'The Toss of a Coin', Chapter 2 / 1

Joining the railways

In 2000 I was involved at the Old Oak Common Open Weekend in the naming of EWS AC electric locomotive, 90031 'The Railway Children Partnership', and in support of that event, was present during the two days with a stand and display about the international street children charity after which the locomotive was named. Coincidentally, that stand was on the ground floor of the old train crew accommodation - where 42 years previously, immediately above on the first floor, I had spent several weeks, just before the building’s completion, copying out new train crew rosters in isolation as the Chief Clerk feared I might be subject to some animosity (as I was apparently doing some clerk out of overtime he had been expecting in order to complete the same task!) As a result I found myself unsupervised with a grandstand view of all the mainline locomotives going on and off shed – ‘Kings’, ‘Castles’, ‘Britannias’, the lot! So my banishment was hardly an ordeal.

How did I arrive at this happy situation? Back in the summer of 1956 I’d enrolled in what was termed ‘a short works course’ with British Railways - a scheme to show Sixth Formers career opportunities. I’d always believed that I’d need an engineering degree to turn my hobby into paid work, but this course seemed to advertise other potential opportunities. I was instructed to make my way on a Sunday evening to a hotel in Bath and duly caught the 4.15pm from Paddington behind one of the Western Region’s derided Britannias, ‘Lightning’, which did not live up to its name enduring a lot of slow line running because of engineering work. Seven fellow students joined me there and we spent the week under the tutelage of the Bristol District Assistant Operating Superintendent, Rodney Meadows, a former Traffic Apprentice, who was to show us the opportunities such a scheme offered.

The week was a joy for train enthusiasts - and most of us were - although I gathered later that I was the only one of the eight that actually joined BR. We had a tour of Bristol Docks in a brakevan, spent an afternoon at Severn Tunnel Junction marshalling Yard, visited a new Signalbox at Bathampton and had a most fruitful day at Swindon Works where we were permitted to view Lode Star and a row of stored ‘Dean Goods’ and ‘Dukedogs’ in the Works ‘Stock Shed’. I kept in touch with Rodney Meadows who became the agent through whom I got the opportunity to work at Old Oak Common.

Having nothing better to do during my ‘half gap year’ between school and college during the first half of 1957, I applied, with a reference from Rodney, to the London Divisional Office of the Western Region for temporary employment, knowing by then that I wished to pursue a railway career. During my first summer vacation from London University in 1958 I repeated the experience, but the summer vacation of 1959 was spent brushing up my German at Munich University and discovering the delights of Bavarian compound pacifics on the Munich - Lindau - Lake Constance route to Geneva and Zurich and learning most of my new German vocabulary at the Hauptbahnhof which was being rebuilt after the ravages of the Second World War.

Old Oak was always short staffed during the holiday periods, so for most of the time there I was employed in various clerical jobs, which involved spending time in different sections of the shed. Initially I spent a few (rather boring) weeks doling out thick green engine lubrication oil to drivers and just enjoying the atmosphere of the depot. At that time Old Oak Common’s allocation included 170 steam locomotives - about half of the ‘Kings’ and 43 ‘Castles’ amongst others - and 20 diesel shunters. Every morning, as I walked down the long slope from Old Oak Common Lane into the depot, I was greeted by the sight of at least two of the large Churchward 2-8-0s simmering at stop blocks by the carriage shed after arrival on overnight fast freights. In fact, one particular siding there was known to all as the ‘47 hundred road’. I would then cut through the side entrance of the shed, across one of the four electric turntables, glancing at the ‘Kings’ and ‘Castles’ on display, searching for a rare visitor. I would need to be careful at this point because the turntable, being fully covered in and electrically operated, would often start off with little warning and at quite a lick.

On my first day I was given a tour of the shed which included a trip in the cab of 5074 ‘Hampden’ being prepared for the ‘Torbay Express’ down to the coaling plant and shed exit signal. The depot was a very cosmopolitan place and although work seemed to be allocated on apparently racist lines there seemed to me to be only good natured banter between the various groups - perhaps I was just a little naïve at the time. The shed labourers working the coaling plant and emptying the ashes from smokeboxes and dropping fires near the coaling plant were all Irish. The cleaners employed in the shed itself were all of West Indian origin and a gang would be seen cheerfully smothering an engine with oil until it gleamed and if it was still there after the gang had gone round one of the roundhouses cleaning the other locomotives, it would get another dose. We had many Welsh firemen and I learned that they had come on promotion to get their foot onto the driver’s promotional ladder, as there was little hope of becoming a driver in the Welsh valley depots before one was in the mid 50s.

The stores where I was initially employed joined on to the ‘Factory’ where facilities existed for the repair of up to a dozen steam locomotives, which usually included two or three undergoing the three monthly valves and piston renewals and a couple of hot box repairs involving lifting the engine from the bogie which seemed the location of most problems. When a locomotive had been repaired here, it was despatched under the eyes of Billy Gibbs, the Maintenance Foreman, for a high speed trip round the Ealing - Greenford triangle to see that all was well. As well as driver and fireman, Billy Gibbs and a fitter from the Factory, it was practice to allow one of the apprentices to make the trip. I got a turn too and my loco was 6024 ‘King Edward I’ after a bogie hot box repair. I remember sitting on the tender toolbox, head above the cab roof (any railway inspectors please shut your eyes - although I did wear a pair of motor cycle goggles) as we accelerated hard from Old Oak West after a signal check, so we only got up to around 65mph instead of the 80 hoped for to test the bearing. A sedate run on the branch, pauses to feel the offending bearing, and then another burst of speed back from West Ealing to Acton, saw all successfully concluded and 6024 was on the ‘Cornish Riviera Limited’ the next day.

By this time I was getting used to the smell of the place. Although it can’t be true, I remember the shed always baking in a heat wave and everywhere was bathed in a peculiar pungent odour of hot oil, sulphur and a faint whiff of stale urine, which seemed especially strong around the dead locos awaiting repair outside the Factory. Once I was working on clerical rather than stores duties I used to wear a white shirt (why?) and my poor mother had a dreadful time trying to get them clean after one day’s wear in that atmosphere.

By early spring 1957 I had graduated to the Central Office at Old Oak, so named because it was located exactly in the centre of the engine shed, the bullseye between the four turntables that made up the main depot. But it was central in another way, because it was from here that all the maintenance work of the shed’s allocation was organised. The clerk that was in charge of engine histories was on longterm sick leave and Billy Gibbs put me to work covering his post. This was a delight to me, because my role involved recording the oil and coal consumption of each locomotive from dockets issued by the stores or coaling plant, compiling mileage records from the loco rosters operated for Old Oak’s engines, and preparing routine maintenance plans (boiler washouts and valves and piston exams) as well as shopping proposals for Swindon Works Heavy and Intermediate repairs.

Whilst the location of this Central Office was ideal in one sense, it was literally hard on other senses. The noise around meant that phone calls were a strain and at the end of the day a sore throat and headache were quite common. One day a locomotive failed before going off shed after the fireman had prepared a big fire for its duty, and it stood inside the shed on one of the roads adjoining our offices blowing off steam furiously for what seemed like hours. On another occasion a Britannia’s whistle got stuck and the loud chime lost its attraction somewhat quickly until it petered out ages afterwards into a feeble cracked note.

Around this time one of the shed’s regulars was the 1904 record-breaker ‘City of Truro’ which for several weeks came up to town on a commuter train and returned home on either the 17.20 or 18.20 Paddington - Reading (I can’t remember which). I travelled on it one day to the first stop - West Drayton - with its eight non corridor coaches, in a fine drizzle - a most unsuitable duty, as the driver had great difficulty in controlling the slipping of the large driving wheels. I did record that we just managed to touch 60 mph before the stop and we only lost about a minute on schedule, but it must have been hard going thereafter as the train was then all stations to Reading. At the end of this stint, 3440 returned to Didcot and was used on the Didcot-Newbury-Winchester service, a much more suitable assignment.

My presence at Old Oak did cause some consternation. Clerical work was jealously guarded and local staff did all in their power to ensure no excuse for staff cuts could be made. As well as the embarrassment of doing a clerk out of his overtime copying out the 1958 winter rosters, I completed my day’s duties in the Mechanical Foreman’s office around 11am on most days. This flummoxed the other clerks and I was told to take an early and long lunch break in the Old Oak hostel canteen and, as they knew I was interested, spend the afternoon with a different fitter each week. I remember vividly spending one week with Joe Parrott (then 72 years of age) who was the Automatic Warning System (AWS) fitter, going out to North Acton, to knock out the AWS shoes of Great Western locos coming from the Midlands and going across to the Southern on Summer Saturdays. Another week was spent with the boilersmith (who was only 67!) enduring the usual ritual of being sent into the firebox of a loco whose fire had only just been dropped. On one occasion I came across one rather rotund Traffic Apprentice who had actually got stuck in the firehole door after such an initiation and we all had to haul him out to his severe loss of face.

My first attempt at carrying out any maintenance work myself was a total disaster. I was told to remove the clack box of one of the depot’s many pannier tanks and I found the nuts so worn that I managed to break two substantial monkey spanners and dismantle half the engine before I prised off the offending part. However, I can’t have been completely useless as the locomotive concerned, 5764, survives to this day on the Severn Valley Railway!