'The Toss of a Coin', Chapter 4

Chapter 4
Training in South Wales

On the 4th June 1962 I caught the 7.55am from Paddington to Swansea to report to the District Operating Superintendent, Jack Brennan, on arrival at 12.30pm. The interview was eccentric to put it mildly. Having greeted me and told me gruffly that I was not to expect to be able to turn up at midday every Monday, he fell asleep in the middle of a question. I was completely thrown, did not know whether to wake him up, creep out or sit it out. He suddenly woke, shook himself and finished the question. I later found out that he had contracted ‘sleeping sickness’ in the jungle during the war and my experience was common - but no-one had thought to warn me!

I spent the next week at Margam Yard in the Hump Tower Control Panel in one of the most glorious June weeks ever - one night shift was so light that the sun had hardly disappeared before dawn was already breaking. There was an evening local back from Port Talbot station (we had to use a transit van for shuttles from the yard to the station) I caught that week obviously intended mainly for steelworkers from the Steel Company of Wales Port Talbot plant.

I risked Jack Brennan’s wrath the following Monday as I was told that the following week would be the last rostered for steam before the 'Hymek' diesels took over. In view of the weather the previous week I had brought beachwear, swimming trunks and summer shirts in my hand luggage and it poured with rain for the rest of the summer. I was in lodgings with a Mrs Beynon a good ten minute walk along the main Walter Road towards Sketty and I got soaked so many times that by week three I had invested in my first umbrella. The digs were again bed and breakfast only and a fellow trainee and I ventured out most evenings as we had no wish to be regaled by Mrs Beynon’s extreme right wing views. She opined that Winston Churchill was a ‘pinky’ (my colleague was a young Conservative and was tempted to argue) but I made the mistake of admitting voting Liberal which was totally off her political spectrum and I needed to make myself scarce! On the few dry evenings John and I would go down to a little pitch and putt golf course between the Mumbles Road and the Swansea Victoria Central Wales line dividing the course from Swansea Bay, but most other evenings we made our way to High Street station and caught the 1.55 or 3.55 Paddington on its West Wales leg and diverted to a Carmarthen pub for a pint, although the locals often reverted to the Welsh language when they saw two foreigners coming. The comparison between Swansea and Cardiff was strange - the enmity between the two cities was palpable, the Welsh of Swansea seemed to have a feeling of inferiority and I was constantly asked if I didn’t prefer Swansea to Cardiff. The latter was much more cosmopolitan and easy-going; at least in 1962 it was. Not sure about now.

One day, as part of my authorised training, I explored the colliery workings fanning out from Margam up the Maesteg Valley to Cwmdu colliery in the brakevan behind a train of unfitted mineral wagons hauled by a Churchward 2-8-0T. Our load of 39 mineral wagons (300 tons) was reduced to 25 (200 tons) at Duffryn Yard as no banker was available and we held a minimum of 17 mph up the 1 in 41 to Bryn Tunnel just short of Maesteg. We returned to Margam with 19 loaded coal wagons, 460 tons gross, having taken four and a half hours for the 40 mile round trip excluding time at Cwmdu dropping off the empties and collecting our loaded train.

Shortly afterwards Jack Brennan decided that I’d better make myself useful and asked me to help his Assistant, Grant Woodruff, a former Traffic Apprentice himself, who’d been given the task of reducing the costs of running Margam Yard. Grant explained a number of concerns in the way that the yard was operating and asked me to trace the activities of a number of diesel shunters (08s) that ran trips around the area over 24 hours. I spent a week following their activities and coloured in the regular movements of each trip engine on an enlarged yard track diagram. It looked very pretty, a somewhat complex schematic that bore some relationship to Beck’s London Underground diagrammatic map. I was assured by Grant that it was useful and that it had enabled rationalisation of the trip workings to be developed and a locomotive saved in consequence. I had a nagging feeling, however, that Margam was really in the wrong place. Later studies I undertook in 1968 after I’d become Divisional Train Planning Officer, confirmed my gut feeling. It was too far west - a modern marshalling yard in the Marshfield area between Cardiff and Newport could have avoided the need for Margam and replaced Severn Tunnel Junction. I was given to understand, however, that the decision to build Margam had been swayed by a generous contribution from the Steel Company of Wales Port Talbot plant which had 15 transfer sidings at Margam for the reception of coal and ore for their activities.

I had to go to London for a training interview with the new Assistant General Manager (Lance Ibbotson) and got a shock at his reaction to my answer to the first question he asked me: ‘Had I visited the new diesel depot at Landore yet?’ I’d only been in South Wales a couple of weeks and in any case Landore depot was just a sea of mud with nothing yet to see. I’d just about got the answer ‘No’ out when I received the biggest drubbing of my life with no opportunity to explain anything. In hindsight I reckon he’d read my Old Oak report and decided that it was time I took as much interest in the new traction as in the old and had decided to shake me up - he must have known there was nothing to see at Landore - indeed, there was no access as it was a dangerous building site. Having threatened to remove me from the training scheme unless I bucked my ideas up, I was dismissed. Duly chastened, I returned to South Wales on the 11.35 relief train as far as Bridgend - with steam.

I spent a few days with the District Train Crew Inspectors. One of their roles was to examine new drivers and I was invited to join a day’s duty in passing out a Llanelli fireman. We were to start with a freight to Margam, before taking over a Manchester – Swansea express at Port Talbot. We found our loco in the roundhouse at Llanelli, a 1910 designed Churchward 2-8-0T, 4279, but lost our trainee who failed to show up. The Inspector decided to continue with me in tow instead, and we made our solid and somewhat pedestrian way, bunker first, to the Hump Reception Sidings with a heavy and unfitted load of coal. Since there was no need to test the trainee on the passenger train, we ran down to the Knuckle Yard and picked up 50 empty cattle trucks for Fishguard, which we would run back as far as Llanelli and complete our turn for the day.

Once the passenger train we’d intended to test the fireman on was clear of us, we followed her out and took the Swansea Avoiding Line for a direct run to our destination. As we got into our stride (the train was now fully braked) I relaxed and enjoyed the passing scenery as we got well into the 50s with the old engine bucketing along cheerfully and in good voice. I peered along the running plate and watched mesmerised as the front end of the plate above the cylinders seemed to be having a separate life to the rest of the engine. I stared and sure enough, the plate above the buffer beam was jigging rhythmically up and down as we also shook and rattled to a different tune. Perhaps I would not have enjoyed my outing so much if I had realised that the maintenance staff would later find a total fracture of the front end of the plate which was apparently only held in position by the two struts from the bottom of the smokebox door to the top of the bufferbeam!

Swansea evenings progressed through August, September and October as before. I was now based in the District Office itself and undertaking a variety of duties both in and outside the office, including some small projects. In December I was summoned before the District Manager to be told that he wished me to act as Stationmaster at Pontardawe in the Swansea Valley to cover a five week gap before a new man was appointed. This outpost was on the freight route between Swansea East Dock and Ystradgynlais and involved the management of one colliery and a pit props yard, and a parcels sub-depot to Swansea itself. The office was Dickensian and I had just five staff, three of whom were Welsh speaking and had no English. The only clerk had been withdrawn the previous week so I was the lone occupant of this antiquarian office which had had 16 staff in the early part of the century. I was still finding out where everything was when I received my first two visitors who wanted to use the parcels service - I was acting as a sub-depot of Swansea High Street. The first was an elderly gentleman who wanted to send a tin trunk to Mexico. The second was a scruffy young man who wanted to send a rifle to Ireland. Help!!! The phone was red hot between me and the Swansea Parcels Office. I wonder now if someone was setting me up but they seemed genuine and after long consultations with the distant clerk money was handed over and the items collected by the parcels van that afternoon.

I amused myself by joining the signalman to watch the pannier tank hauled freights passing in the station (a crossing loop on the single line) and accompanying our daily shunt to the pit prop sidings to place empties and remove the loaded wagons, usually with 6754. Very conscientiously I decided to stop the practice of having a raft of wagons for the pit-prop works ‘up my sleeve’ and only ordered what was required immediately trusting that it would be delivered. I was immediately on the end of a diatribe from the manager of the plant who threatened some very nasty things that would happen to me if the ordered wagons failed to turn up. I’m relieved to say that I was not let down and therefore saved a fleet of about 20 wagons in the circuit.

Over Christmas in 1962 and the beginning of January 1963 it snowed. All the Western Region Traffic Apprentices were pulled off their current placements and closeted for 4 weeks at the Work Study School near Royal Oak station, where they subjected the two lecturers, used to compliant recruits intending to become Work Study practitioners, to a verbal mauling - to such an extent that no future set of trainees was allowed to inflict their criticisms through attending such a course ever again. After four weeks of hell, the authorities despatched the trainees to test their skills in real activity on the ground, and I found myself with three others in a foot of snow stop-watching maintenance activities in Laira Diesel Depot. The shed was meant to be steam-free but every morning a dozen steam locos could be observed queuing at the ashpits and coaling plant, rescuing the service from the frozen and damaged diesels.

From March to September 1963, I was attached to the Cardiff Divisional Office in Marland House opposite Cardiff General station. With fellow Traffic Apprentice, John Crowe, I lodged at 14, Dispenser Street, by the River Taff, right opposite Cardiff Arms Park. It was only a 5 minute walk to the office and I missed the daily commute on the many days where I was doomed to ‘sit next to Nellie’ when we were given files to read or told to watch what the clerk was doing instead of a more active role.

Meanwhile I had a new task. I was charged with designing and introducing Control Graphs to the Cardiff Valley coal desks and I spent a happy month travelling in brakevans up the Newport and Cardiff Valleys to Tredegar, Caerphilly, Barry to Ebbw Vale and the Cardiff Valleys via Pontypridd. I also covered the main line between AD Junction and Llanwern on a iron ore train and freights between Margam, Cardiff, Newport and Hereford. I meticulously prepared the graphs - I suspect a lot of my trips up the valleys were strictly unnecessary - I could have designed them from maps - but I learned the geography that way and got to understand more about coal and steel freight flows which stood me in good stead some five years later. Jack Brennan had moved from Swansea to Cardiff by this time and it was he who had charged me with the job and had grumbled fairly good-naturedly at the time I was taking over the job - I suspect he knew what I was up to.

During this period I was summoned to my next training interview with Lance Ibbotson and everyone had told me to prepare myself well and get my story in first. So when his first question was, ‘Well, what are you up to now?’ I was away and rhapsodised over the control graphs and the intent behind them - to move to short term planning of the local variable coal and steel flows using the graphs and to give a graphic daily picture of operations for dissection and understanding the effects of a lot of the track rationalisation that had taken place. There were too many round trips of less than twenty miles taking half a day of engine and crew time and certainly that sort of productivity for the new class 37 English Electric diesels (the 1,750 hp Type 3s as they were known then) was just not acceptable. I was not to know that I had struck gold. Ibbotson had come from the North East and before the interview was over he was arranging for me to spend a week in Middlesbrough and the surrounding area observing the North Eastern controllers using such graphs as they’d been doing for years. Ibbotson was an enthusiast for this process and my stock had now dramatically altered. Ibbotson was almost bubbling with enthusiasm at the interview and I was despatched back to South Wales glowing with relief and under orders to pack my bags and get myself to Middlesbrough the following Monday.

I spent a useful couple of days in two Control offices in the area watching the graphing of trains on the prepared scrolls as signalmen reported passing trips in the Durham coalfield and the North East docks, then a day watching train planners receiving coal production forecasts and using the ‘pin and string’ method of planning options on the graphs and finalising when all the Coal Board forecasts were in. The next day’s train service was then sent out to depots with the crew and engine diagrams that had been optimised by the short term planning procedures. I resolved to spend the next day watching over controllers’ shoulders to see how realistic the planning had been and the final day enjoying myself watching some of the trains in reality.

Early that Friday afternoon I was standing on a station with a four track layout – I can’t remember where exactly now – when I heard the sound of the exhaust of a steam locomotive working very hard. Eventually clouds of steam and smoke appeared on the horizon and the exhaust now sounded like machine gun fire. The dot on the horizon gained ground rapidly and an ancient old NE Q6 0-8-0 pounded past me doing at least 50 mph with a full load of empty mineral wagons clattering crazily behind. I watched with some amazement – I’d never seen such rapidity in any South Wales freight activity – and on enquiry back in the Divisional Office before making my departure, I was advised that the crew would be on their freight bonus scheme and in addition, once the allotted pre-planned programme of work had been completed, the crew would be booked off with no hanging around at the depot to see if Control had found other work.

I reported back to Jack Brennan with some enthusiasm and advocated a similar short term planning methodology. He authorised the printing of the graphs and set up consultation arrangements with the Cardiff Divisional Office LDC to introduce the system. Surprisingly I was not invited to be present and I have no idea what went on, only that the project was shelved and never implemented. I was never told the reason for this –was it another case of the ‘not invented here syndrome’ that I found more than once on the old BR network? I got my revenge a few years later. Perhaps revenge is the wrong word. But I did use the Western Valley control graph in anger to some effect as I’ll describe in a later chapter, I did become boss of the Cardiff Control in 1967 and I did introduce short term planning methodology for the South Wales coal working in conjunction with John Hodge and T.C.Baynton-Hughes’ ‘Blocplan’ in the same year although not with ‘pin and string’.

As the summer approached I was summoned by Bob Hilton, the Divisional Manager, and told that he wanted me to spend a couple of months as Assistant Terminal Manager at Fishguard Harbour during the peak tourist season. The ‘St David’, on the Fishguard – Rosslare route, had been refitted as a ‘Roll-on/Roll-off’ ferry and he gave me the job of designing the optimum layout for car and lorry parking to assess the maximum capacity and produce drawings for the staff involved in loading the ferry. This involved an overnight crossing to Rosslare on the St David during a force 8 gale and a meeting in a drab hotel in Wexford, but my work – conducted with some nervousness – must have passed muster for I was never called to account for any subsequent ferry capacity problems in operation. The rest of the time I spent helping the Terminal and Harbourmaster with odd jobs – calling the vet to examine cattle after a rough crossing from Rosslare was one such task, to ensure that the cattle were fit enough to proceed to Smithfield Market. Often the vet would require the cattle to be given a 24 hour rest before further movement and I would need to liaise with Cardiff Control to change the train arrangements.

I took my first accident inquiry during this turn of duty when we had a crane slippage and dropped a load when the gears slipped. I’m afraid I didn’t do very well and my report was inconclusive. I was faced with conflicting evidence between the crane operator and the maintenance staff and I was too inexperienced at that time - too gullible as well perhaps – to be able to make a judgement on the versions of what I was being told. It was made pretty clear to me that the crane driver was known to be a bit ‘slap-happy, and therefore I was expected to find him the guilty party so he could be disciplined – clearly the desire of other management staff there, but I could not bring myself to find in that way as I’d been unable to uncover any evidence that would justify such a conclusion.

In other ways the assignment was a pleasure. Fishguard in summer was a delight, I went walking along the coastline, I had excellent lodgings, and took an occasional trip back to the main rail network at Clarbeston Road via the local connecting train of two coaches always hauled by the same pannier tank engine – the local ‘Thomas’. I returned to the Cardiff Office for a last month or so and can’t have upset too many people in the process for it was back to South Wales that I went at the end of my training with the full support of Bob Hilton and his team.