Great Western Coffee Shop

As I gave a bit of an introduction about myself yesterday.

It got me thinking about the good old days and how you can't repeat the things I once did as routine. Sorry I've got an old PC that I can't upload pictures too.

So using your own internal picture memory of things you have Seen and Heard on the Railways (and of course upload pictures of said remembered image if you wish).

Let me ask you for your memories of things that were common daily occurrences on the Railway back in the 1970s that No longer occur daily.  (Railway related only).

Only one entry a day please, give everyone a chance!

As a Start I'll give the first memory.

No 1.   Steam Heating on Passenger Trains  (yes it still occurs on Heritage railways)..

Aged 6. Being lifted into the cab of a 47 waiting time at Taunton and being allowed to blast the two-tone.

Aged 8 (with 13 year old brother) in early 1965:  Cycled from Pinhoe to Exmouth Junction shed. Left bikes outside the entrance (unlocked of course). Crept on hands and knees passed the Shed Managers Office window. Got the numbers of the various Westcountry Pacifics, Ivatt Tanks and a couple of 14xx locos.

Then, saw 34026 'Yes Tor' in steam just outside the shed; caught the attention of the driver: "Excuse me, sir. Can we come on the footplate?" "Yes, of course" came the reply. Whilst on the footplate, the driver said "I'm taking her to Central, you can come if you like!"

"Why not" said my brother. So, there were four people on the footplate as 34026 made its way to Exeter Central.

Slight problem though. We had to make our own way back to Exmouth Junction to get our bikes and were both covered in oil and soot. Interesting explanation on arrival back at home.

Arriving at the station for the daily commute, listening for the single 'ding' on the bell for the up line followed by a 3-1 'dings' from the previous signal box offering the morning commuter train to the city.

Compartment coaches - remember the mark 1s with their lumpy bench seats, stiff sliding doors, "all or nothing" heaters and the sliding vents in the top of the windows that refused to yield to increasing force until suddenly they would jerk apart beyond the markers indicating where you should stop to avoid a draught and resolutely refuse to go back to them?

Seeing the rotating beams of the lighthouse next to Hoek Van Holland railway station after the early morning ferry arrival and before the late evening ferry departure back to Harwich.

I remember a weekender railtour from Euston to Inverness in the mid-1970s. Eight people to a compartment made sleeping during the overnight journeys impossible!

Being lifted on to the footplate of the 0-4-2 tank at Brixham at the age of 4.

A warm summer in 1966. Cycling down to Brownedge Level Crossing - the strong sweet smell of warm creosote coming off the crossing timbers. Long converging steel lines of rails off to mysterious places whence came barking Black Fives pounding through with clanking waggons - the sound of bells ringing out from the crossing 'box windows - birdsong - sunshine - and the urgent shout of the bobby to get the ****** off his crossing!! Oxonhutch - aged 5-6. Still love the smell of creosote.

Coming back from South Wales after seeing my grandparents in the late 60s.  Looking out the window as we approached Reading and seeing the famous Nelson’s Hat signal as you approached from the west.  Might well have fired my interest in railway signalling. 

Will try to find a photo of the signal tomorrow. 

Travelling from Worcester to Leeds for Christmas. I think it was 1964 I was 7.
Finding that the Diesel had been replaced by a Black 5 due to a faulty Steam heat boiler.
Banked up the Lickey. Stopping at a building site called Birmingham new street and diverted to Bradford Exchange due to the rebuilding of Leeds.
Later my Mother wrote to BBC children's hour and got a recording of the Lickey banker played for me.
All gone now including Bradford exchange.

At age 10 or thereabouts, I went to Scarborough on family holiday. We stayed at Scalby station, by then closed but the line to Filey was still operational, so our back windows led out onto the platform (I can't remember if we had access by a door to the platform). A highlight of the holiday was travelling on a DMU passing through the closed station. The station yard also had several camping coaches at the time. Great times.

I used to be the school projectionist, in charge of a 16mm Bell and Howell projector. A collection of us up in the gallery were the technical experts of the time. Lights dimmed using Admiralty stud rheostats, first experiments with stereo for the intro music.

This one night we thought we would do something different. The intro music was faded the lights went down and before the film started we put "Castles in the Chilterns"(Argo Transacord) at full volume. That rocked them in their seats. The wonders of then new technology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMegBD-xNoY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMegBD-xNoY)

A few years later when I was in the army I was a part-time projectionist for the SKC (Services Kinema Corporation). The cinema at Arborfield was a large corrugated iron building with two mercury arc projectors, and a notice by the volume control: light rain increase by three, heavy rain increase by four.

As a teenager in the late '70's going on summer holiday trips from the Thames Valley (Reading) to my grandparents in Plymouth. Usually behind a Class 47 or Western in (I think) Mark 2 coaches.

At college in Portsmouth in the 1960s, we had to go to the Natural History Museum for the day. We went by train To Waterloo. I decided to catch the Mail back, steam hauled via Eastleigh. Chatted to the driver and was given a footplate ride on the SW main from Woking to Basingstoke in the middle of the night.

I know my first train journey was in 1950, but can't claim to remember it due to my lack of years (i.e. none of them). It was a sleeper trip to Aberdeen, and back, which we did as a family every year until 1959 to see "grandma in Scotland". But from later years, I do remember those third class sleeper compartments, with four berths, which we occupied as a family until member number five got too big to be tucked in with someone else.

There was that lurid blue/purple light that was always on, and the hushed voices of parents strangely modified by the regular background noise (not really in the background, and of course with added irregular noises too). Me up in a top berth, with those to big leather straps holding it up and a wooden ladder to climb. And wasn't there a space above the corridor where some luggage could be put - though not very easily? Maybe not - but of course, for a family of five, with all the clothes there would be too much to handle on the tube to Kings Cross so a big cabin trunk went ahead as "luggage in advance".

I've had a look on line, but can't find a single picture of the interior of one of those compartments, neither a Mk 1 (which I may remember from the end of the 1950s) nor whatever hand-me-downs BR used before them.

And that in turn has reminded me; I recently came across some related old letters of Dad's, which I'm scanning - I think they would merit their own topic.

The Royal Mail van turning up at Leatherhead with mail bags which would be put on a flatbed trolley, wheeled along the Up platform and then, when the train came in, lobbed into the guard's compartment of a 4SUB or 4EPB.  Happened at least a couple of times a day.  Then there were the empty pigeon baskets being returned and all the regular and Red Star parcels. 

Off course there are some vanished features on our railways that are unlikely to be missed. Few, if any would have shed a tear at the demolition of the Temple Meads GPO conveyor or waxed lyrical about it's form and beauty. To the contrary, it's removal has somewhat enhanced the vista on the approach to the station.
It was quite interesting to trawl through the later 2014 forum posts on the subject.

Something else I also miss, after years of shunting, the (to me wonderful) sound of Buffers singing in the yards whilst "fly" shunting took place.

Wagon buffers sang like bells, clang clang clang.

Three link couplings used to clunk when taking up the strain.
Lovely sounds.

A story of a Freight Guard who had a journey to hell.

A long "Unfitted" wagon train of around 70 wagons was in a yard.
The engine whistled when the ground signal came off, the guard released the hand brake waved his 2 foot ("600mm" for youngsters) square Green flag, and the train started, over the sound of the loco the guard didn't hear the first 20 odd couplings taking up, then he heard Clunk         Clunk      Clunk   Clunk Clunk getting louder and louder, but more worrying faster FASTER and FASTER.
The guard dived into the van to brace himself holding onto the hand brake wheel.

Stationary to 30mph in a nano second, the poor chap was flung to the back of the van, breaking his right arm very badly, the guard got to his feet and going back outside waved his even bigger Red Flag, freight guards had enormous flags the Red biggest of all.
The driver should have checked back for a green flag to indicate the train was in good order. HE DIDN'T

Now a freight guard didn't just sit at the back of the train drinking Tea he would apply the hand brake to keep the couplings taught when going down hill, release the hand brake on the level and going uphill and try to make his journey as jolt free as possible.
This poor chap was in no state to operate the hand brake so he sat there for 90 minutes being thrown about as the buffers met and when the couplings snatched. Only when the Guard failed to appear at the next stopping point did his distress come to light.

Whilst on the subject of "Unfitted" freight trains who remembers the Diesel Brake tenders, built from old steam engine tenders, coupled to Diesel locomotives to increase brake force and could be in front or behind (or both) of the locomotive.

Any pictures out there, don't recall ever seeing a Diesel Hydraulic with a Brake tender.

It's one of those things that is a source of wonder to those of us non-railway people with an interest in railways that "unfitted" train where allowed to run so long. I don't know how long ago Smokey's story took place, but that poor guard was exposed to considerable danger by being stuck at the back of a long line of flexibly connected unbraked small goods wagons being hauled across country, up and down gradients and accelerating and slowing down. It should not have been allowed in the twentieth century.

A Google image search for "brake tender" brings up loads, including this from GCR (https://www.gcrailway.co.uk/2017/11/the-diesel-brake-tender/) about one that's been built from new as none survived being scrapped.

Theirs isn't such a good picture, and I'm not convinced they were made from carriages. But if they were old tenders, how are so many on two bogies? I thought most 8-wheel tenders were on four fixed axles - or is my limited memory at fault there?

Continuously Welded Rail may give a smoother, quieter journey but I sometimes miss the comforting rhythm made by the old tracks.

Now in these modern times, something I miss is the days when,

There were 4 Ticket Types

Being

1 Single

2 Day Return

3 Period Return (valid 3 months for the return journey I seem to recall)

4 Season

Not if you were travelling (i.e. bouncing around) in a PACER or SKIPPER unit, you wouldn't.... ::)

Now long gone not the Clickety Clack of the track, but the

Clickety Click Clack of passenger vehicles on 6 wheel bogies.  :D

CWR short wheelbase 4 wheel wagons and diesel traction was the cause of many derailments in the 60s. At speed the wagons started ocsillating and jumped the track.

I remember we had to send out a notice to all sheds saying cool it boys no more than XXmph

(anyone remember?) even if wagons were fitted.

Unfitted freights were restricted to 25mph, but as Steam engines didn't have Speedometers (the later BR one did) the speed of a Unfitted Train was often around 40mph

My early railway memories are mainly of watching, almost daily, the diesel-shunter crossing the road with a short train of wagons at Bridgwater.  What's now the siding used for nuclear flask traffic and not much else was a line that continued over the road, roughly where the Bristol and Bath Roads converge, and head past what's now Sainsbury's and on to the docks.  The present day Sainsbury's was a timber yard, George Hooper's, where my father worked.  We left Bridgwater in 1960, so I guess my memories would come from 1959/1960.  There were no level crossing gates.  The traffic on the roads was halted by a shunter on each side of the train (or possibly the shunter one side and the guard on the other)

It would be the closest I'd get to a fun fair white knuckle ride these days!


BTW, had to look that up..... didn't know some Pacers were rebranded as Skippers.

These shunting reminiscences remind me of the evening our shunter, Ernie Stockman, lost his favourite pipe, which was rarely out of his mouth. Very upset he was. He had been out shunting the engine run round on the Taunton stopper (at Castle Cary).

Following afternoon he came on, like a bear with a proverbial sore head.  But then, when the stopper was back we heard cheers. His pipe was safely on (and frozen to) the external running board of the coach. It had travelled back to Taunton - still hot, and then had a trip out to Minehead and back in the morning before returning to Cary in the late afternoon. It took some gentle hammering to unfreeze and loosen it, but, it must have been hot initially, so says a lot about the top quality of the road and the careful driving on its trip back to Taunton.

Trainspotting up on the bank at the London end of the up platform at Coventry (my home town) station in the late 50’s – maybe with Pete Waterman! – and booing as Polyphemus appeared again on the up express at about 1115.  41902 and 41909 on the Leamington Spa Avenue – Nuneaton shuttles.

Trainspotting on the Lickey Incline when it was still mainly steam, and seeing the Bromford Bridge oil train with a 2-10-0 at the front and a 2-10-0 and 3 panniers banking - I still have the photo from my old box camera.

On holiday, getting in the cab of 6821 Leaton Grange as it waited to take the up sleeper out of Penzance.

PACERS were once officially known as SKIPPERS in the far Southwest.  Their general descrIption was to be known as NODDING DONKEYS, a very appropriate name...... :P

Having just left the train from school at St. Austell aged about 14 , watching a train of empty china clay trucks climbing from Par with three pannier tanks, one at the front, one in the middle and one at the rear. They were working really hard and the approach to St. Austell station was really loud.

Another one from me....

I grew up in Crowthorne (Berks) but went to Military Boarding School in Dover between '75 and '82 (aged 11 to 18 years).

A lot of the time my journeys to and from school were by train. As I often started these journeys with a few others (our fathers all worked at RMA Sandhurst) we would meet at Camberley for a train to Waterloo, cross over using the walkways to Waterloo East, and thence onwards to Dover Priory.

Waterloo was a big meeting point for other inmates going the same way, so plenty of noise, banter and slight misbehavior was often the order of the day on the next part of the journey.

The trains were usually corridored, slam door, 4CEP EMU's and the like, and lent themselves to the establishment of teenager-ish dens during the journey.

Usually these return to school journeys were on a Sunday, so mercifully few of the general public had to endure our antics.

A Skipper is the only train I've ever felt sick on. Falmouth to Truro (late 80s,) was I glad we weren't going any further,

I am reminded of going round Longmoor Military Railway (LMR) in/on a Wickham trolley. They also had one of those things beloved of films where you had pump a "see-saw" mechanism, but that was hard work.

For the spectacular I think it would be hard to beat the Meldon Quarry ballast trains arriving at Exeter Central in the 1960s.  Two locos on the front with a further two banking at the rear.

They were indeed hard work.  I couldn't believe how hard until I tried.
At the end of various military courses at Longmoor, there used to ride all lines excursion behind one of the tanks on open flat wagons. Sheer joy.
Unfortunately long before I had the wherewithall to purchase a video recorder..

Reminds me of a train I saw in Arizona last Nov. I am used to the length of American freight trains but I saw one between Flagstaff and Winslow that was an order of magnitude longer than anything I had ever seen before. It was containers, two high; I really couldn't say how long it was, it just went on, and on , and on.........Two huge diesels at the the front, two at the back and two in the middle...................just amazing.
Later on "I was standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona"..........for real !

Around 10 years ago I was on holiday campervanning around that part of the US, and stopped for the night at a site near Flagstaff and adjacent to a rail line. Through the night the enormous trains trundled past - horns echoeing around the valleys, so you knew they were coming a long time before they reached you.

I got up to watch one pass us, and it may have only been moving at 15-20mph, but it took 20 minutes to pass me!

The best place I've been to in North America to watch these enormous trains was Kicking Horse Pass on the Alberta/British Columbia border, where the trains negotiate the famous spiral tunnels, very slowly, and cross-over themselves as the front emerges from the top tunnel portal while the rear is still going in the bottom one.

Back in the 1970's I was on a train from Nottingham to London Euston, yes Euston (line south of Bedford shut for engineering work) on the Bedford to Bletchley section it was jointed track and the MKII I was traveling on started to ride roughly, this is poor track thought Smokey, but the swaying from side to side changed to bouncing up and down which got worse and worse. When it got noisy as well, Smokey thought we had derailed but as I'd been on derailed stock it didn't feel like that.
I moved to the next carriage and you could see the effected coach was bouncing through the corridor connection.
When the train braked the coach quickly settled down,  later, speaking to a carriage & Wagon examiner, he said it was hunting caused by constant train speed, constant rail lengths and an example of Resonant Frequency, the loud noise was the suspension hitting it's stops.
Didn't make Smokey feel sick, more like fresh underwear required.  :o :o

Yes, I've been on two derailed trains - both times more than a mile and a half underground - the 'seats' were 10mm boiler plate and there was no suspension whatsoever. That was quite painful and I felt everyone of those sleepers.