I recall him in this way.
I was signal-man at Challow in 1962 – 65 and part of the job was to divert any Up goods train that was likely to delay a following express to the Up Relief Line. One of the worst running trains of the 24 hours was the 3.50 a.m Stoke Gifford – Banbury ‘F’ headcode. Three pause Two on the bell. It was not – OFFICIALLY – the slowest of goods trains, this would have been an ‘H’ headcode but the 3.50 Stoke had a poor reputation for dawdling. This was believed (by the signal-men) to be because Swindon loco men having relieved the Stoke Gifford crew, had only just started their day and were anxious to dawdle in order to be ‘put inside’ at as many places as possible and thus lose time and thus eventually get into overtime. The 3.50 Stoke was scheduled to run through to the Loop at Steventon and not be put inside anywhere else.
When I saw the name ‘Conduit’ on your website I instantly recalled my mate Elwyn Richards at Uffington saying to me on the phone, after he had sent the 3.50 Stoke ‘on line’ (so it was passing Uffington) That’s that ol’ Conduit on there and they’re hangin’ the pot on something dreadful. You’ll have to put him inside.’
Gordon Shurmer’s story of the engine and tender breaking away is probably more unlikely than winning the lottery and winning the lottery would be much nicer.
However, there was a case in 1957 when Driver Bill Bateman had a terrifying incident between the engine and the tender.
He was on a Down newspapers (?) 12.45 Paddington, I’m not too sure, but anyhow they were shut off, running in towards Swindon and relaxed at the end of 8 hours – going home. But on the Up Goods Loop at Highworth Jc a 47xx on an Up Goods had been driven past the Loop Starting signal at Danger and the engine was derailed on the trap points and all its wagons were spilled across the track and also into the arch of Stratton Green Bridge.
Bill Bateman couldn’t see any of that in the dark, hit it at maybe 50 and the terrific blow received by the engine threw the flap up between the engine and the tender and Bill was thrown backwards, legs first into the gap. The fireman was thrown clean off the engine.
The vacuum pipes being severed by the crash the brakes went on and the gap between the engine and tender opened and shut as the brakes went on and Bill was being pinched and released again. He reckoned the toe tips of his boots were clipping the sleepers and his backside was being squashed and released as the train brakes and the engine brake pulled against each other.
Reading Tom Conduit’s Swindon Old Town Bank story was brilliant. He has some great tales. But you know, those of us who grew up on the Paddington – Bristol line and hadn’t been anywhere else were very narrow – if it it had once been a broad gauge railway.
I was once friendly with a Scots fireman – by the time I knew him he was at Oxford. As a young signal-man I had him up in my box and there I was, wet behind the ears and knowing only about my bit the GWR(WR) saying. ‘We’ve got TWO inclines between Bristol and London – they’re both 1 in 100 and they’re both nearly two miles long.
The Scot looked at me in disbelief so I re-stated this amazing fact. He recovered himself in order to say – being very polite – ‘Oh! We dinnae notice a gradient that’s not in two figures.’
So of course i thought he was VERY boastful. Five years later I was in Scotland, looking for steam on the Stirling Perth line and watching A4 and V2 and Black 5 locos. Anyhow. The day I got to Dunblane, which I made my base of operations, I went to the signal box for a look and there I saw a siding falling steeply down to a river. I asked the signal-man why the siding was so steep. He was most puzzled and then he said. ‘Oh no – that’s not a steep falling gradient in the siding. The siding’s level – it is a very steeply rising main line!’ It was then that I recalled, and felt terribly embarrassed, what I had said to Jock the Scots fireman five years before.
So , ‘Travel broadens the mind.’
I made a tape recording on the foot-plate of a loose coupled freight train from Swindon through the Severn Tunnel.
The tape shows that the driver did not work the train as described on the ‘tale’ but there would have been different techniques according to driver. On this occasion, the driver let the brake off and that’s all.
The train freewheeled out of the loop, down the hill and picked up speed towards and into the tunnel.
The weight of 70 empty tubs was pushing us. After we’d been in the blackness for a while – the driver knew how long to wait, he began to open the regulator, the engine started to accelerate and draw the train out, couplings tight. Perhaps the guard had his brake on.
By the time we passed the first white light marking the bottom of the incline and the 40 yards of level, we were running quite fast and the engine was opened out.
The couplings would have been pulled out tight and we we opened up with enough regulator to take us storming up the 1 in 90 and, after 2 miles or so, out into daylight.
It was clever stuff.