everyone, and woe betide all concerned if one of the dreaded Western/Midland swaps was also involved.